Feldon From Lyndro on the EQ2 Forums:
The new AA curve is mostly based on the amount of AA experience most people earn when they reach 90. For people who start up new characters (new players or alts), we’d much prefer they have fun playing the game rather than mentoring down to grind their way up to 280. This isn’t really compelling gameplay, and we don’t see a whole lot of value in perpetuating it. We’d much prefer that when the bulk of people “finish” (Finish is a tough term to define and is loaded and open to lots of interpretation, but I’m going to use it anyway) the first chapter of Velious content, that they spend their time in Withered Lands and Skyshrine working toward 92 and not building up AAs. For people that really enjoy grinding, that option is still there for you, you’ll just have to do it less.
and:
We looked at people who reached 90, so the answer to that question is somewhere between 0 and 100, inclusive. There are lots of different factors that go into this, and there isn’t a one size fits all solution, so we went with one size fits most. The AA slider is one factor of a few that changes it on a player by player basis (Some people tradeskill, some people explore to find every area in every zone, some people try to complete every quest, and some people try to get to 90 as quickly as possible). We had to look at time and the group. Picking out individual factors just muddies the data after a certain point.
Commentary — Why Did Low-Level Grouping Die?
The biggest reason why level 20-80 zones are abandoned or people do them solo is…
- Rewards are worse than mastercrafted.
- XP in some dungeons is inappropriately low.
- XP is split between group members, so there is a huge disadvantage to grouping.*
- Heritage Quests that take you into dungeons reward a pittance of XP.
- Quests in older content are klunky with all kinds of gating mechanisms.
I know people say “but more group members let you kill things faster.” Low level players are not experienced with their character and are still learning. Also people are trying to figure out quests and get quest updates, or see if they need to use any item they just got out of a chest. The logic that 2 people can kill things twice as fast as 1 does not scale up to 6 people killing things 6 times faster than 1. In fact, this type of logic has changed low level grouping such that if you don’t kill a mob every 3 seconds, or pull roomfuls of mobs and burn them down, people drop group saying you are going “too slow” and wasting their XP potions.
I have been championing this for years and it’s fallen on deaf ears, but the golden age of EQ2 was Desert of Flames and Kingdom of Sky because not only was there still a reason to run level 1-50 content, but there were new tiers of great content with viable rewards and an item progression. It used to be that you’d pick up some quests, run a dungeon, and walk out with 4-5 levels, 10-15 AA points, and some nice gear upgrades. When that stopped, grouping in dungeons stopped.
It is typical for a lengthy Heritage Quest at level 20, 30, 40, 45, etc. to reward less than 10% of an AA point. This is absolutely absurd. There are 320 AA points in the game now. Completing a Heritage Quest should award 2-3 AA points at a minimum. And the reward shouldn’t be worse than mastercrafted or replaced by a Kill 10 Rats quest a few levels later.
Kunark did not help at all by having ridiculously low dungeon XP, forcing everyone to solo quest. Then level 22-62 Mastercrafted gear was boosted several times, making level 20-50 gear completely worthless.
There have been so many missteps and half-measures over the years that have completely killed 20-80 content. If this content was still viable, then Double XP weekends would see those zones twice as busy.
Definitely agree. For heritage and signature quests especially, it is sad they aren’t really considered worth doing anymore other than just to experience them. (The experience is lower than grinding/solo questing and the rewards often aren’t as good.)
Hubby and I just finished the Peacock Club quest line on our alts last night. We had never done it before so wanted to try it out. We got a group of guildies to help us with the last part in Fountain of Life – killing Godking Anuk. He is an x4 mob and we had my hubby (level 66), myself (level 76, mentoring hubby), and four mentored level 90s.
Not one person in our group had done this quest chain before, and several of them had never been in Silent City (although they agreed it looked like a cool zone and some seemed kind of wistful that they never checked it out). While the chain was fun and the story was really interesting… after 19 quests, numerous sub-quests, and many hours in Silent City getting updates, we got a little bit of AA, a sword that wasn’t as good as what either of us already had (although it was kind of cool for appearance), and an arena pet. With how overpowered mentored characters are, the final fight felt kind of anticlimactic as well. (There was a whole strat for Godking listed on EQ2 Wiki, but with our single group we burned through him in less than a minute.)
Providing better rewards in the form of experience and gear upgrades, balancing mentoring so that going back to do old content is appropriately challenging, and better directing people to these quests instead of just the golden path, would all help old dungeons be more utilized and increase players’ enjoyment of the game as a whole, I think. People play MMOs for a reason. They want to play with others and want to feel a sense of challenge and adventure. The current mindset, however, seems to be that you are holding yourself back if you take time out of the grind to do the older group content.
The way I see this, they had two options. Make grouping at low level, also called grinding :/, just or make it go quicker. Well it was a non-choice because there is not reason to the former. They can’t sell you new stuff if you aren’t at cap, most people want to be at cap, and it is way easier to change the curve then address content. They might as well just let you great a level 90 in mastercrafted as the game is dead below that.
The Heritage reward should definitely be worth the pain of doing the quest.
There are a few heritage quests that gives absolutely worthless items for the level they are and they higher you go, the worse it gets compared to same level fabled items easier to get by (broker => click click => got it)
I disagree. The reason low-level grouping died is because the risk of dying at the low levels has been almost removed. Back when I started playing, soloing was life threatening. Anybody remember trying to do quests in Nek Forest? You were risking your life going through that zone. And if you died, you had to go back and get your corpse! So it really discouraged doing everything but the safest things on your own. People grouped because going places by themselves was dangerous.
Now, you can go into dungeons, pull rooms, and be fine. Much less risk of dying and zero risk of having to go grab your corpse if you do. Before, people were almost FORCED to group. Now, they can easily level up to 90 without much risk at all. That’s what killed low level grouping, the increased ability to solo.
Low level grouping doesn’t exist because those levels don’t exist.
It takes a day to 1-90 a character. If you know the right people and know what you’re doing, 1-90 with 200+ AAs to boot.
For example, if you want to go to the freeport/qeynos sewers to experience the content there; create a new character in darklight wood, proceed to run to those zones (rather than bell to them), you will out level the content based on DISCOVERY EXPERIENCE alone before you get to it.
I suppose one could group, but the annoyance of finding one is not worth the trouble if one has a completely different tier of content every hour or so.
If it isn’t ‘how quickly’ one levels, it is ‘how trivial’ the content is. I made a character for a progression guild of casuals, and it solo parses for 20k+ at lvl 70. 30~35k in a raid…one character parses for approximately what raids used to do. The power available to low level characters through gear/AA is simply ridiculous.
No one does the content in groups because there is no need to; the time one has to do the content is very small and there is no need to get a group when the hardest heroic dungeons are soloable without a mercenary.
Lowering the AA curve is buyer’s remorse on the part of EQ2 designers after nerfing XP grinding zones and XP from quests.
SOE designs from the top down of from “What hardcore/raider/exploit undesirable behavior can be we prevent?” instead of working from the bottom up of “What behavior can we encourage?”
Dethdlr,
Sorry but I’m not buying. 🙂 XP debt was a nonissue in Kingdom of Sky and Echoes of Faydwer and yet grouping from 1-70 was extremely healthy through both of these expansions. Grouping up was rewarding.
I feel most of this craziness started with The Shadow Odyssey. Up to that point we had 3 “tiers” of play. We had the overland “easy” zones, the heroic “medium” dungeons and raid “hard” zones. Everyone had a home but there was also some crossover. You could group up and have fun, although I agree completely with Feldon’s take on XP and AA (ie, the lack thereof).
TSO changed all that. Although I was a non-raid Pally, up until TSO was released, almost all non raid zones were accessible to me. Does anyone remember how rough TSO zones were BEFORE you had the shard gear? This led to running “grey shard” quests to farm. I firmly feel that the designers began pandering to the “squeaky wheels” who said the game was too easy. Then, enter Sentinel’s Fate as the pendulum swung back the other way in some respects. The overland zone was so easy it was crazy. You would do “gopher” quests and finish a quest in 1 minute or less. People started complaining that the game was too easy again. Enter, Destiny of Velious with crit mit on overland zones. Bad choice so developers then put in the “let’s drop nice legendary gear from quest lines that completely negates all the gear players have gotten thus far” (ie, due to the lack of crit mit on most non raid items from previous expansions.
What this all means is the developers need to have a clear vision where everyone has a home. For whatever reason, it seemed like we had that before. I agree about “encouraging behavior”. Give us a game that is fun, enjoyable but in depth. Let us decide how much we want to delve in. All the options should be on the table for all levels. I’m not saying it’s easy but it does seem like it’s either feast or famine. Where is the middle ground? The dungeon that offers good xp, good aa, and items that surpass MC gear? (I love crafting, don’t get me wrong, but shouldn’t legendary gear from a boss ALWAYS surpass MC gear?)
Devs, we appreciate your hard work. Listening to all the complaints and the flamers will not help. I will say that I am heartened to see the in game polls. If it’s that 90% of the game wants harder raid zones, then so be it. But it indeed seems like many of the decisions are “band-aids” to the wounds SOE caused in the first place. We need to get back to a tiered system that means something.
You know, the original EverQuest actually gives you an XP bonus the more people are grouped with you (at least at one time they did) all the way up to 20%. I honestly believe if they did the same thing in EQ2 – get rid of the ridiculous XP nerf the more people that group with you and instead, give you an XP bonus all the way to 20% the more people group with you, it will give people more of an incentive to actually group through the lower tier levels.
Feldon,
You’re telling me that in Kingdom of Sky and Echos of Faydwer the content at the lower levels was as easy as it is now? That you could solo all the stuff that you can solo now? Don’t think so.
Back when those expansions came out, people did groups because if they wanted to do the instances, they needed a group. Unless the zone was grey, most people couldn’t solo most of the instances. You couldn’t chronomentor back then either so even if you wanted to run a zone you had out leveled but never gone into, you needed a group so you had someone to mentor. These days, there just isn’t that much below level cap that you “need” a group for. If you want to do an instance, just wait until you’re big enough, then chronomentor down to get the XP and AA. No group needed.
@Axe
About MC gear, if you’re talking just your general MC then yes the gear dropped from the named of a zone should be better unless the MC gear is from the next teir up.
MC fabled on the other hand requires drops from those bosses to make so it essentially is a drop from the mob anyway.
I think if they want to fix the problem of zone difficulty where things are to easy to raiders and very hard for casuals they will need to lower the difference in armor. The raider armor is to far out of whack with the heroic gear making the zones super easy to raiders while they are still hard to very hard to casuals.
This is a progression problem and i’m hopeing it will get fixed eventually when they are forced to do something simply due to the mass inflation of stats due to their current item mechanics system.
While I do agree with a lot of the points Feldon makes on XP rewards for lower level content, I feel it is a bit besides the issue.
Fact of the matter is that when you level a toon to 90 with the AA slider set to 50% using SOE’s favorite method (the golden path), you will end up at level 90 just short of 200 AA.
So if you want to access the levels and content that will be added with GU63, you will then have to start grinding AA’s to get there.
While that is a perfectly sound playstyle for a large part of the population (or at least the most vocal part of the population), it does not really make sense from a design point of view. Flattening the curve makes for a much smoother levelling path from 1 to 92, which is a good thing in my book.
IMO there isn’t much grouping anymore because there just aren’t enough people to group. Yes you can find a group to run with, but they won’t be doing what you might like to do. e.g. Last night I spent a couple of hours running Runnyeye: The Gathering. At 90 it was an easy solo (with a merc) mainly I wanted to get the collections and book pages, but realised I’d never been there so got the discovery AA too. There’s no way I could have found a group to do that and would have had to split the loot. Even if I did find someone to duo (much less chance of a bigger group) they probably would have been “helping me out”, rather than running a zone they wanted to do.
In the early days there were people in every zone and there were people running every instance, now there are very few people playing and the only instances where groups are constantly being formed at top tier where the rewards are worth the time.
I don’t know how how the game can be fixed at this late stage.
Soe is already trying to get people into older zones, anyone remember the “new” sinking sands zones? While those zones are “new” it was cool to check them out. Although they were balanced horribly, for the rewards for the zone.(I might be wrong about this, havn’t done those zones that much, but they seem too hard for their reward.)
So yeah, Soe is kinda trying bring back old zones, but they botched it. I would like to see old zones scaled up, offer a good challenge, and reward tons of xp.
/rant on
One has to wonder recently with all the features that get introduced, and abandoned just as quick, can the current game engine handle anything new? I always assumed that because the game looked so good for it’s time, that they had to pull alot of coding tricks to make it run smoothly. But all those tricks are now hurting the game, because it limits what they can do with it. The easy examples of this been the dungeon finder, and dungeon maker. Those two features feel shoehorned in, like they were forced to work around the current game engine. Smells of bad programming.
/rant off
HAHA So Lyndro agrees with me about grinding AA being repetitive. The problem with old content being skipped is what I believe to a be a result of the age old problem with MMOs that add new content with expansions every year or so. Take classic EQ as an example (18 expansions). Does anybody ever hunt in the Karanas these days? Or Visit Neriak? Qeynos? Rivervale? Whens the last time you’ve seen someone walk rather then click a PoK book? It’s because when you add new, people skip the old because it’s outdated and doesn’t supply as good of rewards, which is SOE’s fault for not keeping consistency when throwing stuff on top of other stuff. This problem I hear is plaguing WoW too. I personally Don’t think we need a new expansion every year, but that’s just my opinion. Quality over Quantity. If it’s good, people will go back. Sometimes I visit Stormhold for nostalgic reasons, but other then that I stick with EoF-DoV content these days because the rewards are better.
I’m new to EQ2, but well experienced in MMO’s. Frankly, they all suck. Economicly, few people play MMO’s and they soon (in days, months)hit the “level cap” and start PvP or Raiding. Then they scream for “NEW” stuff. A true, lasting MMO would have a “Heaven” for Raiders (max players) and a “World” for leveling. The “upgrades” for Heaven would be new dungeons, bosses, different KINDS of weapons, gear. They would also have a command system where a Raider with a given “title” could group with x players. Titles would be limited to number of players in game. i.e. 150 lords who could group 40 players. 250 ArmsCommanders who could group 30 players, etc. This would encourage PvP for the titles. Intricate puzzles requiring extensive time and solving as well as slaughtering to solve. The “upgrades” for World would be a careful balancing of the curve and reward system for the stable world. No new dungeons but redistribute the rewards, and possibly mobs, to encourage a different path to the top.
Greykemp,
I read it twice and I still don’t know what you’re suggesting.
@Greykemp
If I read that right, you want the “heaven”(max level stuff) to have cool different stuff, but also have a PvP aspect, by making it so you need a title to be able to allow the grouping of a large number of people. Both are somewhat nice ideas, but the cool different stuff is assumed to be there, and the pvp mechanic sounds like more trouble then it’s worth.
Now the “world” you mention is the leveling content. You want them to make sure the gear curve stays balanced, but with each new expansion, that they go back and change the golden path to max level. For example, make butcher block an level 80 zone, and knock moors to an to an level 20 zone? That sounds cool, but again sounds like more trouble then it’s worth.
Maybe I read too much into your post, but that’s what I got out of it.
Feldon, Rocky – Obviously I wasn’t clear. Here is the problems I see. 1) Attract new players, 2) keep the old players 3) Give each (new/old) a reason to play the others game content.
In essence, I’m asking for two games. The newbie plays a game, not to level but to experience content. When that gets boring, at max level, they “die” and are raised to heaven. Here your goals are different. Possibly, 1) Finding special gear (not craftable) 2) Gaining a title through PvP allowing larger groups. 3)Earning achievements based on what bosses a group you led killed, etc. maybe earning the right to alter your character. Heaven should not be a very fun experience solo.
If you want another 90 character you have to start another in the “world” zone and there is no mentoring. You can’t cross a 90+ back to the world. To avoid old players hating the requirement to level a new 90 the world should be somewhat scrambled every few months. It should be a fresh exploring experience, not just grabbing a guide and speed grinding to gain rank.
@Greykemp: Please keep your game away from my game. LoL
There is already a mechanism in game to encourage grouping OR doing old content; achievements. The trouble is that they don’t reward power so most don’t care for them…but what if some did? What if the ONLY way to access “best in slot” gear for each tier required not only defeating the tier’s content, but all prior non-greened?
For raiders, the best fabled BP might drop from a nasty HM mob, but if you’ve earned that piece from all prior raid mobs, maybe its even better. Mechanically there are many options; trade in vendors, achievements, whatever.
heroic and solo stuff could work the same way and the achievement system makes more sense. All heroic named downed in group of ‘design’ level for best neck in game up to last tier fully defeated? How about all HQ and sign quests for a charm? Maybe uber harvesting mount with invis harvesting for finishing every crafting and harvesting quest?
Most people want to be powerful toons (just see how people flock to OP’ed alt, classes). So recharge old content by making it the only path to ultimate (mythic?) gear.
With the right checks and controls (level, group, use of special items , etc.) It could also cut back on people exploiting and farming to update their gear. Even if some farming happened at least old content would get a run. (no trade stuff only to make even more rare and elite).
I like your best in gear idea. Especially the NO-TRADE NO-VALUE attribute. It would require a LOT of grinding so almost no one would have more than one or two pieces. My basic point remains. a maxed out level player should NOT be playing for the same rewards a leveling player is after. The leveling stuff should be NECESSARY to become a maxed player but once maxed any “go back” system warps the leveling system. Chronomage sounds good but not if you come back with gear that makes you a level 15 with level 85 stats. Now, if we combined the two and had Chronomage that truely made you a level 15 attempting all those quests for that super gear. That might make it worth it.
It seems every MMO player thinks they know how to make a better game then the game they are playing… but when they explain it, it sounds like freaking gibberish.
Either way, this AA bump is fine. Besides a level 90 toon with 130 AAs is severely gimped (I speak from experience… I made this mistake), so this way you know a level 92 toon has all their endline abilities.
@ GreyKemp
Guild wars 2 already uses some of your ideas. The main meat of the game is meant to be PvP, but there is a large world to level through as well. But from what I’ve heard it lets you skip to level 80, with all skills unlocked if you just want to do PvP. So anyone can jump into PvP, and not be held back by PvE. (I would have to assume that the 80 that skipped ahead would be PvP only) The game also auto-scales(down, not up) you to any zone(instance or world) that your in, so the zones are always a challenge.
I would love to see eq2 use some of these ideas, but Sony’s idea of scaling is a lvl 90 cloth wearer can tank anything under 60 while mentor to such level. I wish they would fix the mentoring, but give a bigger xp bouns for mentoring. Since that’s what it’s suppose to be used for. For people that want to solo and duo old zones, there are always mercs. (afterthought: Why not the best of both worlds, let you choose how much weaker you get while mentoring, and the bouns xp is increased the weaker you get. I could see this become abused in large groups, but it couldn’t be worst then refer-a-friend)
I wonder if you could make a game that is fully armor based, no stats for the player normally so all of it comes from the armor. With class also set by the armor your wearing. As such a person could be a tank if they had plate armor and were wearing it, but could be a wizard if they had wizard armor and wore it. Though that would utterly destroy the alt market, though you’d then be hunting for armor for the classes you wanted to play.
Though i’m thinking that the game would be pretty complicated to design. You certainly wouldn’t want the need for as many hotbars as you need in eq2. You’d want something smaller like eight or ten abilities max for each class.
As for the AA changes, it’s probably needed for the introduction of more AA in the future. If you continue to raise the cap higher and higher but don’t flatten the curve it just becomes a massive grind fest to get to the top. That’s if they continue raising it anyway.
@ Thait
I’m pretty sure that, “The Secret World” is doing a class-less base mmo. I havn’t read too much about the details, but what I’ve heard is that everyone picks from a pool of about 250 skills. So we’ll see how that game works out, and see if they are forced to redesign the system or not.
Also your idea of a game where everything is decided by armor, makes me think of Mario.
Grouping suffered in EQ1 too, but it was mostly due to lack of people to group with. I think EQ2 suffers for the reasons people mentioned… lack of incentive to group and lack of penalty for solo play.
Back in the days of death penalties groups were the safe way to experience the game; soloing was largely something you did if you had no other options or you just wanted the thrill of doing it alone. Now the entire game is safe so there’s almost no risk reduction to grouping. Gear improvements could get you some people.. I guess.. but what people seem to want when they’re not capped is fast, stable improvement.
A good group might be as fast as solo grinding, and might even be fun, but those things are almost mutually exclusive since if you are really grinding your hardest you’re probably not socializing all that much – assuming the content is level appropriate. Finding a group is not as instant as having the ability to solo, and your groupmates often stall you and you end up waiting on them to get back. Socializing is great, but the game isn’t built to encourage that at all when grouping, its just built for you to run around and kill stuff. EQ1 camps and some areas of Vanguard had noticeable wait times built in where you’d find people would talk to each other, go afk, or whatever.
If you doubled group XP or halved solo xp you’d discover a resurgence in grouping. I don’t think you can make soloing more dangerous at this point but you can at least line up the incentives correctly… A halfway competent group doing level appropriate content should completely blow the rewards for solo play out of the water – like 2-3x. At this point, with dungeon maker, there’s no class barrier anyway so any 6 people should be able to jump in and start exploring a dungeon and doing that multiplayer thing.
If you look at the lifecycle of an MMO as a bell curve, EQ2 would be in the final stage of the curve. Some games have long curves, others are like a flash in the pan. EQ2 is a stayer, it is a brilliant game, but it is also 8 years old now, the old age pensioner of MMOs. New customers in the MMO segment see the game as dated, the expansions mainly keep us long term fans happy. New customers look to newly released games where the buzz is. Plus SOE have always been pretty bad at marketing.
That is the main reason why you don’t get groups below L90, it seems obvious but a lot of the debate here seems to excludes this. I don’t think I will ever stop playing it, but I won’t expect to get a group at lower levels. I am really happy about the mercs, and the DoV armour, it has allowed me to see parts of the game I never would have otherwise!
Certainly your opinion to have.
The article’s title “Commentary — Why Did Low-Level Grouping Die?” led me to believe we were able to make commentary about why low level grouping has died.
The article ignored the elephant in the room. Rather than address it in your article, you choose to be facetious when someone else brought it up.