Is it OUR fault?

[Hrann]

I would just like to add that there is likely no content that a casual player will never see, as long as he waits long enough.  Eventually, in another 5 or 10 years, if the game is still running and someone is still playing, there will be casual player who solos his way to PoTime.  Of course, he will be level 200 and be using a 347damage/3delay weapon with +400,000hps on it  ;)

[Coprolith]

Whats Sony to do?

Well that is the million dollar question. Wish i had an answer. We can only hope that the combined efforts of all players and the staff at SOE can find the solution that satisfies the largest part of the player base. EQs problems have become too complex to be solved by a bunch of Devs on Friday afternoon, i think we can all agree on that.

There's nothing wrong with creating separate content for hardcore and casuals in itself. Good business practice even, since you cater to a bigger market. Keyword here is separate tho. How that's best implemented is difficult to answer.
And not too separate either. Back in the days of Velious there was even some interaction between the hardcore guilds and the casuals. The most monumental and exciting event in EQ history to me is still the awakening of the Sleeper. When word got out that my server's top guild was going to awake the sleeper, hordes of casuals flocked to EW just to be part of the experience. "I was there when the Sleeper was awakened and all i got was this lousy T-Shirt". I was there too even though i knew i'd never set foot inside Sleeper Tomb itself. Close second was the first eight ring war. Hardcores started the event, and they invited 100+ more players provided they had a solid connection. At the end of the event player corpses were piled 3 high from Thurg entrance up to the wurm caves. Some people lost 2 levels but they didnt mind.
In comparison, hearing of the first Quarm kill excited me about as much as a BBC gardening program. What the hardcores are doing today has become so far removed from my own gaming experience, so distant that they might as well literally be playing a different game.

Also i think SOE has to reminded that casuals and hardcore players do play two different games (figuratively speaking this time), and at very different paces. They don't have to design every new zone to be challenging and accessible for everyone. Casuals lag behind the hardcores in terms of their toons power, and as time progresses that only gets worse. If SOE wants to cater to everyone from the gimpiest casual to the uberest hardcore they need to put much more variation in the new zones, and design new raid encounters for every type of guild. If they don't, they are forcing a big part of their player base to remain in the old zones, which is what we see happening now with GoD. Its not for nothing that a lot of people will list Velious or Kunark as their fav expansion. They had content for everyone. But those were simpler times and as i've already said, EQ has become much complex. I don't know if its even possible to make such an expansion again today, and i certainly wouldnt know how, but if they manage that then i'll take a deep bow to the Devs.


Hrmmm, talked too much again did I? oh well

/hugs

[Kuroii]

I've been playing EQ for about 3 years now and i enjoy it quite a bit. I long accepted that I won't see places like Time and VT. I don't mean that I have given up, what I mean is that I realize the dedication and time sink it is to see these places. As much as I would like to be in a high end raiding guild and see these places, I honestly dont see how different it is then being in a casual guild riading in a place like TOV.

Yes mob level and difficulty are higher meaning you need a more focused group/riad...but when you think about it how is a raid of 72 time geared toons going after quarm much different then 36 well geared(pre-elemental) toons doing HoT?

You have about the same challenge level given the gear level and mob level and still need the same tactics to win with a minimum of deaths.

The only clear difference is the drops, but is a drop the only point of a raid? If the gear you can get is the only concern, then you are not playing the game you are just "getting it done".

I am a long time gamer and when I started playing EQ I was amazed by the idea of so many people playing together at the same time. What shocked me though was the singled minded focus on the gear. Yes, high end gear make the game easier and makes it possible to see new zones, but what is better having fun or having gear. I know some people will say that getting that high end gear is fun, and I dont deny that getting cool drops is fun, but is that the only reason you log on?

MMORPG's are the only games I have ever seen that are focused more on gear then on gameplay and the simple pleasure of gaming. Would you play console games just so you could say you beat it, or would you play because it is fun?

The more gear focused people become the more fun is sucked out of this game.

If your a casual player and wish you could have that really cool Time/GoD gear, that's fine keep wishing but there is no need to get pissed at SoE that your 10-15 hours a weeks is not getting you into Time.

I'm not saying give up and be happy with only playing in Tier 1 planes, what I'm saying is, instead of getting upset that you can't do this or you can't do that, find something you can do and enjoy it. Just because PoP leads to the best gear does not make it the funnest place to go. Take a few days and explore Norrath its a huge place with many many cool things and zones to see. Hell I spent 3 hours just exploring and talking with NPC's in Skyshrine once I hit Ally.

I guess my point is this:
Games are to have fun therefore, if only highend gear makes you happy but you can't play 40-50 hours a week then find another way to be happy because without that dedication it just won't happen.  Getting mad and flaming is not going to solve it. Every single game I have ever played you get more and better rewards based on how long you play. So why shold EQ be any different. Yes we pay every month for this game, but we pay to play not pay for gear.

Enjoy the game find what you like and do it, if you can't do what makes you happy then move on because the game won't be changed to make everyone happy.

[Ragash]

Every single game I have ever played you get more and better rewards based on how long you play* . So why shold EQ be any different.

* emphasis mine

Except EQ has its own version of a glass ceiling.

A raider can put in 40 hours of gaming in a week. A time challenged but serious player might take 3 weeks to put in the same 40 hours.

At the end of those 40 hours the raider and the time challenged player will not realize the same rewards for the same amount of time played.

So, in EQ at least, it isn't just how long you play but also how long your individual play sessions last. The players who can afford 4-8 hour sessions for raids get a different set of rewards than the players who can only afford 1-3 hours of playtime in any one sitting.

I don't want things made any easier for me because I can't raid or play more than 3 hours at a time. What I, and I think many other players, have is an expectation that my 40 hours of playtime will result in comparable rewards to what the raiders get.

LDoN was a step in the right direction but the current themes need some serious tuning to make it worthwhile for time challenged and casual players who use them as their primary upgrade path.

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Ragash,

You also nailed it. BAM!

Good insight dude.

[Cyphen Wilder]

Been playing the game for 4+ almost 5 yrs now, highest level toon is my 57 warrior, so the term casual player sticks to me like glue.  Do I expect that I should be running around in high end stuff because I have played for so long, yet there are 65bst with tons of AA in time after 6months of playing?  Not at all.  I'm not trying to be in Time or whatnot.  I go to Hooter's, the bars, whatever versus staying in all night playing EQ.  For the players working so hard to get so far to get the best gear, good for you.  Hardwork plays off, and you reap what you sow (hehe).  For the casual player like myself, more then more then enough to keep me occupied all the way to level 65 with both my warrior and bstlord in the old world stuff as well what appears to be coming up.  If I want high end gear, there is always LDoN and the recc lvl 65 gear available there.  Looks like the time needed to get the 1450pts for each peice of recc lvl 65 gear, along with all the good augs to make them badass pieces of gear are equal to the time spent by the ubah players going through Time and whatnot to get their gear.  I have no problem doing that to make my $12.95 a month worth playing EQ.

[Coprolith]

I don't want things made any easier for me because I can't raid or play more than 3 hours at a time. What I, and I think many other players, have is an expectation that my 40 hours of playtime will result in comparable rewards to what the raiders get.

Not even that in fact. When you're in a hardcore raiding guild you are effectively dedicating almost all of those 40 hours towards getting better gear (its not the goal in itself of course, but effectively thats what it comes down to, killing mobs that drop 'phat lewts'). My 40 hours on the other hand are dedicated to exploring new zones, getting xp, and generally just finding new challenges that don't necessarily involve loot dropping mobs. Then there's the overhead from starting up and finishing each session. With shorter sessions that overhead becomes a relatively larger part of playtime. Frankly my expectation is to get the same % power increase as a hardcore raider in twice the amount of playtime.

So ermm lessee, PoTime was conquered something like a year after PoPs release? Little less i think but with pharming the zone until the entire guild was equipped with Time-gear a year is about right? So if the average hardcore raider plays 4 times as much as i do, I expect to be dressed in full PoTime level gear in about 7 more years. Is that unreasonable of me to ask?  :D
By the time my gear beats the current GoD-level gear i'll be retired and then i can become a hardcore raider myself, yippeee!

/hugs

[gnomersy]

cop your wrong at the max you should spend 2x the time to get equal gear meaning if it took 1year for someone to get through the whole pop shat and farm the crap out of time in 2 years you should be able to get that again this is with dedication through time played not single stints this could preferably work with ldon and as each new xpan comes out they have a brand new set of ldon armor augs weaps that will cost more probly 1.5-2x the last set and will be comrable to new gear so if you do decide to head over for some 1 group content you wont be totally gimp or if you decide to go for a open raid you wont be screwed

[Coprolith]

/em catches his breath after trying to read that run-on sentence in one go

Not sure i quite understand what im wrong about according to you, Gnomersy. Are you saying a casual player should be able to get equal gear in just 2x the time instead of 2x the playing playing? Cuz that can't be right. I also dont see how new LDoN merchant gear added with new expansions changes things. Sony is currently considering adding time-level gear to LDoN. Gonna take a guess and say that these items will cost around 2500 pts, and thats just the base armor. The time-level effects will have to be added with augments. So lets call it an even 5000 adventure points to upgrade a single slot. That's 100 wins at L65 normal setting. Even if i dedicate myself to doing nothing but LDoNs that would take me about 6 months, or 10 years for a full set. So by the time the next expansion comes out which puts even better gear on LDoN merchants i have 1 or 2 pieces of the best equipment from before that. At that rate i wont exactly be a threat to a hardcore player's uberness, but at least i get a taste of what's it like.

/hugs

[Bryc]

Yeah, there's a common misconception that LDoN is gearing up the casual player. It is, to some degree, but it's mostly tweaks to gear as opposed to total revamps. We just don't earn enough points.

I am ranked #143 on Fennin Ro. My wife's mule with four wins is ranked 8000, so call it ten thousand people doing at least one ldon on Fennin. This would put me in the top 2% easily, yet I have "only" 203 wins.

Someone who has fully progressed through LDoN would have full LDoN armor, LDoN weapons (SHO for us), each item fully augmented. All this would require in the area of 1000 wins. Two expansions later, 98% of the FR playerbase has advanced less than a fifth of the way through LDoN.

LDoN looks good on paper, becase you can quantify the effort required. In practice, if it's intended audience was the casual player, it's much much much too slow.

[Birdienumnum]

I agree with Coprolith and Bryc..

SOE has stated that the best selling expansion is LoY.

I think that SOE has, belatedly, seen that catering to the high-end raiders has hit their pocketbook.
PoP was popular. This had content, even if only a smidgen, for all players.
The downturn in sales, I believe, started with LDoN.

Every expansion since has had less and less content for the casual player. Finally Gates came out. The word got out before hand that the content is for 60+ players with great gear. Sales are not good. The pre-orders for Omens is announced. Disaster strikes! Sales? What sales?

SOE keeps EQ going for a return on investment. When the returns are way way below projections, and SOE finally realises that the uber raiders are not where the money base is, a plan to remedy this is begun.

Some comments from some posts:
High-end raiders are not necesssarily good or great players. There are some excellent players out there, that are in a guild that does not have a Tier 1 rating.

The comment, ad nauseum, that there is wonderful and plentiful content with good exp for the casual players 45 to 60 is just so annoying. Shows how out of touch some high-end people are with the overall state of EQ.

EQ has become very gear reliant. One must gain plat to buy gear from the bazaar, because the gear that drops to a single group is not appropriate to the level of the group.

Of all the forums I visit, I still feel that this forum has the most mature, informative information available.

[Coprolith]

LDoN looks good on paper, becase you can quantify the effort required. In practice, if it's intended audience was the casual player, it's much much much too slow.

Yep, that's exactly it. Once you've hit 65, you can only progress further with AA grinding or gearing up and this is just too d**n slow. There's only so much time you can spent in a zone before it gets repetitive. Everyone likes to see new content. This can be gained from new expansions, or by gearing/AAing up which opens new zones that previously were too hard. But the latter process is really slow for a casual player, like watching a glacier move. So when SOE makes an expansion aimed entirely at high-end, hardcore players, they run the risk that the old content becomes too repetitive for the casual players. Its rather ironic tho that GoD drove away exactly those people it was aimed at. But the the worst mistake SOE could make right now is try to bring them back with another expansion aimed mostly at the high-end. I think what EQ needs is another Kunark/Velious/Luclin; a huge expansion with content for everyone.

I think that if and when they are going to add new and improved gear to LDoN merchants, it'd be a good idea the scale the old gear down in cost and make the new gear cost 1492 points, rather then simply adding the new gear at higher cost. Because quite frankly, the idea of having to do even more missions to get a single upgrade appals me.

/hugs

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Yes, they should have created another Kunark-Type expansion which should have catered to everyone from level 1 - 65.

Basically have GoD/OoW being the 60-65 content of this new expansion while also have zones/content for levels 1-65.

Though, really, when thinking about this I sort of shudder. Dont we simply have 'enough' zones for level 1-50? I mean really. There are a TON of zones for these folks to play in.

If anything they should go back and rework quests and the rewards to more meet the current inflated quality of items that can be easily obtained in the Bazaar.

They also should go back and rework experience modifiers for all zones from 1-60 and simply give them all 'the same' zone xp modifiers. This will basically make it so no single zone or few zones are where all the xp is to be had thus causing folks to explore and utilize zones they dont now due to the fact that they can get better xp in these 'other zones'.

People will take the easiest way out.... if you make everything the same 'XP Wise" then it will give people more choice. They know if they fight in Zone "A" they will get "XXX" XP and if they fight in zone "B" they know they will get the same.

Now it would be a matter of mob density/pulling.

It 'seems' simple to answer, but I suppose there is a hell of a lot more then that.

Ok, Im done rambling --hehe

[Ragash]

Though, really, when thinking about this I sort of shudder. Dont we simply have 'enough' zones for level 1-50? I mean really. There are a TON of zones for these folks to play in.

What about semi-instanced zones keyed to character level ranges? That way everyone can get to experience the same new content and hunt there for exp and rewards appropriate to their level.

This gives everyone the excitement of the new content and if done right can counteract the feeling that high level characters are isolated from lower level characters (something that contributes to the whole 'level as fast as you can' mindset in my opinion).

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Having Instanced Zones being 'overly used' would be a bad thing in my book. You would no longer have 'any' social interactions with others other then your immidiate friends or hunting partners.

Now dont get me wrong here I think proper implementation of Instanced Content would be a good thing, but going overboard on it would be bad. The game would turn in to al Local LAN Party type atmosphere or perhaps even the feel of a single player game. This would be bad I think.

Having a good 'balance' of this would be nice though.