What keeps you playing outside of raids?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by showstring, Jul 16, 2020.

  1. Dasidarius

    Dasidarius Member

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    I think this is what has so many people saying "why now". Everything felt good and there is virtually no alternative to get that modifier back.
     
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  2. Lenas

    Lenas I Feel Loved

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    EQ is fun at all levels though, IMO. Crawling dungeons while level grinding was sweet. The problem is that eventually you out-level them and there's no going back. I don't see how to combat the issue of low-mid level content eventually becoming ghost towns without either a continual influx of new players or some level of instancing and level scaling.
     
  3. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    Going to check out TLPs from here on, i made a zerker but haven't found the time to level it.

    I was on a tear with XP and had plans to level another toon, but no more. It's raid and nothing else to PoP most likely.
     
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  4. Terijan

    Terijan New Member

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    Agreed. We're on the same page in the sense that we're talking about the same goal. Not at all saying the problem is fixed by the experience being fast, but being broad. So feedback about lost options are valid, even with new options, especially if there are less overall.

    WoW was designed around the original EQ, and the way it drops off after the early areas, as a counter-blueprint. Rate of XP wasn't in a vacuum but predicted against expected income, regen from availability of inns/food, and perceived danger (vs. expected same-faction player density). Unique quests, spawning treasure chests, in-world harvestables are all the actual ways they intended to lengthen the game. As the game neared launch the smooth, designed experience was thrown out by decisions made with top-down goals (mind you; by a literal self-named "shadow council"), goals that lacked relevant information guiding them. And that's the only reason I spoke up; because it wasn't a design decision to slow the game down that way (true of most daily features at blizzard), but one that threw out design and changed the vision, part of WoW's failing to fix EQ as you say. The same problem is being explained through another example here, that the game is always under threat of being too narrow despite its broad early vision, and what a pity given how unique the gameplay is throughout. That's why even if something like flash of light seems like it was too great before, people are right for feeling like they lost something -- they lost the viability of it as an option. It's not "useless" now, but the absence of utility still costs a spell slot. This is what designers know and talk about, that the perception of the player is used for the experience, and that contradicting it or exploiting it is more likely to backfire, and encouraging a cycle of curiosity met with possibility is likely to succeed. Between the two, the rest EXP contradicts perception, and made a trust problem.

    WRT the first question; I'm an idiot that still runs around 1-boxing because I love the experience of playing the game, down to talking to the NPCs. There's so much juicy drama in the game, especially in the fleshed out areas. But I could spend all day in Rivervale.

    And @Torven WRT the auction house: quite similar in that I agree with the goals; you wouldn't want trade to be disallowed, but a massive # of people were unable to play the game because of the restrictions required for the auction house to work (of which always-online was one). It was a huge legal crisis in multiple countries at once to make the money trade legal, led to Blizzard region-locking all their games (which for a while required people in poor countries to pay the dollar price, and people who lived outside of their homeland got locked out of their accounts in WoW and had to get a copy in their region, which would be *language-locked*. And just by being always online, anyone who didn't have a consistent connection or a decent computer would get booted frequently (which by volume is most of the people who play blizzard games; not that that convinced anyone), often because Blizzard's servers themselves were hiccuping. The final deployment of d3 had 1 login server (overall capacity was 20x less than dev ops told them they needed), the error 37 was a warning that the login server's queue was full but the label wasn't written. Everyone who didn't keep their head in the sand knew that it was going to be problem after problem, but the trolley had no brakes. I might as well be describing the bnet desktop app lol.
     
  5. shorttin

    shorttin Member

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    After the exp changes it's raid then log. I have hope that PoP will be like Al'Kabor but I'm definitely not holding my breath at this point.
     
  6. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    These old war stories are fascinating. I'm just grateful they made these decisions because I made enough money off the game to have to tell the IRS about it :p I think the AH could have worked better if they had done a reverse pricing model: i.e. users input the stats of the item they want and how much they are willing to pay for it, then users could offload their drops quickly without having to figure out any sort of price and can just play the game. There is a problem with this though in that it would mudflate the game much faster, but such is the nature of ARPGs, which really need frequent character resets.

    As for WoW, I think Blizzard pulled miracles out of their butts in 2004 and Blizzard peaked then. I have a love-hate relationship with that game, which did so many things so well but ultimately was a step backwards from EQ in several respects and its success killed the genre. WoW is like an arcade MMORPG and while fun, I don't want all games to copy it because I would strongly argue that game design is as much art as science so there is often no right or wrong way to make a game thus I don't like everybody cloning WoW and want alternatives.
     
  7. Verdent

    Verdent People Like Me

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    I enjoy meeting new people, helping new players, catching up with old friends, dungeon crawling is great, just xping is alright but having another goal helps.

    I would challenge anyone to find a better EQ community than what we have here.
     
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  8. Ravenwing

    Ravenwing I Feel Loved

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    Vanilla Everquest was magical in 1999. It has great mid-level dungeons, but more than that, just logging into Kelethin and exploring orc hill is a thrilling adventure when you've never seen it before and neither has anyone else. (Admittedly, it probably also helps to be 13 years old.)

    It's hard to imagine recapturing that sense of strangeness and mystery. Maybe even in a brand new game: you and the people around you may not have explored this world before, but if you've played a MMORPG before, there's a sense in which it's all variations on a familiar theme, like reading a novel in a genre you know well.

    That fact that MMORPG veterans, and especially people playing on EMUs, treat the low- and mid-level game as a kind of obstacle course to be cleared as quickly as possible isn't indicative of any design flaw, IMO; it's just indicative of the kind of people who play EQ on EMU servers and their particular relationship to the game.
     
  9. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    dude have you seen my streams? All i do is mines
     
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  10. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    What are some other good spots except ssra mines with the current exp mechanics? Are there any secret sweet spots people havent thought of yet with level 55 mobs?
     
  11. Walex

    Walex I Feel Loved

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    I think you misunderstood; the mobs in the Ssra mines are almost exclusively below 55. What Torven is saying is "Here on TAKP, people intuitively found out that mines give the most xp even though that was never the case on AK. Mines were never popular on AK because the exp was not as good as it was here." So with the "xp nerf" he has changed it so mobs 55+ (i.e. NOT the mines) are now more rewarding:

    As for your question of good exp spots, here's a good starting point:

     
  12. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    hmm the only spot on the last that seems easily feasible is jugs and would prolly have to plant a bot first, what about the sperm looking things in that zone with the frog town?
     
  13. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    So far, I've found level 55 mobs in Ssra -- aside from raid trash with gobs of hitpoints -- in two spots: deep in the mines and on the second floor. Skeletal Drudge, Poxed Soriz, temple skirmisher, Spirit Destroyer, Arch Warlock, Arch Arcanist are all level 53-55, so about one third of the spawns will give the high-level exp bonus to a level 60 toon. Elites and clerics (Priest/Templar) are always 56. Some mobs in the Cursed temple can also spawn as 55.

    Almost everything on the first floor and the front half of the mines is 50-54, so doesn't give the high-level exp bonus to level 60 toons.
     
  14. solar

    solar Administrator Staff Member

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    LFG for deep mines or second floor pst
     
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  15. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    The problem occurs in all MMORPGs, not just emus; WoW is very much the same. I agree that the player mindset in EQ's early days was much different. The genre needs to adjust to the new hyper-min/max crowd.

    I think MMORPGs (at least some) should take a cue from EVE and time-lock players into lower levels, frankly. There are many ways to do that.

    Also offer things at mid-level that would still be valuable at higher levels but are harder or impossible to obtain at level cap. Have some content that somehow becomes unavailable/harder once you outlevel it. I always thought it was dumb that a high level could waltz into a low level dungeon and mobs didn't assist. They should flee from you immediately and swarm you instead.

    Allow non-maxed level players to significantly influence the game world in some way.

    Require players to fight a diversity of NPC types to progress instead of killing the same things. (I'm big on this one)
     
  16. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    BTW, I'm still exploring camps with level 55+ mobs outside of Ssra, but here are a few candidates:
    • reets and juggs in Seb
    • almost all of Cazic Thule
    • lots of rats in DN
    • tons of mobs in Seru; not sure where the good camps are but I'm sure they exist
    • most mobs in Umbral
    • shard mobs in FG
    • sentinels near Tormax*
    • guardians between Statue and Idol*
    *Sentinels and guardians in Kael are mostly level 66. I'm not sure if they get the high-level experience modifier. I could be wrong, but as I read @Torven's posts, the high-level modifier only applies to mobs within +/- 5 levels. So a level 66 mob might not give the bonus to a level 60 toon?
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
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  17. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    check out the black reavers in swamp of no hope, let me know if you find anything good to charm in that area. Otherwise i will later today, thinking that might be a good spot
     
  18. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Good call on the black ravengers in SoNH! Those guys owned back in Kunark. A few more ideas:
    • priestesses in SG are 54-56; there are two dense clusters of them
    • almost everything near Velk's castle (gargoyles, guardians, sentinels, icy watchers) is 55+
    • HoT is one-groupable and all 60+; tons of HP so bad exp, but armor drops
    • almost everything in deep Chardok is 55-58; dense mobs, low HP
     
  19. Lenas

    Lenas I Feel Loved

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    I took my trio to Velk's castle a couple of weeks ago just to check it out and camped out near the ice wall. I had blown through a few times on Velk raids but never had an actual group there. It wasn't bad, interesting to hear it'll be better now.
     
  20. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    They would not grant a bonus to a level 60, no. You wouldn't want to kill them anyway since their stats would make them poor exp even with the bonus.

    I do recall juggs being such good exp that people killed them even after PoP launched to get their first couple of levels. That should be one of the go-to places.
     
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  21. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    Not exactly related but one of the recent changes to EverQuest that I actually appreciated was the change to how you progress your tradeskills beyond skill 300 in EoK. Prior to this the strategy was to always find the easiest combine above your skill and do that combine as much as possible. But in EOK they changed tradeskills to where you can skill up from 300-350 by learning new recipes.

    So instead of doing 100 Arctic Wyvern Masks to skill up Tailoring, you had to make each piece of Arctic Wyvern armor for 1 point. It makes the tradeskilling game much more dynamic since the path to max is no longer just grab 1000 of the simplest combines and repeat, but instead do damn near every available combine, including some very obscure ones, to reach maximum.
     
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  22. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    Almost certainly true in the sense that so many play the game to chase pixels and numbers and BIS gear. I call this the Diablo effect; however, Diablo, as popular as the game was, is not the only way to play a game like EQ. Role vs. Roll.

    However, I don't believe the game really started out this way, at least in terms of the love for it among the player base through Antonica and on into Kunark & Velious. Back in the early Kunark era when my wife and I started, there were people who did actually roleplay. Faction was a big thing back then. Reading the books to learn the lore and story line were popular. Quests were a badge of honor when completed. Hell, people used to group and spam languages to one another so they could say they had learned them all, even though the languages really have no relevance to game play. Just grabbing a SoW and running across the continents checking out the zones was a ton of fun and exciting (even for the non-bards.). People used to introduce themselves by their "rank" or "season" rather than their level, at it was considered tacky to yap about levels and xp and dps numbers as being "metagame" stuff that was better for forum talk or private chat to help someone learn their class and role.

    I came to EQ from a background of years of old school Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper role playing. For a video game that grew out of MUDs, which themselves grew out of pen and paper role playing and heavily influenced by Dungeons & Dragons, it certainly bears the stamp of those hobbies.

    My wife and I are casual players. Grouping was always our thing when available, but since our first characters were Wiz and Dru, we had the solo option available when there were no groups or time was limited. Learning some of the story and lore and the factions were interesting for us, and truly we have never really explored many of those different lines because we have not played many of the race/class/deity options.

    I remember when getting a set of bronze armor was an accomplishment, and the EC tunnel was the trade center of Norrath on most servers. Back then, the game was ALIVE, with hundreds and thousands playing at the same time on all of the servers!

    There were and still are hours of game play just exploring the starting hometowns and others where a character is not KOS, learning the factions your race/class/deity starts with and is KOS to. For those who have not played every race/class/deity combination, and who do not seek out spoilers for the entire game, there is a ton of playable content that does not boil down to grind and clicking, if one is interested in the world and what's going on in it rather than just the latest gear upgrade or raid mobs nuked and smashed.

    Certainly for those who played EQ Live back in the day a ton, tried most of the races and classes, did most of the quests, grouped and raided most zones, there is not much new to do.

    Frankly speaking, I actually don't think the grind is that bad from 1-50, and getting to 60 and keeping it fun has more to do with grouping and hunting in different places, breaking that up by doing some quests or camping a piece of gear in between xp killing, dungeon crawling rather than dungeon camping, and finding those out of the way spots where there are dark blues out of doors for some kiting fun or just to do something different. I think the AA grind is more pernicious than the level grind, especially for those who want max AAs NOW. For us however, once we hit 60 and turn the AA xp on, we just keep doing our normal thing and the AAs come in good time.

    Raiding can be fun (breaking into Fear way back! WTH!), but its also obviously time consuming and not always as social as its made out to be. All of my best memories from Live EQ were the super fun groups I played in, particularly in certain zones like SolA or LGuk or Sebilis or KC. AoE groups were also always a blast and a really nice change of pace (Now maybe dead here? We'll see I guess).

    I think EQ was its most charming before Luclin (a boring expansion, and not just because it was unfinished), although I do like PoP and believe it was a breath of fresh air (even if it was not, strictly speaking, Norrath air). PoP looked and played and felt much more like EQ than Luclin does in any given zone. It would have been better IMO if the factions had been kept much more relevant throughout the expansions, if gear at lower levels had been better itemized, especially gear from quests. Further, I think the game suffered, like all MMOs, from being top heavy because there is simply too much lowby and mid-level content. Its my view that more of the content should have been tuned for high level play, so that the game expanded in terms of exploration and quests and options to crawl or kite, rather than shrink from lack of higher level zones to solo, group, and raid. Revamping zones (or keeping the lower level zones while offering a revamped version as well) was a nice way to expand the higher level play options, but was never really enough. If the game always ends up top heavy, then put more content in (/cough Veksar)!

    Which brings us back to your point: the grind and other road blocks that were purposefully put into the game to keep the subscriptions going. Luclin IMO was the preeminent boring and frustrating example of this. Lucling desperately needs to be complete and revamped.

    I submit that the grind and roadblocks were nothing more than speed bumps to getting back to enjoying the actual game.

    For myself, EQ has always been about much more than the grind. If we (those of us with the mindset that the EQ world is itself fun and interesting and worth exploring and learning about) grind to move to the next level and tougher challenges, its really so we can get BACK to the game we love, be done with the treadmill for awhile, and experience the game as a whole rather than just another xp camp grind.

    Unfortunately, apart from one specific EMU server, the days of hundreds and thousands playing all at the same time are probably over (although I don't see where the current MMO scene is offering much beyond pay to win), and that really kills the grouping game (see: TAKP).

    However, THE game is still there, in a world fraught with peril and adventure and hard fought victories for those not too jaded to explore it and live in it, despite the "grind."

    Now, if we just had a TAKP PvP server with some strict rules strictly enforced....
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2020
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  23. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    Looks like swamp ravengers are undertuned. Enjoy the camp this week.
     
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  24. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    Nerfed before I could even enjoy it! @Torven will they still be worth killing after the patch?
     
  25. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    So theres (I think) 12 of them, theyre level 55, and theyre about a 20min or longer (i went for a cigarette came back and they were up) repop. If by undertuned you mean theyre too easy to kill, then they may still be worth killing after the patch. I got 1-2% exp per kill. Nice little afk camp at least, depending on how difficult they will be after the patch if Torven will give us a hint. /shrug
     
  26. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    also side note they dont summon, potential wiz/dru kiting mobs
     
  27. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Mech and I clocked about 120% of an AA per hour per toon at reets/juggs in Seb in a group of 6 level 60s. The group wasn't really ideal from a DPS perspective (SK/dru/enc/mag/2clr), but we were able to keep all the spawns down between the firepot door and Trak's lair. We got two reet crowns in an hour, too, which tragically will turn Mech's gnomes into wood elves :(
     
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  28. Bragon

    Bragon People Like Me

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    Thats marginally more than what we got pre patch with our group of single boxers down there.
     
  29. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

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    These should actually be kind of nasty. I think they were added with the Ithiosar GM event in late Luclin? Right now on TAKP they are using computed default stats and they haven't been looked at. Computed stats work well for newbie zones (which is why I missed these) but not for higher level stuff. They are way undertuned right now. They should also summon.
     
  30. Yinikren

    Yinikren Well-Known Member

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    I definitely remember the black ravengers in SoNH summoning and hitting for ~250 or so. They were pretty nasty to accidentally bump into.