Is it OUR fault?

[Oneiromancer]

Part of the Berserker epic already throws the character into a solo battle.  The opponent even pauses occasionally for the character to bandage himself.  If they're planning on making solo/duo LDoN-style content, then they can certainly make quests that require solo, or no more than 1 group.  Look at the Hedge Maze--3 groups max.  It's certainly within their abilities.

Game on,

[Cyphen Wilder]

Honestly, that's an absurd idea. What is the point of getting into Time if you can't do anything when you're there? Time is a raid zone. You need a raid to do anything there... anything. What purpose would it serve to grant a solo route to entry? It takes raiding skill to advance through Time.

Because I will get to 70 with my characters and will have a ton of AA getting there and after getting there WITHOUT having had to join a huge ubah raiding guild.  So, when I am there, it would be cool to be able to be flagged if the opportunity presented itself for me to go on a Time raid.  If there was a quest like I mentioned, people that had done old school flagging process would not be so pissed that you got Time flagged a different way.  And honestly, nowadays that every strategy and way to kill bosses has been done and online it does not take that long to get to Time now as it used too.

[Rhaynne]

Regardless, if it takes a raid to do anything there, it should require a raid to get there.

I have no problems with adding solo and small group content.  I think it's a very good and necessary step to take.  However, raid content needs to be accessed through raids.   It's ludicrous to do otherwise.

The whole motivation behind the suggestion is this line:

it would be cool

How about a solo quest to access VT, or how about Tvexu, cause that would be cool too  :roll:

[Scalewulf]

I can see where it would eliminate some backflagging (when taking into consideration all the people that leave EQ and the spots that need to be filled in Time+ guilds).  

But at the same time, I personally could careless if I have the opportunity to be flagged for raid-content.  

I don't really dig guilds or raiding.   8)  

I just want the opportunity for similar rewards for similar time spent.  I'm still of the belief that I work much harder when solo difficult content than I do when raiding.  Therefore shouldn't my reward be at least similar if the time-sink is similar?

This is what I would like to see.   :D

[Coprolith]

Regardless, if it takes a raid to do anything there, it should require a raid to get there.

Agreed. That's one of the main points I've been trying to make: keep the high-end raid content completely separate. Alternate means to VT or PoTime or whatever only reinforces the idea that everyone should follow in the high-end guilds footsteps. It'd just be another carrot on a stick.

New content to explore and a steady pace of upgrades to be able to take on new challenges is all i ask. It doesn't have to be Time+ quality gear, just better then what's available now. The only ways for me to upgrade in power right now is via AA grinding and pp grinding --> bazaar, or doing endless amounts of LDoN missions. Drops from mobs that are an actual upgrade are almost impossible to get at any rate. Why on earth does this stuff drop from mobs for which you need better gear then the drops themselves? Same thing with tradeskills, if you've got access to the ingredients needed to make best craftable gear, that craftable gear is no longer an upgrade to you. Given the amount of time and pp you need to invest to become a grandmaster in any tradeskill, what's the point? I loved doing tradeskills with my first character. Mind you, this was in a time when you could actually make a buck from full plate.

/hugs

[Tardar]

Now this conversation is starting to make sense.

So for the sake of arguement, forget all this alternate access to Time and VT and such.  Quite frankly I dont care, you aren't going to be able to do anything there without a sizeable raid force, so the whole idea is just useless.

Now, as far as Solo and groupable upgrades go, that seems fair.  It should all be quested in my opinion.  As soon as a mob starts to drop gear that is doable by one group of bazaar outfitted toons, then you are talking perma camped, usually by some 6 box dork.  This quested armor should be NO DROP for sure, and it should NOT be Time equivalent, just upgraded.  

The quest should be very long, and the pieces very rare.  Reason being, to avoid the PLers from outfitting their lvl 20 bst in this uber gear.  Just making a level restriction would not be good enough IMHO.  Achieving a piece of this gear should be an accomplishment on the lines of an epic (not ours btw) or the shawl.  

I could live with that.

[Hrann]

Except I don't want one or two quests.  I want an expansion full of ways to upgrade (well mostly).  Make them all quests or whatever, I don't care, just as long as it adds content for me to consume and enjoy for more than a month or two.

[Rhaynne]

Totally agree with you, Coprolith.

[Urim]

The people here asking for upgrades and are pissed with GoD, i have one question for you. Have you even done any fighting or progressing in GoD? From the various times i have spent soloing in some of the sewer expeditions for the BiC quest i have gotten quite a bit of elemental quality loot dropping from random trash mobs. I've seen a 36% haste belt with around 100 or more hp, a caster cloak with an effect and 100 or so hp, i've seen rings drop, lots of things and these mobs weren't too difficult, easily done witha group of bazaar geared toons. Plus, i know trash mobs in each of the zones drop fairly good loot in respect to bazaar bought gear. Maybe spending a couple days exping in GoD might net you a couple of the upgrades your talking about.

[xaoshaen]

It's already been 2 years for PoP, it will be at least that much longer.  VT is still inaccessable.  VP is what, 4 years old?  I can get in there with one group, but certainly not kill anything worth looting.  But maybe that doesn't count, so I'd say 4 years is more like it.

You can kill every mob in VP with four players, fewer if some of them are well-geared. It was accessible to casual players in late Velious or early Luclin. VT is certaintly not inaccessible, if you really want to get in. The only part that requires more than two people is the Emperor, and he's become a viable pickup raid target. Killing stuff inside might be an issue, though. ToV, Velious faction leaders, and even Sleeper's Tomb became accessible within two years, so I'd say one to two years is more like it.

So far, the EPs are on the far end of the spectrum, but their exclusivity is drawing to a close. I've seen pickup, or open guild, raids on VZ, TZ, and Agnarr so far. Several of the more casual guilds are progressing to the point where RZ is becoming a viable target.

All the content that is already accessible is also accessible to the raiders, yet they ask for new content.  And not just that, they want new content that provides upgrades.  All I want is the same thing, just not on the same scale perhaps.  Give me a way to get VT or elemental stuff over the next year, without having to join a 72 person raid.  I don't think that is too much to ask, given the fact that the raiders will have moved far beyond me by the time I get it.

You conveniently overlook the fact that many hardcore raiders are still only in elemental gear themselves, but setting that aside, VT-quality gear is already obtainable through LDoN. GoD has loot available to single groups that is better than Elemental drops. Old gear can now be updated through augmentation. My Beastlord currently buffs out to 6200 hps or so. He has no raid gear. He has a ton of upgrades still available to him (no LDoN armor yet, no GoD drops, though I'm hoping to change that soon), and could pickup a few hundred more hitpoints just through augs. His weapons are already better than just about any hand to hand available in Luclin. I'll definitely be comparable to VT-geared Beastlord before I'm through.

I really don't see that casual players are hurting when it comes to getting geared up. Yes, it takes time, but we've alreayd covered the manhours required to get raid gear. What Coprolith is suggesting, that there's not enough content to explore, is something else entirely.

[xaoshaen]

New content to explore and a steady pace of upgrades to be able to take on new challenges is all i ask. It doesn't have to be Time+ quality gear, just better then what's available now. The only ways for me to upgrade in power right now is via AA grinding and pp grinding --> bazaar, or doing endless amounts of LDoN missions. Drops from mobs that are an actual upgrade are almost impossible to get at any rate. Why on earth does this stuff drop from mobs for which you need better gear then the drops themselves?

Have you spent much time in GoD yet? How about doing hard LDoN runs? I know the dropped loot in LDoN is too limited to ever gear yourself up completely this way, but what's there is damn nice, especially when you consider that you're making solid exp (~1 AA per hour) and earning 1/15 of a new piece of armor at the same time. GoD can be even better. Initially, the entire expansion was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, but since the revamp, it's become a very worthwhile place to visit... to the point that my guildmates are hitting the GoD sewers (which are open to anybody) instead of the EPs when we aren't raiding.

Same thing with tradeskills, if you've got access to the ingredients needed to make best craftable gear, that craftable gear is no longer an upgrade to you. Given the amount of time and pp you need to invest to become a grandmaster in any tradeskill, what's the point? I loved doing tradeskills with my first character. Mind you, this was in a time when you could actually make a buck from full plate.

Oh yeah, EQ's tradeskill system is one of the worst I've ever used. There's something seriously wrong when the biggest reason to do tradeskills is for quest components. Of course, since EQ lacks item decay, one of the biggest advantages to a tradeskill system is negated.

[Hrann]

We've gone over this already.  LDoN is just a few zones that you need to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours to get upgrades from.  It is just too boring.  You convieniently left out the part where I am asking for new content along with the upgrades.

Listen, I will spend thousands of hours at LDoN, but not many others will.  Those others, my friends, will quit this game from boredom long before they get those LDoN upgrades.  What is needed is a real expansion with loot from real monsters or quests.  Content content content - is the only thing that keeps long term players from getting bored.  But content without upgrades would be ignored in my opinion, which is why I want the upgrades there.

GoD is geared towards hardcore players.  There are about 8-10 players in my guild of 65 that have any success in there, and it takes an extremely long session for even them to pass the first sewer expedition, nevermind the later ones.  Even so, there are some upgrades to be had, however hard they are to get; but the few zones available to casuals hardly count as an expansion in my mind.

Regarding the time lag - two years is ridiculous.  There is nothing that the hardcore guilds did while raiding 2 years ago that a casual group can do today.  I don't know what kind of casual players can do Hoshkar in VP with 4 people, my guild brought 12 people in there about 6 months ago and we wiped when he was at 97%.  Those same 12 could barely take Silverwing.  The Emperor in a pickup raid?  I've never seen it, but I suppose it is possible.  Again though, any expansion other than PoP is more than 2 years ago.  Luclin is coming up on 3 years.  Talking about Velious and Kunark is 6 and 7 expansions ago; no one I know is willing to lag behind THAT much.

[xaoshaen]

We've gone over this already.  LDoN is just a few zones that you need to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours to get upgrades from.  It is just too boring.  You convieniently left out the part where I am asking for new content along with the upgrades.

The elemental planes are also just a few zones (fewer than LDON), in which you need to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours to get upgrades from. Of course, if you get a good group together, you can knock out a hard LDoN in an hour. Even if it takes you ninety minutes, that's still only 22.5 hours per piece of purchased armor. Add in the chance for 0-4 nameds to spawn, each of which is guaranteed to drop some pretty nice loot, and you do not need to spend "hundreds and hundreds of hours".

Listen, I will spend thousands of hours at LDoN, but not many others will.  Those others, my friends, will quit this game from boredom long before they get those LDoN upgrades.  What is needed is a real expansion with loot from real monsters or quests.  Content content content - is the only thing that keeps long term players from getting bored.  But content without upgrades would be ignored in my opinion, which is why I want the upgrades there.

Using your definitions then, LDoN offered no content for raiders eithers. GoD definitely does, but since the revamp, it also offers some heavily underutilized content for casual players.

GoD is geared towards hardcore players.  There are about 8-10 players in my guild of 65 that have any success in there, and it takes an extremely long session for even them to pass the first sewer expedition, nevermind the later ones.  Even so, there are some upgrades to be had, however hard they are to get; but the few zones available to casuals hardly count as an expansion in my mind.

You haven't spent much time in GoD lately then. The revamp made a significant difference. You don't have to pass any sewer missions to get upgrades. In a three hour session the other day we got an Improved Damage 4 augment, some caster sleeves that wound up rotting, and a spell. The few zones? There are more zones available to casual players in GoD than there are PoP zones that they're excluded from.

Regarding the time lag - two years is ridiculous.  There is nothing that the hardcore guilds did while raiding 2 years ago that a casual group can do today.  I don't know what kind of casual players can do Hoshkar in VP with 4 people, my guild brought 12 people in there about 6 months ago and we wiped when he was at 97%.

The only thing I can think of here is that you were woefully unprepared for Hoshkar (who is definitely the second toughest mob in the zone). Our first runs at him during Kunark left us wondering what hit us too. That's the thing about new content though: you actually have to learn how to beat it. For what it's worth, we did it with a monk wearing Kael quest armor, a Beastlord wearing bazaar gear, a warrior wearing bazaar gear and a time geared cleric.

On a side note, if you feel like going after him again, bring your DR gear. His AE is resistable, but if it lands, the slow is going to kill your melee DPS and make it difficult to outdamage his enormous regen. The trick is to kill him fast. Of course, he only has 32k hit points, so a couple big nukes or a harm touch (if it'll land... haven't fought him with an SK in years) will take a big chunk out of him. Heck, four SKs sould one round him if HT lands ;)

Those same 12 could barely take Silverwing.  The Emperor in a pickup raid?  I've never seen it, but I suppose it is possible.  Again though, any expansion other than PoP is more than 2 years ago.  Luclin is coming up on 3 years.  Talking about Velious and Kunark is 6 and 7 expansions ago; no one I know is willing to lag behind THAT much.

Yeah, Emp pickup raids are definitely rare, simply because most non-raiders don't bother to get keyed, and he's still a viable target for lower end raiding guilds, which makes it tougher to find him available.

The thing is, Velious and Kunark have been trivialized for a long time too. Luclin is trivialized save for one zone. All of PoP save six zones (ok, 8 if you count the B versions of Time and Earth) has been trivialized. So you're really only talking about 9 zones that the raiders have and you do not. If you want to argue that hardcore and casual players alike need more content, that's one thing, but I don't see a massive disparity in the places each can go.

[Coprolith]

Let me tell you a story about my very first toon in EQ

It was a dwarven cleric. I soon found a friend who played a dwarven warrior. We played EQ the way it was meant to be played. At lvl ~16 we travelled all the way from butcherblock to qeynos and back by foot (including 2 boat rides and a heartstopping nightly journey thru Kithicor, praying to Brell that ITU didnt fade) just to get these 2 items: Avenger Battle Axe for my friend and a Bloodforge hammer for myself. These days a lvl 1 newbie wouldnt even bother looting such weapons but in those days these weapon were 'uber'. But the exhilaration and fun we had during the journey and the incredible sense of accomplishment after completing the quest are what made me addicted to this game. We bought stacks of booze and invited every player in Kaladim to join us in our celebration.
We never bought any gear, we hunted for it or made it ourself. We only ever went to the EC tunnel (Bazaar didnt exist back then) to sell banded armor, him /auctioning and passing the orders on to me in Freeport. The money we made from banded i used to make us full plate.
By the time we were 40, he had a full set of Crafted and i had a full set of the Temple of Ro quest armor. At 50 i had an almost full set of dwarven cultural armor (the old type), made with my own hands

Can i still do any of this today with my 65 Beastlord? The answer is a definite: no.
In today's EQ i am sentenced to endless repetition if i want to improve my character. 1200 LDoN missions, or endless months of cash farming to buy upgrades in the Bazaar, followed by endless months of AA crunching. There are no quests that i can do that reward me with an actual upgrade that do not involve multiple-group encounters. If i want to craft Stonehide armor i need to be in a raiding guild to get access to the EPs, but if i had access to the EPs then i wouldnt need Stonehide armor.

I get by these days because between LDoN missions, about half a dozen zones that i haven't grown tired of yet, and weeklong parsing projects there's just enough fun left to continue if i vary them enough and take the occasional break. But make no mistake, the only real sense of accomplishment i get these days is from my parse projects.
Casual players have been sadly neglected since PoP. Its ok for people who are new to the game, but not for old timers like myself. LoY was nothing more then a handful of exp zones, good for a few months. After a dozen missions in each LDoN theme what little difference there is between them begins to fade and the missions become a minimum-wage production line job. What they should have done is make 5 themes of incremental difficulty, with each theme giving incrementally better rewards for all classes. And when you 'beat' tier 5 LDoN at normal difficulty, tier 1 hard would be the next challenge. This way there would be challenges for everyone, you could step in at the tier most appropriate to you. Don't even get me started on GoD.

And you know what really pisses me off? Mr. John Smedley saying there's plenty of content for casual players, and giving a 'helpful' tip to start a new character to keep a fresh interest. Yeah right, after having invested almost a 100 days /played on my current toon i'm going to bag it in favor of levelling up yet another toon, in zones i already know like the back of my hand, only to end up in the same position as i am right now, all just so he can continue to cash in on my subscription without having to spent a single dime of it on original, innovative, fresh content accessable to me and good grief this is a long sentence even with punctuation.  :D

Anyway, as always,
/hugs

[Hrann]

My first toon was a dwarven cleric too :)  

Xao, I think at this point we are talking past each other.  I had a big paragraph in here furthering the argument, but it just seems from your comment that you travel in different circles than me.  The things you consider trivial and the assumptions you make are beyond the average casual players reach in my experience.

The main point I want to make with this post is that I never intended to say that hardcore players do not need more content.  I simply wanted to stress that getting their leftovers is not good enough for casual players - some content needs to be created with them in mind.