What keeps you playing outside of raids?

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

  1. Aramere

    Aramere New Member

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    9
    I'm getting to the stage where logging in outside raids is getting difficult.

    I'm sure everything is accurate and as it should be.

    Typically I enjoy logging in and knocking off an AA or two and chatting with some friends . However, it feels like a drag now. Have tried some of the 'better' or 'popular' areas like CT, PC and Umbral and I don't find them that fun. People I xped with have lost interest.

    I only started recently, so it isn't a fun time to play catch-up with those who have been here for a while.

    It's a fantastic server. Great community and devs. Really looking forward to PoP.
     
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  2. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    I played around a bit in Velk's castle. I got about 90% of an AA per hour in a trio: SK, clr, enc with a pretty crappy dog charmpet. I imagine a real group with real DPS classes could do a lot better. This'd also be a good spot to DS tank big trains with a couple of druids rolling a zero-hate CH rot. Tons of 55+ mobs that hit super lightly.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2020
  3. Yarnee

    Yarnee People Like Me

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    gosh darnit, i literally just placed a bot there thinking no one ever goes there and its going to be open now you advertise it to everyone
     
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  4. Tesadar

    Tesadar Active Member

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    What keeps me playing here (when i do play) is the AAs lol
    Not like you capped out old fools :)
     
  5. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    So, how's everyone enjoying the AA grind with the exp nerfs? Anyone found a way to stay motivated to kill monsters for exp?
     
  6. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    AAs are about as fast for me as they were before the nerfs. It's just different camps that shine now.

    I've done about 6000 tradeskillups across four toons in 2020. Grimel's gonna give me a carrel at the top of the PoK library.
     
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  7. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    2,455
    Aside from helping new people with their keys, Fashionquesting is good motivation too. That made me spend extra time in game the past couple of weeks.

    I'm dreading tradeskills, but I really need to work on those for at least 2 of my characters next. So farming components for a month may be my next reason to stay online after raids are done.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2020
  8. Mitya

    Mitya Well-Known Member

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    I'm still really trying to get 60 on my main three toons and it's rough. Without having that tank in my group, I find myself pretty much at the mercy of other folks that are willing to let me join them. I'm not really sure where to go at 55. I've done Nobles a ton but it's starting to slow down a bit now that I'm 55. It's also hard to get motivated when I kill like 4-5 things and the XP bar moves 1 pixel lol.

    All things considered though, I feel like I did it to myself. I just want to get these guys to 60 so I can focus on some other teams/synergies just to see what sticks.
     
    Qelana likes this.
  9. Darchon

    Darchon I Feel Loved

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    3,627
    I've been just trying to stick with quests. My most recent projects have included trying to obtain 2 Magician epics simultaneously to put on some level 50ish magicians and after last weeks Seru raid I camped all 4 consilium reports to finish up earring on Enchanter.

    The magician epics were actually pretty good EXP from grinding PoSky island 7 for a week with a trio. I got at least 2-3 AAs up there. The consilium reports I probably got an AA or two out of also. I will say the EXP bonus not extending to level 66 NPCs is mind bending when the red cons provide less EXP than the white cons in Seru.

    I also took this opportunity to swap my druid out for my cleric in my grinding trio since the druid is pretty good on AAs and cleric is lacking. It has been an interesting transition what with the whole no snare/ports/DS but having a real CH/reverse DS/Stun Command.

    Mage epics I've come down to needing 2 Quillmane Cloaks and 1 Earth staff, so most of the good exp from these quests have been obtained already. Perhaps my luck in PoHate will be awful and I will continue to see EXP up there though! At some point I will need to sit down and camp Quillmane I've just not had the motivation to do it yet.

    I'm thinking about my next few projects. A few of them are PL alt related which doesn't really result in any AAs so I probably should focus more on the additional VT Keys or random item camp ones so I'm actually gaining AAs.
     
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  10. Auyster

    Auyster People Like Me

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    Really its just raiding and leveling alts to 60. Between my brother and I, we want to have a lvl 60 of every class before PoP. So far we are just missing a Bard, Shaman, and a Paladin. Haven't started on the paladin yet but the bard and shaman are in there high 40s.

    Along with having a plethora of toons to call upon, the trophy trio challenges are very entertaining. Lately I have been doing Va'dyn and Zelnithak with my Warrior/Enchanter/Cleric and doing Phinny with a Enchanter/Wizard/Cleric. VT geared toons help quite a bit with the trio challenges.
     
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  11. Zamiel

    Zamiel Member

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    57
    TRUUUUE. solar the god



    This is the same reason that people play Cookie Clicker, and it doesn't even have the benefit of a chat. If you still play EverQuest after 21 years, you can only feel slightly better about yourself than the average Cookie Clicker player. The XP system (and most other core game mechanics) of EQ are degenerate and poorly designed (when compared to other games). Of course, they had some technology limitations for an online game released in 1999, but I digress.

    RE: What keeps you playing

    I have a take on this question that will (probably?) be different than most people. I don't currently play, but what kept me playing EQ in the past for so long were all the bugs and exploits, and pushing the boundaries of what was possible in the game.

    The "normal" game is to just "level up in the standard dungeons", "get AA", "get raid gear to progress your character", "join a guild", "make friends with people", etc. But when you play the game for long enough you kind of graduate beyond that. I'm sure many people reading this can relate.

    The game will evolve into different things for different people. But for me, it evolved into a meta-game about:
    - "How can my knowledge of this game increase?"
    - "How can I combine game mechanics in previously untried ways in order to do new things?"
    - "What other strategies and techniques are other players not doing? What other strategies and techniques are other players afraid of doing?"
    - "Can I do independent research to discover new things?"
    - "What exciting challenges can I accomplish that are difficult?"
    - "How can I push the limit of what is possible in the game?"

    After messing around with a raid boss for an entire day and coming up with a brand new strategy, it really feels rewarding. And after going back to Plane of Knowledge to rest, and looking around at the other players who are only concerned with getting their next AA point in a standard Plane of Valor group or something (e.g. the most boring, grindy, standard way to get AA in a pick up group), it really makes you feel like something is missing in how other people view the game.

    (Pithy taps into this philosophy a bit with his "3-box challenges" thread; that's the kind of stuff that I would commonly do on Al'Kabor.)

    A lot of people probably think along the lines of: "Bugs are bad. If the developers fix every bug, then the game would be perfect!" Instead, I conceptualize it in the exact opposite way: every bug is a tool in a tool-belt that can be used in a certain situation. The more tools that you have at your disposal, the more strategies you can combine, and the more nuanced and in-depth the game becomes. Knowledge becomes power.

    If you remove every interesting bug (e.g. EverQuest on live), then it removes all of the tools that you can use to solve problems in a novel way. This reduces the game to be about clerics in a complete heal chain, rogues AFK with auto attack on, and playing the game in the most vanilla, boring way possible - exactly what solar is describing in his post above. My philosophy is a more libertarian way to look at the game - the game is a sandbox in which very little should be off limits. Using bugs and other unintended strategies are one of the only ways that you can break free of the Cookie Clicker-style bullshit and create gameplay that is actually interesting.

    In the context of this discussion, playing on TAKP will never be like playing on Al'Kabor was. Why would someone spend an entire day developing a new strategy if the developers are there to step in and tell you that your way of playing the game is "wrong", and patch out your discovery on the next day?

    Of course, having bugs in the game can lead to other problems, like rogue Temerity players (e.g. Huffwins) using the reverse-pacification bug to intentionally destroy the raids of the rival guild (e.g. The Syndicate Empire), so there are good arguments on both sides. Game mechanics should probably be examined on a case by case basis.

    And admittedly, a more libertarian philosophy is probably not compatible with a server that wants to appeal to the largest amount of people as possible. My goal in writing this is not to persuade others that the way that they play the game is wrong, but rather to give some perspective on an alternate way to look at the game. (A sandbox philosophy is best combined with a hands-off approach from the developers, so it is a perspective that is probably not very relevant anymore. Especially with the changes that TAKP has already made that make it more bug-free and subsequently less interesting than how Al'Kabor actually functioned.)
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2020
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  12. Dairmuid

    Dairmuid Active Member

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    63
    I Power leveled a new Trio (Warrior / Druid / Enchanter) to Level 30 and will play them up to 60 to learn the classes. Alts keep my entertained between raids. I don't enjoy AA'ing much and know it gets a lot easier in PoP.

    Still love the game as much as ever. Hats off to the Dev Teams for keeping up the server. I really appreciate what you all have created here.
     
  13. Devour_Souls

    Devour_Souls People Like Me

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    I'm pretty sure that if this happened on TAKP, we would have a lot less VT gear.
     
  14. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

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    The server would have had a lot more AA's
     
  15. gardnerjens

    gardnerjens People Like Me

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    quote ftw and what i have been advocating for since people play old iterations of an old game
     
  16. Tryfan

    Tryfan People Like Me

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    Guess it depends on the kind of 'exploit' Zamiel is talking about. "A new way of playing the game" is one thing, "reduces risk to zero for reward" is quite another, "gains reward at the cost of someone else's fun" yet a third. The trash cutting strats people use to get to the wing bosses carry considerable risk of wiping which still even now happens. Perma pacifying everything does not. Pulling 200 Deep mobs was risky to everyone there, pulling 200 Deep mobs when someone outside the group is trying to camp a shard is not kosher.

    The deviations we have here so far have been - mostly - pretty reasonable. If going to absolutely pure AK where people have perma paci and crash entire zones with shakerpaging, not sure you'd have more than a few people playing now. There's some things in my opinion that should be changed under the "they would have fixed this, and DID fix it on live" movement (mainly archery and monk defensive stats), but we're good enough that hundreds of us put in years of toil here.
     
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