Brainstorming

[fuwok]

Supposedly, tomes were never supposed to be as plentiful as they are. The idea of having 60 and 70 tomes wasn't even thought about when tomes were released. I liked having somewhere to put my excess xp as a "maxed out" character pre-Ikisith, but the implementation of tomes since its inception (even codexes) was poorly thought out.

I didn't like the release of Ikisith from the standpoint that it greatly increased player power in a totally non-linear way, both with the inundation of tomes, and the high tier loot which is leaps and bounds ahead of anything pre-Ikisith.

The power curve before Ikisith was pretty linear, once it came out Ikisith, it became logarithmic. It is fun to be Godzilla stomping around killing everything when a 6 man group has the strength of an 18 man Tier 10 raid. Getting to that point though, and regearing/xping characters to that point means the endgame can start to look mighty impenetrable, even if you were already in the endgame and now just have reduced playtime.

 

[Charley]

Can you elaborate on this point any? Everquest is all about killing mobs to get stronger and then moving on to the next camp to kill more mobs that you couldn't before. If you find that "terribly boring" then perhaps the reason is because you don't like RPG's.

I have played RPG's for 10 years now and invested countless hours in them. I don't think the problem is "I don't like RPG's". What I find "terribly boring" is that there is literally nothing that engages a new player in the world and lore of SoD as they level up (besides the main quest). I realize that exp grinding by killing enemies over and over is the main method of progression. What I don't understand is why there isn't a story (quests) to accompany this grinding. Give players an actual objective to accomplish in a zone/dungeon rather than finding a good camp spot and killing the same respawns over and over. Encourage groups to adventure through the dungeon, killing as they go, but with some sort of purpose that could be lore-driven.

You can start the Main Quest of the game at level 1. This quest lines gives you a dumb amount of exp vs the exp needed to simply level to 65. It also has a reward you will use for the rest of the game.

Newport ring 5 is also simply amazing. The last ring for Tanks and Melee dps will last a very long time unless they are crazy twinked. I remember using mine still after I had max aa's and was doing tome exp. I don't see that as "easy to replace" at all. I also still use my gloves from my Thuragdin quest to this day.

The Main Quest and Newport Ring are fantastic quests. I am saying there should be more quests like these. The Thurgadin quests are also great. All I am saying is that we could use more of these types of quests.

It only feels like a race because you made it a race in your head. Leveling to 65 helps the learning curve of the game. The game is designed to help you learn how the game works so when you hit level 65 you know how to play the game in some form. I know this doesn't work for everyone.

I have to disagree with you here. It does not take 64 levels of grinding to learn the game. I would maintain that once you hit 65 and begin raiding, there is a completely different learning curve that comes with raiding with 18 people. Grinding in a 6 person group does not teach you how to raid. It teaches you how to grind exp. There is some overlap to be sure but they are not the same thing. How much do you really think people are learning by killing the same monsters over and over in Zone A, then once they have reached a certain level, doing the same exact thing in Zone B.

I really do not know where to begin with this. It seems like you are just contradicting yourself.

You want to give quests more exp so people can level faster.

Quests are mainly for gear. Perhaps you feel the gear that you get from quests are not good enough but that is the main goal to most quests I can thing of. Simply going out and killing random mobs and give you exp will give you much more exp then trying to do a quest. Some drops needed for quests are rare and force you to "camp" a mob. This takes time and slows the rate of leveling down. The time the quest takes you away from not getting exp is the price you pay to get the item reward. If the quest gave you the item reward and the same (ore more) amount of experience that you would have got if you had just grinded then everyone would now do that quest and no one would grind around that level.

Did you miss the part where I said increase the experience on NON-REPEATABLE quests. People would still have to grind at that level even if they got an entire level's worth of experience for one quest. I really don't understand your point. Even if every single person did that quest, they would only be one level higher and still need to grind in the same area.

You want to give people leveling to 65 more quests so they can get better gear.
I'm guessing you want this gear to be useful at level 65 since it "feel like you were starting from scratch as soon as you hit 65"
Then you say "I'm not saying we need to give them armor with 40ac, 60hp, tons of stats"

Now that we know what you are not saying, let us get to what are you trying to say? I for one am lost.

When I started the game my friend and I went out of our way to farm gear we wanted as we leveled. We did every Starfall quest and Thurgadin quest on all three of the characters we played (He played a shaman, warrior and I played a ranger). My friend really wanted a Chestplate of the Warlord because he thought it was amazing so we farmed the crap out of Keep of Mielech and the thing didn't drop for a very long time. We were all level 65 by the time he finally got it. It was still an upgrade and he used it until he quit playing the game.

The BP has 40 ac and 66 hp on it when its PRISTINE. The mob that drops it is level 55 and comes with 2 adds that are rather hard when you are a fresh player trying to farm his gear.

Do you want his magical armor quest to be easy or hard? How many stats do you want to put on the armor? If its too hard and far under the quality of BP off Warlord Pripitraliti the Great then people will never do the quest that people spent time to write and code over doing something else. If the quest is too easy and the BP is almost just as good as the one in question then people will stop farming for it and less and less people will go to Keep of Mielech.

Ok, your example with the Chestplate is really bad because it is a DROPPABLE item. Even if there was a quest in place with a comparable quality BP, people would still farm the chestplate because they can sell it to others or a vendor. All of the quests/gear I am talking about would be no drop.

You also say that you and your friend went out of your way to farm gear you wanted as you levelled. All I am saying is that a player should not have to go well out of their way to obtain gear, but rather, gear should come somewhat naturally as a character levels. Obviously, a player will have to go out of their way for the better rewards (Starfall and Thurg quests) but that doesn't mean these should be the only ways to gear up your toon.

 

[cian2]

Supposedly, tomes were never supposed to be as plentiful as they are. The idea of having 60 and 70 tomes wasn't even thought about when tomes were released. I liked having somewhere to put my excess xp as a "maxed out" character pre-Ikisith, but the implementation of tomes since its inception (even codexes) was poorly thought out.

I didn't like the release of Ikisith from the standpoint that it greatly increased player power in a totally non-linear way, both with the inundation of tomes, and the high tier loot which is leaps and bounds ahead of anything pre-Ikisith.

The power curve before Ikisith was pretty linear, once it came out Ikisith, it became logarithmic. It is fun to be Godzilla stomping around killing everything when a 6 man group has the strength of an 18 man Tier 10 raid. Getting to that point though, and regearing/xping characters to that point means the endgame can start to look mighty impenetrable, even if you were already in the endgame and now just have reduced playtime.

The actual usefulness of having 60-70 tomes is way exaggerated though. I think I could drop myself to 25-30 tomes and be equally effective. Still, 30 tomes is a lot. I've always said exp should get boosted a TON as times goes on, by now it should be like 2-3x what it is now. I think it should be boosted (or reduce exp requires for tomes by x percent) every few months. I even tried to push for it when I was a dev, but all we see is exp getting nerfed... it's been nerfed three times now in the past year or so, and I have no idea why and never seen slaar or woldaff elaborate on the decision. Really, considering myself and lots of others near the top got so much exp when it was easier, it just continues to put new people at a disadvantage. Boosting exp gain and balancing around 30 tomes for the future seems a lot more reasonable than removing tomes.

I do think it's more of an imagined barrier than a real one, but seemingly equally as important

 

[Kedrin]

More lore in the game would be cool. Well, there is a ton of lore in the game but its hard to find and should be more in your face.

Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that leveling to 65 is easy enough that you don't need much gear at all. You can get to max level by just picking up random things along the way. My friends and I just wanted to get cool gear and do quests to experience more of the game. The only quest that was very difficult was the Ruby Hilted Longsword Quest because I had terrible luck and had to kill far too many Najad's for a Lock of Najad Hair. I was there for 4 days strait.

 

[Widan]

One of the main problems, as Fuwok briefly touched on, is gear inflation. I remember when IP and cmal 4.2 loots were the best loots in the game. They were so overpowered compared with everything else that Wiz or whoever decided to nerf them across the board. I think we have again reached the point where the higher tier gear is at stupid levels and needs to be rebalanced, see: nerfed, once again.

 

[Kedrin]

One of the main problems, as Fuwok briefly touched on, is gear inflation. I remember when IP and cmal 4.2 loots were the best loots in the game. They were so overpowered compared with everything else that Wiz or whoever decided to nerf them across the board. I think we have again reached the point where the higher tier gear is at stupid levels and needs to be rebalanced, see: nerfed, once again.

The main problem with nerfing gear is that the High end content is balanced around characters having this gear. Trust me some of these fights are very hard.

Sharn`Ree
Warchief Rujik
Blazewind
Taeshlin, the Fallen Guardian

These fights have been untouched since FWF went to sleep. It seems that Exodus also has players with better tomes and Gear then FWF did when we first started to kill these mobs. Perhaps I am wrong and a lot of their people quit over the summer also or something. What I am trying to say is If gear is nerfed then there is only going to be more time for the dust to collect on the end game of SoD , unless Marza re-codes every fight he made and that just seems ridiculous.

 

[Charley]

More lore in the game would be cool. Well, there is a ton of lore in the game but its hard to find and should be more in your face.

Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that leveling to 65 is easy enough that you don't need much gear at all. You can get to max level by just picking up random things along the way. My friends and I just wanted to get cool gear and do quests to experience more of the game. The only quest that was very difficult was the Ruby Hilted Longsword Quest because I had terrible luck and had to kill far too many Najad's for a Lock of Najad Hair. I was there for 4 days strait.

I think that more city-oriented lore woudl be a great addition. It could help give some distinction to each of the different starting areas. Really, the only difference between the starting areas is the name of the mobs you kill and how easy it is (newport vs. mistwoods). If we added some quests and lore, it would give a new player a much better sense of their place in the world of Dalaya as well as some direction for progressing their character other than making your yellow bar move.

Here is an example. A new Warrior begins in the city of Kelethin. The Warrior Trainer introduces him to the Warrior's Guild and provides some background on the role of a Warrior in the city of Kelethin. The Frilakh have been slowly advancing on the city and their camps are even within sight of the great lifts. Maybe your first mission is to kill some scouts so they cannot bring back information to their commanders. There could be a whole progression of quests dealing with the Frilakh, some could be class specific, some open to all classes.

I don't think my point is that you NEED gear to level to 65. I just think that it makes for a much more fun game when you can improve your gear steadily as you progress.

 

[Rorne]

New Tome System

-Two kinds of tomes: General and Class. Much fewer general tomes and more class ones.

-Each class has two tome paths that enhance and customize facets of the the class, you must pick one or the other to do and obviously there would be some method of "respec'ing". Once the paths had been finalized and put into the game a list of them and what they do would be posted on the wiki so that pioneering players wouldn't have to blindly pick and hope that they would be getting what they want out of their choice only to have to swap later on.

-Embarking on a class tome path would begin at level 25 via an introductory quest where you would receive your first class tome. Another quest would take place at level 45 and again at 65 (integrated into the murk village entry quest). After that all class tomes would be obtained via raiding:See Below. General tomes would be obtained via exping in level 65 dungeons (not ikisith specific)

-Upon reaching level 65 (and in the case of Class tomes once you had completed the level 65 quest step) you would have the ability to do all tomes. Both Class tomes and General tomes would be completely tradeable with higher tier Class tomes dropping off higher tier raid targets across the world (once again not ikisith specific).

-General tomes would be doable whenever you obtain them but Class tomes would require a generic type of reagent. These reagents would drop from or be obtained through some mechanic from all raid mobs and you would require an equivalent tier (or above) reagent to combine with a tome to activate it. IE: Class Tome #5 dropped from tier F raid mobs requires reagent from tier F raid mob or above.

-A much more reasonable balance could be struck between rarity and and experience requirement to completion. General tomes would be there to do when you don't have a Class tome to do and Class tomes would be more readily available, limited by the reagent more than an idiotic luck system built around randomly obtaining them.

It could be pretty difficult to develop two worthwhile paths for the more one-dimensional classes like say warriors or clerics but it's not impossible and could also add much needed depth. Starting players out early would give them a taste of things to come, give them more to do at low levels, and add a little flavour between them and their counterparts as they level up depending on what the tomes they do and which path they pick. It would actually make them feel like something came out of ikisith development they can benefit from other than a glut of retarded droppables.

All previously completed tomes could be liquidated into banked experience for players to put towards the new system so they are not unfairly screwed, if this was done right this would also be an opportune time to phase out codices of power and redistribute that power gain.

 

[Widan]

The main problem with nerfing gear is that the High end content is balanced around characters having this gear. Trust me some of these fights are very hard.

Well obviously some content would have to be rebalanced. And if there's no one to do that then the highest end content can just rot, that would be much better for the server than the way things are now.

 

[darksabbath]

I think that more city-oriented lore woudl be a great addition. It could help give some distinction to each of the different starting areas. Really, the only difference between the starting areas is the name of the mobs you kill and how easy it is (newport vs. mistwoods). If we added some quests and lore, it would give a new player a much better sense of their place in the world of Dalaya as well as some direction for progressing their character other than making your yellow bar move.

Here is an example. A new Warrior begins in the city of Kelethin. The Warrior Trainer introduces him to the Warrior's Guild and provides some background on the role of a Warrior in the city of Kelethin. The Frilakh have been slowly advancing on the city and their camps are even within sight of the great lifts. Maybe your first mission is to kill some scouts so they cannot bring back information to their commanders. There could be a whole progression of quests dealing with the Frilakh, some could be class specific, some open to all classes.

I don't think my point is that you NEED gear to level to 65. I just think that it makes for a much more fun game when you can improve your gear steadily as you progress.

That is some great stuff, and some great idea in other posts here. Why not app to be a dev, and ask to work on the low level game, focusing on this kind of quest implementation? It's not that nobody wants this lore stuff in game, it's that people haven't had the time or ideas for it. Some have worked on it in the past (see Surefall armor series for druid/ranger), but those people have since quit, or moved onto other things.

Also, you forgot about the starfall class quests, and adepts. Adding the exp code to these items made them relevant. Perhaps the way to make quest drops relevant is to add the exp code to all of them, or any meant for toons lvl 60 and below, at least.

 

[Charley]

That is some great stuff, and some great idea in other posts here. Why not app to be a dev, and ask to work on the low level game, focusing on this kind of quest implementation? It's not that nobody wants this lore stuff in game, it's that people haven't had the time or ideas for it. Some have worked on it in the past (see Surefall armor series for druid/ranger), but those people have since quit, or moved onto other things.

Also, you forgot about the starfall class quests, and adepts. Adding the exp code to these items made them relevant. Perhaps the way to make quest drops relevant is to add the exp code to all of them, or any meant for toons lvl 60 and below, at least.

I have submitted my dev app and asked to work on low to mid-level content. We'll see what happens. As for the exp code, I would hesitate to make this commonplace. I think the intent of the gear/quest rewards that I am talking about is that they are usable for 5-10 levels, until they can be upgraded by another item. That isn't to say that there will be absolutely no newbie quests with expable items but I would rather there be a larger selection of gear and upgrades for the low to mid level character vs. a few pieces of gear that you keep with you for 40 levels, gaining stats as the item gains exp.

 

[darksabbath]

Well, the gains on some of these pieces could be set to happen quicker, and increment smaller. That way, the pieces are more replaceable.. but still worth doing. Not every piece has to last for 30-40 levels with the exp code. There is many droppable items that are easy to acquire from others that are more worthwhile than quest rewards. Making quests worth doing was one of your points. Exp rewards don't have to be huge if the gear you get is worth using.

 

[SecretsOfThePast]

Main issue seems to be that you should be rewarded something physical for your time no matter what, according to the discussion.

IMO, the main issue is getting drops and exp at the same time through any means of gameplay.

If a player wants to quest to max level, they should be able to and be rewarded about the same as if you ground out that experience.
If a player wants to grind experience to max level, they should be able to and not be hindered gear-wise for doing so.

With 3.0 designers will have a bit more flexibility in terms of content design in this regard.

For example, we can easily go back and add increased/decreased exp to existing quests easily. There's also a function of the new scripting system that adds a percentage of expeirence to your character needed for level. If a designer were to choose, they would be able to grant experience based on your character's level versus an invisible 'quest level'. Certain things come to mind that could benefit from this.

For example, the beetle quest in North Newport. You could set it so you get exp rewards that gradually decreases upon getting experience until level 5. This ties into grinding out experience as well, because now you just added a repeatable quest to get minor money rewards, maybe a random chance at a piece of cloth armor, etc, in addition to experience. Add a lore element to the quest, maybe some random dynamics (maybe give out a random quest objective each time?), and you have a way for players to grind exp in multiple ways that are intuitive and, while grindy, more dynamic in a way that it gives you something to do, something to work together towards as a group.

With some of the new quest systems designers will have in 3.0, the above is very feasible and much more complex systems could be added on top of that.

For example, Maybe even a repeatable-daily boss-killing quest where you'll fight an NPC that shares similar statistics and encounter mechanics to an adept and can only be engaged like an adept. Upon defeat, you turn in the quest and recieve a huge chunk of experience for your level and a piece of armor or something. The NPC would be on a long respawn timer, but it gives people more things to do.

Also, All of these systems are scriptable within less than 10 minutes of content design time compared to 2.0's backend. It would be trivial to add tons of these encounters, and making a custom NPC with a script would only take maybe ~15 minutes more development time depending on the complexity of the script you want to make.

Back to the present instead of the future, I think a short term solution is to get more designers on that kind of thing like Charley has attempted to apply for. More things to do in a game is never bad. A long term solution of course is getting the things in the game that you are doing fun while appealing to long-term players.

 

[cian2]

coding quests is very tedious and i think people get tired of it pretty fast. i wanted to make netherbian lair into a 30-45ish zone with all no drop gear and class specific quest stuff you could upgrade. unfortunately i never got to do it. i never really though of myself as a great person to do low level stuff since im more the kind of player who races through it, but it'd be great to have someone who concentrated solely on it

 

[Charley]

Main issue seems to be that you should be rewarded something physical for your time no matter what, according to the discussion.

IMO, the main issue is getting drops and exp at the same time through any means of gameplay.

If a player wants to quest to max level, they should be able to and be rewarded about the same as if you ground out that experience.
If a player wants to grind experience to max level, they should be able to and not be hindered gear-wise for doing so.

This is exactly what I am talking about; giving the player some flexibility to choose how they want to progress through the game. Obviously, some players like grinding and others may prefer questing and learning the lore of Dalaya. Both should be viable options for levelling a character.

Maybe grinding should always be the fastest way to level up your character, but there should be enough loot obtained while grinding to outfit your character. In contrast, questing could be slightly slower for levelling due to travel time and such, but maybe the item rewards are slightly better than the loot received for killing mobs around the same level. Maybe some of the questable loots offer unique effects that can't be obtained elsewhere (level appropriate clickies like buffs or level 1 and 2 focus effects).

 

[Anti Eh]

The main problem with nerfing gear is that the High end content is balanced around characters having this gear. Trust me some of these fights are very hard.

Sharn`Ree
Warchief Rujik
Blazewind
Taeshlin, the Fallen Guardian

These fights have been untouched since FWF went to sleep. It seems that Exodus also has players with better tomes and Gear then FWF did when we first started to kill these mobs. Perhaps I am wrong and a lot of their people quit over the summer also or something. What I am trying to say is If gear is nerfed then there is only going to be more time for the dust to collect on the end game of SoD , unless Marza re-codes every fight he made and that just seems ridiculous.

well fwf had farmed out a few 4.3 weapons b4 hitting up those targets no?
def remember seeing Juff with a sword b4 sharn`ree loot posted on ur website ^^
exodus got 4.3 2nd phase to 2% a bunch and 0% a couple times,

but fight seems crazy nerfed now and we struggle to get first phase below 13%
i can understand wanting to change the fight a bit if you dont like the strat leaks,
but curious if its still balanced for groups that are not 6/6 rohk tomes, 6/6 1.2mils, 6/6 vah backs, 6/6 nz rings, 6/6 taesh ear groups.
cause ours pretty much meet these req's other then nz rings and we lack.

i always though last version was pretty intense without having 2minute vahback buffs or any 4.3 weapons yet.
the need for extra movement speed was unreal as is.

im not sure how the stuff u said is balanced around having upgraded 6man weapons.
but from what ive heard is u prob need 4.3 gears to kill those targets u mentioned and 4.3 got made hard enough that even fwf dies to it now?

i mean sure killing up to NZ, then trying custo and lacking , backgearing in spires and leaving elemental researcher for cw and sb , then going to turraj and clearing top tribes is fun.

but to progress exo still has like 10weeks of 4.3 kills to farm out, so the most excitment we get is hoping Nz drops 3loots while only do raids 2days a week.

 

[cian2]

well fwf had farmed out a few 4.3 weapons b4 hitting up those targets no?
def remember seeing Juff with a sword b4 sharn`ree loot posted on ur website ^^
exodus got 4.3 2nd phase to 2% a bunch and 0% a couple times,

but fight seems crazy nerfed now and we struggle to get first phase below 13%
i can understand wanting to change the fight a bit if you dont like the strat leaks,
but curious if its still balanced for groups that are not 6/6 rohk tomes, 6/6 1.2mils, 6/6 vah backs, 6/6 nz rings, 6/6 taesh ear groups.
cause ours pretty much meet these req's other then nz rings and we lack.

i always though last version was pretty intense without having 2minute vahback buffs or any 4.3 weapons yet.
the need for extra movement speed was unreal as is.

im not sure how the stuff u said is balanced around having upgraded 6man weapons.
but from what ive heard is u prob need 4.3 gears to kill those targets u mentioned and 4.3 got made hard enough that even fwf dies to it now?

i mean sure killing up to NZ, then trying custo and lacking , backgearing in spires and leaving elemental researcher for cw and sb , then going to turraj and clearing top tribes is fun.

but to progress exo still has like 10weeks of 4.3 kills to farm out, so the most excitment we get is hoping Nz drops 3loots while only do raids 2days a week.

Lots of people had 4.3 weapons for sharn'ree, but they really are of no consequence on that fight. Exo is way more geared right now than FWF was when they did sharn'ree imo, but there has been a lot of changes between then and now, mostly various class nerfs. Gear would be an issue on rujik but from what I've seen I think you guys have the gear for that too.

We haven't done the new 4.3, I'm not even sure what changed other than the trigger activating at 30% instead of 20, which shouldn't be a big deal by itself. The fights been adjusted a bunch of times. hopefully I'll do it sometime soon so I can see if its really too hard again. But tbh if I was building strong 6 man groups i'd be more inclined to go to the overgrowth

18 mans and 6 mans arent linearly balanced, with the right group 4.3 is pretty damn easy, but with the wrong group it seems near impossible. And honestly, most of the 4.3 loot has been nerfed to the point where it's not a big deal anymore. the days of ridiculous horok and bane are long over. of course, the robe will always make it worth killing.

 

[Obscenitor]

well fwf had farmed out a few 4.3 weapons b4 hitting up those targets no?
def remember seeing Juff with a sword b4 sharn`ree loot posted on ur website ^^
exodus got 4.3 2nd phase to 2% a bunch and 0% a couple times,

but fight seems crazy nerfed now and we struggle to get first phase below 13%
i can understand wanting to change the fight a bit if you dont like the strat leaks,
but curious if its still balanced for groups that are not 6/6 rohk tomes, 6/6 1.2mils, 6/6 vah backs, 6/6 nz rings, 6/6 taesh ear groups.
cause ours pretty much meet these req's other then nz rings and we lack.

i always though last version was pretty intense without having 2minute vahback buffs or any 4.3 weapons yet.
the need for extra movement speed was unreal as is.

im not sure how the stuff u said is balanced around having upgraded 6man weapons.
but from what ive heard is u prob need 4.3 gears to kill those targets u mentioned and 4.3 got made hard enough that even fwf dies to it now?

i mean sure killing up to NZ, then trying custo and lacking , backgearing in spires and leaving elemental researcher for cw and sb , then going to turraj and clearing top tribes is fun.

but to progress exo still has like 10weeks of 4.3 kills to farm out, so the most excitment we get is hoping Nz drops 3loots while only do raids 2days a week.

Having a few more items per person is not going to make a damn difference if you cannot execute the strategy for a fight like Sharn'Ree. The only real gear check of the fights that we did was Warchief Rujik where you need to do about 1.95M damage in a minute or less.

EDIT: Did not notice this at first glance but this is a good laugh --

the need for extra movement speed was unreal as is.

 

[Anti Eh]

thought we went thru this in another thread, but fwf player skill > exo player skill.
you should see the last golem train from our 15th ish custo engage rofl.

 

[Zapple]

One of the main problems, as Fuwok briefly touched on, is gear inflation. I remember when IP and cmal 4.2 loots were the best loots in the game. They were so overpowered compared with everything else that Wiz or whoever decided to nerf them across the board. I think we have again reached the point where the higher tier gear is at stupid levels and needs to be rebalanced, see: nerfed, once again.

I agree this is true but progression isn't linear anymore either like it used to be. You go from not needing tomes or a good charm from tier 1 to entry tier 10 to needing like a 228k charm as minimum and 5 codexes to pass an on-tier raid through content after that. The items being as good as they are is needed with the raid monsters being as hard as they are as well as a consequence of the progression no longer being linear but sort of exponential, and I think I'm fairly qualified to say this having done all of those top tier content except for Warchief Rujik. Most t11+ encounters would have to be adjusted to be easier if the items were nerfed, and this is something people nerfing high end things like the runic bst/mage pets and other things do not understand having not actually done the content themselves and not being aware of how the amount of damage in is way up and the amount of damage output needed at times is also way up.