Feldon 
With Game Update 66, we saw a lot of changes, including “Quality of Life” changes to a number of classes. Summoners now see their dumbfire pets share their stats and now spawn behind the enemy, greatly increasing their chance of survival. Scouts especially Rangers have seen a lot of distance and positioning restrictions loosened or removed altogether. Crusaders can now cast on the run. This is not to mention the new overland zone as well as the Adv Solo, Group, and Raid zones.
However the most controversial issue in this update was the change in how Platinum (coin) is awarded in group and raid zones, particularly in outdated content. Kyle “Kander” Vallee went on the record on the EQ2Talk podcast to say that the changes were meant not to try to “balance” the economy or reduce the amount of coin coming into the game, but simply to fix the silliness of so many players farming 5 year old content just to fund their current activities.
So now that the update has gone live, what’s the verdict?
How much are you seeing from doing old and current level content?
Is it enough to finance your gameplay?
Shakugan reported the following coin amounts from Chains of Eternity’s Dreadcutter Advanced Solo zone:
Aaeva reported that Phara Dar from Veeshan’s Peak (Rise of Kunark) raid zone dropped:
Angelyka reported Protector’s Realm drops are now:
And Sony wonders why the playerbase doesn’t trust them. The reason the gave for making this change is patently false – an outright lie. The change is CLEARLY meant to prevent hyperinflation in the economy and to prevent players from gaining massive plat through repeated runs of old content. Plain and simple.
If the stated reason was true, 77g per run is NOT enough to “fund activities.” When an average greater adornment costs a minimum of 3p, red adorns and stewards gear cost 14-25p, how is 77g going to be anywhere near enough?
SOE needs to stop with the sanitized marketing speak and outright lies and just be honest about what they are doing and why. I feel like an employee being told by a manager at a big company about how impending layoffs are actually good for me. Treat us like adults and tell us the truth. To be spoonfed this politically correct BS only to have reality be 180 degrees off is just downright insulting and further evidence of their contempt for the very fanbase they profess to respect and adore. Disgusting.
I would like to see more data before I cast judgement – but ~3p for an advanced solo zone that takes mere minutes doesn’t sound like a bad run at all.
@Pomma – Where do you see 77g per CoE run?
@Pomma I think it was 77g per named
its time to let Kander go. He was also the driving force behind the CoE adornment mess. I think McDonalds is hiring, perhaps he can go improve the bigmac.
POMMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Donathan reported running the Alluring Embrace Advanced Solo zone in Siren’s Grotto and getting 55g from the final named.
Perkoset reported from the Siren’s Grotto heroic zone:
Protector’s Realm and Shard of Hate granted 150p for a few minutes effort.
Yes there are all the arguments about they were raid zones, etc. etc. but the bottom line is, yesterday, I could make 150p for 10 minutes work. Now, the Siren’s Grotto advanced solo zones take 30-45 minutes and reward less than 3p. That’s a 50:1 reduction in plat-earning ability.
I rand DC got 53gold Not much to fund my toons at all.
Counterbalance–You could do PR roughly, what, once per character every three days? Whereas the zones have 90 minute timers, allowing multiple runs a day, every day. Factor in loot drops that are actually relevant (at least, what they can be muted into) and the equation is different.
Still, a quick run of the numbers gives me about a sixth the hard plat, with some room for variation for rare drops and selling ‘muted materials. It may take a while for the full numbers, but this is definitely a drop in the incoming cash flow. I wonder if prices will eventually be adjusted to match the new reality…
@Pomma: Perhaps I missed something. Who said that after the change running PR would be enough to fund activities?
From what I remember, they said that having to mentor down and run old content to fund activities was a ridiculous way for things to work. They wanted you to get enough coin to fund activities from running current content instead. 3 plat per run in a zone you can do in less than 15 minutes and that you can reset every 90 minutes isn’t awful. It’s not the PR ATM, but not awful.
P.S.: I’m pretty sure buying stuff through SLR or stuffing your mattress with plat isn’t what they consider funding activities.
/agree with Ceala. I would like to see more data
@Dethdlr
Read EQ2Wire’s interview with Kander – he explicitly states that running new content should be sufficient to fund a player’s activities. As others have so expertly shown here, this is not the case unless your activities are limited to RPing
Temple of the Faceless AS gave me 1p42g in total from plat drops.
@Pomma: The amount of funds you need to fund your activities depends on what your activities are. The theory is that running the current level content should generate enough plat to pay your expenses.
So somebody here lay out what your current expenses are that are no longer going to be covered by running current level content.
I’m not saying it is or is not enough to fund activities. I don’t think we have enough data yet to make that decision. How much will I make from running three CoE heroic zones? Don’t know yet.
Enraged warboar – 4p3g
Names in ALtar x4 – 4p5g – 4p30g
SG Dissension – plat chest from trash with 110plats in it (4p60g per person)
Well sucks to be the newcomers to the game, or to the people who didn’t farm. I knew this day would come, even back prior to AoD, I knew the plat farming nerf would happen. Happened a lot a lot latter then expected. Sitting on 70,000p now and a 3 year subscription that i took advantage of during the days of using SC sale + ingame subscription. Completely set for the rest of my time playing this game in the near future.
Also not sure why people only did SoH/PR. I rotated three of my tanks on PR, TToT, VS, Korsha, VP (11/12), SoH, MMB (3/6), Zarrakon’s, and TotMC (2/5).
And just to let you know: Go mentor to 90 and farm Guk: Hall Of the Fallen. The amount of loot that drops from those zones greatly surpasses any of the Advanced Solo’s drop rate on money and can easily surpass 5-10 plat with each run.
The problem is that even though you can run it every 90 minutes, most people do not have the time to stay on all day doing zones. It then becomes a job and that is just plain foolishness. That argument holds nothing. Now the real question is, how long does it take to make enough for taking care of a toon. I am certainly not running 500 AS zones for an adornment remover. Heck, it was outlandishly priced even for running PR 9 times. A green adornment remover at this rate will take 60 runs. I feel sorry for the people who only run one toon because they just got shafted big time.
@Dethdlr
Say you just leveled a toon to 95/100. A full set of Steward’s gear will set you back 25p per item. Assuming you get a primary, secondary, and ranged, thats a total of 250p not including the greater spirits. Now, lets say you need to replace all of the yellow adornments on your armor – now you’re looking at an additional 49p just for armor. This doesn’t include stewards jewelry or primary/secondary/ranged adornments which you can get from adv solo drops.
Greater astral adornments run between 2.5 and 4p each, with each armor and weapon using 1-2 per. Again you’re looking at close to 100p or maybe more just for adornments. Assuming you get your weapons and jewelry from adv solo drops you’re looking at adorning those too.
Now look at reforging – 3p per item, again you’re looking at possibly upwards of another 100p depending on what you’re reforging. Add onto that another couple of plat for food and some ammo stacks and you can see that a new toon is an investment of potentially 500p or more just to be adept at running CoE heroic zones. If you can run PR, you could have this much in a couple of weeks if you just have a single toon, less if you have alts. Running these instances you’re looking at potentially months worth of the same level of effort to get teh plat needed.
And of course we didn’t even go into the cost of expert/master spells, mounts, poisons, potions, etc etc etc.
I not seen one plat yet, I seen mostly 50-90 gold, the last name had 90 gold on it.
I got 59 gold from the final named fight on Tvalan, I got 70 gold from the last named fight in the other new zone. The gold I seen between each name vairies between 50-90 gold, I got the 90 of the frog. Total fail, I thought I head that dev say the other night in the pod cast were going to see lots of plat, Ummm no that is not the case.
They are going to have to either cut down on the cost of reforging, the cost of stewards guild or folks are going to go broke and that is from what I am seeing. Now I will let you know what we see on raid tonight, but so far I am not getting enough of anything to even bother running the two new advanced solo zones, There is nothing in there worth having so far, and it does not even cover the repair bills.
This, sadly, does not surprise me. Now death really will matter, because repair bills for the average 95 player will end up not being trivial.
Are they going to lower repair costs from the mender? That would be a practical change.
An almost certain result will be the lack of people to buy SLR items, because most casual folks just won’t be able to afford them any more. That does tie into the “vision” of non-raiders not getting raiding level gear (or even good gear, let’s face it, +160 chest stuff isn’t cutting it any more). If you don’t raid, you don’t need that kind of gear, or so they say.
It’s just so nonsensical — why is the steward gear so expensive, not to mention adornments, if the dev team is throttling the plat flow? Oh and we all have noticed there’s a lack of spirit drops, making trading a spirit for 10 obol a really silly decision.
Thanks for posting this stuff, folks, at least we know the reality and can hoard our savings!
@Pomma: Through normal gameplay, you don’t get all your gear at once so you shouldn’t need to reforge it all at once. Nor should you need to adorn it all at once. Nor would you be buying all the Steward gear all at once. In order to get the spirits needed to buy the steward gear, you need to run zones which will generate plat. Unless of course, you’re getting all this from another toon.
So what you’re describing is twinking out an alt. Pretty sure that’s also not one of the activities they had in mind when they mentioned being able to fund activities.
@Dethdlr
But isn’t what they are doing basically saying this is the playstyle you should be playing? It seems to me that the whole idea of play your way is really play our way. Just my 2 cents.
not even close to enough, as expected. SoE hates its player base. end of story :-p
The fact that you COULD “earn” 150p in only 10min was part of the problem.
I think once people get over their sense of entitlement, they will see that their earning enough to pay for their expenses. You wont get rich unless you commit some major time to doing that — but thats the way it should be.
Buying raid gear from SLRs, Elite Mercs, etc are not “normal expenses”. They are luxuries and if you want the plat for those it should take more than an hour to farm plat for luxuries.
Anyway, good change. Just get used to it people.
good thing i farmed enough to keep me up in needs before the change . 3 plat for a solo zone may sound decent but my tanks drink just 1 cost 6 to 9 plat each . so i am going to run a zone 2 or 3 times to buy 1 drink . the fact that i raid is the only way i will make any decent plat now or craft . until the broker prices drop this is a very bad idea that will hurt only the NON plat rich players . sony should have just increased the lock out timers on the old zones .
on another note it should cancel out many of the little guilds who don’t raid .to be able to afford the cost of the guild hall and more they will need many crafters adding plat into the upkeep cost . until prices drop from players and those set by sony itself there will be unhappy players for sure sony . 3 plat for solo zone lmao
@Ratzilla does it take you over 5 hours to complete that Solo zone?
@Dethdlr
Getting a full set of stewards gear IS absolutely the intent of the devs – its why its there and why it is an extension of the quest line. I didn’t state that you’d need over 500p at once – but the total remains the same no matter how long it takes. So, no they aren’t preventing you from getting this gear with this patch, but they are greatly extending the amount of time it would take a new player to fully gear out their toon with the desired and appropriate gear for heroic zones. This is separate from SLR and the associated costs with that.
I’m not debating the PR issue here – I’m simply stating that their statement that the new plat drops will offer “plenty” of plat is false. They seem to want people to believe you’ll get just as much plat from new zones as you did from running old raids and that math just doesn’t add up, period. You can’t argue with the numbers.
Thus my point is either they have zero understanding of current plat needs based on current established gameplay norms (that they themselves established), or they’re outright lying to make it appear that they didn’t do this change explicitly to prevent plat farming and to balance out the economy.
I don’t really have to convince anyone. SOE’s words don’t match their actions and any fool can see that unless they’re an apologist. The math doesn’t add up no matter how you slice it. This is why a good portion of the playerbase doesn’t trust or believe anything they say – its always a game of poker with them, and they’re all too fond of bluffing.
@Dethdlr ^^^^^^^^
I guess partially I agree we should see how things turn out with drops overall, but this statement does not line up with initial experiences unless you think people are running adv. solo + group instances several hours a day (e.g. it did not take long to get bored doing these).
My original reaction to the change was pure anger but I realized I hated doing PR/SoH runs to the point I hardly ever did them. However, I will not be trying pickup groups to make plat ever (endless waiting to get a douche group). So if these adv. solo things drop my earning potential to bid on auctions by <6x as often I will be pretty unhappy. I think some people on these forums should understand your expectations of play style does not fit all players. I like grouping with a couple of friends and grouping with others is generally a big net negative (with rare exceptions — and those folks generally are gone a couple months later).
@feldon, @dethdlr: Thanks for having an honest forum on eq2 news. I wish SOE would give eq2wire a lifetime acheivement award or something.
@YB – Thanks for your comments, I agree. Seems ridiculous that we have one group of players trying to control the way another group of players play. I get so tired of having someone tell me how I should earn plat and gear, how I should play my toons, what zones I should run, etc. Don’t I pay to play this game the way I want? What business is it of anyone else as long as it isn’t injuring them somehow?
My big issue as I’ve stated over and over is that SOE isn’t honest. They act like we’re morons and feed us BS lines about why they make the changes they make, or just stay silent on ninja changes because they don’t want to come out and admit they’re making wildly unpopular changes to placate a vocal few and/or the devs themselves. I’d have a lot more respect for them if whenever they made a change they answered the following questions honestly and BEFORE a change is made:
What is the change being made?
Why is the change being made?
What is the goal of the change once it has taken place?
What will be done if it causes other issues?
I never hear any of this – just a lot of fluffy “please everyone” bs that is bordering on stark lies. They need to ditch their handlers and let the devs talk – everything coming out of SOE sounds like pure management 101.
This is all about Kronos and SOE losing subscription money. Plain and simple.
Most of the changes in Game Update 66 to classes and PvP were directly the result of Player Feedback. Sometimes we suggest things or report bugs during Beta that get missed, but that’s what hotfixes are for.
I haven’t given up hope that we’ll see the Advanced Solo and Group zone plat amounts tweaked to make a little more sense. They won’t reward 150p. Nobody should be able to make 150p for 10 minutes work. But I think there’s a possibility there will be some adjustment of the numbers.
The whole idea must be that with less influx of plat the prices will in the go down how long that will take is of course anyones guess. The prices set by SOE in game will probably have to be adjusted a bit in the future. But extreme inflation and an economy where SLR is the NORM for equipping your toon is not healthy, especially not if you hope to retain at least some new players. Well maybe we all have to plan a bit in the future, with some money constraints the norm might not be to have the best at every single time, maybe use regular food when you are not doing anything special?
@Kruzzen: Normally, I’d agree with you that they shouldn’t be telling us how to play. But it’s really hard to make the argument that 5 year old content being the fastest way to earn coin makes sense. Most people agree it was pretty silly whether they liked running it or not.
@Pomma: Yes, getting a full set of stewards gear IS the intent. But to do it, you have to run the heroic zones. And since you have to run them many times to get the obol and spirits to get the gear, you’ll be getting plat from those zones at the same time. You claim they are extending the time because you can’t just hit the PR ATM anymore. But you’re leaving out how many group zones you have to run to get the things you need to buy the items. I still don’t know if it will even out or not. I’m curious to find out.
Also, I could have sworn you said you read about the interview Feldon did with Kander. On top of that, EQ2Talk interviewed him for like 2 hours. Listen to that interview. He spells out exactly why he made this change. In that interview he calls several things that have been done in the past dumb. That’s not management speak, that’s honesty from a dev. Put the tinfoil hat down and step away. 🙂
Has anyone done a group zone yet to see how much plat is dropping?
The interview mostly talked about his feelings about things, some minor changes that would really make no one upset (like the rez range), etc. “Safe” topics. On the more controversial stuff he seemed to make it clear it was opinion or something they are “thinking” about changing or “may” change.
Why isn’t this stuff on the forums? Why don’t they actively engage with us? Am I the only one who sees a lot of smoke & mirrors/ cloak & dagger (no pun intended) stuff going on ?
Any time an EQ2 staffer says what they’re planning to do or thinking about doing, people say “EQ2 dev so-and-so promised X” and beat them over the head with it for the next 5 years. Not surprising that he would add disclaimers and say that this is an *idea* but not a concrete promise. Sometimes the team get together and decide that something was a bad idea or needs to go back to the drawing board. All things considered, I thought he was very candid and honest.
I miss the Dev Chats, but after read the comments here, would you want to be on the receiving end of all the negativity? Kander and Kaitheel, who are the Lead Designer and Assistant Lead Designer of EQ2, didn’t issue a press release polished by Marketing, instead they put themselves out there on Fansite-run Podcasts. No topic was verboten.
People seem to think that the EQ2 team goes away and has meetings about how to screw over the players. I’m not sure why. Sometimes they decide to do something ambitious and go too far in a few places. It beats the heck out of “How does WoW do this?” which was a question heard in almost every EQ2 design meeting up until a couple of years ago.
Looks like I got about 20pp for a run (plus brokerable loots) thru the SG heroic (challenge). Pretty fun zone too. I’d much rather have incentives to run current stuff with other players than ever set foot in PR again.
First named in dreadcutter AS 29 gold
Second named 26 gold
captain 25 gold
final mob 56 gold.
I want to be nice, but this is frickin ridiculous.
@Dethdlr
I don’t have a problem with them moving the plat to higher content. But after running a zone I am very disappointed.
If Adv Solo zones are current content and only drop one chest with plat, then that means people will move to Guk and Befallen to get their plat fix. Still not current content.
@Feldon
They are a company. They are out to make a profitable business. They are not out to make friends. If you can’t take criticism and feedback from your customers, you’re in the wrong business. Avoiding your customers because they are “too negative” does not make for a positive customer service experience. If anything the negativity should inspire MORE outreach, not less. Sometimes I think they forget that we are the customers, and their own emotions and ego get in the way of doing things the right way. I don’t care about SOE’s hurt feelings or wounded egos – I care about a game that was once and could again be great. I have years of great memories of EQ1 and EQ2, and I’m sad to see the state of things.
Again, since I pay them to make this game, I’m not the one who needs to bend over to suit them. The best policy would be to be open and honest, engaging with the playerbase. No, you’re not going to make everyone happy, but at least you can be clear and forthcoming. They are anything but that today. An interview with one/two devs with some fairly vague descriptions of things they like/don’t like or want/don’t want to change is not a substitute for official discourse.
They have to make the first move to win our trust back, and to use the excuse that we’re too difficult to deal with is simply a cop out.
4 plat a raid mob.. 4.. yeah.. 4 thats all? 4? 4? reallY!!? 4? lol oh yeah that makes up for the plat people got from PR. Good thing im in a guild that can clear alot of content quickly, would hate to be in some casual guild or not in a guild.. if i wasnt raiding in my guild and having fun with that, i would not be playing after the latest insult to players.. just saying they need to raid the plat from what it is right now, this in no way makes enough plat to where you can keep up with everything a person needs to be be top of their game.
PR was stupid to begin with. We all know it was to be nerfed, and here folks are complaining about plat drops being not enough.
News flash. I have 15 level ~95 toons (mainly for testing purposes). I have all tradeskill classes maxed. I have a couple tinkerers. I have an adorner. Eight of those toons are geared enough that I can use in raids, depending on what is needed.
I have never run PR for plat. I went in there once to follow the quest lines for mythics (was bored and wanted to see the server wide msg.) I have been fully able to fund ALL my toons with selling of drops (not SLR, I’m too lazy) and collectables.
And this was while the raids I was in dropped 0 cash and heroics were even less cash then what you’re currently complaining about.
tl;dr
It is possible to survive without the PR ‘ATM’ (as someone called it above.)
what we saw on tonight’s raid into the grotto 5 plat split per person, of of one trash mob, and the loot that dropped was like wow, and got sold to mobs.
@Antonia Bayles bit on the side
Krono do not lose sub money. In fact, they make more because 18 > 15. That, and the people who formerly wouldn’t sub with their CC info can do so without.
All the plat nerf did is make those that hoarded tons of plat GODS and to the casual or new guy we are but ants in the world of norrath.
When I can’t even afford the fuel to make arrows to go kill stuff it’s time to quit.
@avianna – there are crappy arrows that are usable for 1c on the vendors.. but yeah, can I have your stuff?
Just for the record, I ran PR post level 90 maybe a total of 15 times. It was so boring and tedious I didn’t want to do it. My points haven’t surrounded the legitimacy of that or any other plat farming, just the ridiculousness of SOE’s claims about having equal plat for equal effort elsewhere.
And @Dedith – if you’re happy using crappy rhenium arrows, thats all you. My ranger uses dragon bone arrows and they’re 7g a pop. Go SG or WE x2 and tell me I can get by with cheap gear and cheap ammo. SOE designs these encounters with certain DPS in mind and its hard to top 500k on a ranger single target with crappy arrows.
Good I’m glad.
Never did run PR farm for stupid amounts of plat, and I love all the people crying about it.
I went 2 expansions actually doing current content, raid content at that, with 24 other people, several times a week, and we got a big fat ZERO plat in our chests. Then we get to see the only way to not leak plat in repair costs raiding is to sell loot to people solo farming content from 2008.
Good riddance.
One thing I noticed questing in Cobalt,was a lot of the “rare” merchant drops,ie void soaked flower.Then i killed a named,got a crappy belt,and 55g
@pomma – Again, try reading the posts some more. I was replying to someone saying they didn’t have the cash for fuel to make tradeskill arrows, which would be needed to go kill/quest for more cash. I suggested the silly vendor arrows as you have to start somewhere.
Prior to the multi-attack-arrow change, I’d had sympathy for rangers.. not so much anymore. And I do see rangers in CoE raids doing just fine with the tradeskill arrows breaking 500k on single targets.
I am soooooooo fcking happy they made this change – I felt like i was FORCED to farm PR/SoH x2 a week just to keep up!
@Pomma: Before I respond, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to do some point – counter point thing here. Your opinions are just as valid as mine are. I’m not trying to win or get the last word or anything like that. Nothing personal is going on here. We’re all good. 🙂
You just mentioned “SOE’s claims about having equal plat for equal effort”. I missed that. Who ever said that? I heard them say that running current level content should fund activities but I don’t remember them saying that there would be equal plat for equal effort. Come on. The effort to do PR was WAY out of whack for the plat reward it provided. Why on earth would they put something in that was just as ridiculously out of whack?
@Willow
And so did many others who plat farmed. Plat farmers aren’t exclusive to soloers and groupers. That’s ignorant. I’m part of a raid alliance that’s farming hard mode CoE and advancing through PoW. Majority of us have farmed heavily from the RoK/TSO raid zones for plat with many ranging up to 20,000-150,000p. None of us are crying or complaining. The very least some will be sad a past time hobby is gone, but the majority of us feel pity for those who hardly have any money at all. The money people been harvesting for years has piled up. We’re now the money barons. This hasn’t solved a problem since the currency is still ingame and it will only cause a larger wealth gap.
TBH; SoE shouldn’t have delayed this problem for 3 years. The solution they had with this update is too little too late. It was only worsened when they decided to make post-SF mounts all exclusive to SC instead of monkey sinks such as Mount Vendors.
You don’t think that a large part of this is due to the the incredibly poor level of communication we get as players get from the devs?
Lets be honest most people believe that the forums are there so that the players can be heard yet there is next to no acknowledgement from SOE on any level sure once in a while you get a cryptic comment but on the whole there is no discussion which leaves the player base with the impression that SOE do what ever they want.
Now I understand that whenever they stick their necks out there is an avalanche of responses varying from genuine feed back to idiotic rants but I believe that this is due to them not giving enough regular feedback of their own.
I don’t think they sit there thinking about how to screw over the players but I do believe that they have become so focused on the end game that they have forgotten that a lot of players will never see that end game because they are not in the select few guilds that have the capability to access that content.
@ZAPPHOD
Mskes me sort of jealous of the EQ1 forums. I waltz in there from time to time out of curiosity and you’ll see devs chatting and talking with players most in less then a week then what the devs at EQ2 put out in a year.
@Dedith
For someone running a very useful fan site for eq2 players, I expected a much better attitude toward others than “Can I have your stuff?”. Sure, there are plenty of people who make empty threats on a daily basis, but if a good number of players do leave, it hurts the game. If enough leave, it’s over.
You’re obviously passionate enough about eq2, considering all of the work you’ve done with the armory. Why doesn’t that same passion extend to the community?
Take a page from Feldon and Dethdlr’s book please.
Even though many of you don’t farm PR and other old instances for plat. You likely got your plat from the broker then or by crafting items and selling them or your services. The plat you got came from people running PR, so no matter how you look at it, your plat income has been cut by at least 75% and probably more if you don’t play a lot.
New people are completely screwed, shinies and things they used to be able to start making money with right away will tank.
The problem here is that many people posting here and elsewhere are so happy to see others who farmed plat getting “screwed” by this change, they’re not seeing the bigger issue which happens with EVERY nerf. This is an SOE problem, not a player problem.
Sony has consistently stated overtly or subtly that “players shouldn’t have to farm 5 year old zones to get the plat they need.” Thus, you can infer that they made the new plat drops to “give you the plat you need” for consumables and so on. So, the question is very simple:
“DID THIS CHANGE RESULT IN ANYONE GETTING ENOUGH PLAT TO HANDLE ALL GEAR AND CONSUMABLES COMMENSURATE WITH THE ACTUAL CURRENT CONTENT?”
My answer is a resounding no. I do not expect 150p for 10 minutes’ effort. However, 10p for an hours’ effort isn’t really sufficient. Last night I spent over 2 hours running SG and each named got me about 2p, for about 8p total (did not finish the zone). The encounters were all difficult despite a good group pulling some strong numbers. Granted this was a first run but still – it will be awhile before thats a 20 min run. My repair costs were around 6p last night, netting me a whopping 2p for 2 hours’ work.
Krono sales should go up as $OE now is the main seller of plat and it doesn’t drop easily.
I think Pomma’s comments are very well put and spot on. EQ2 devs/community managers/Smokejumper et al have done nothing to increase player confidence and deserve all the animosity they get for such poor handling of the game and the player base.
EQ2 is a case-study in how NOT to run a successful MMO.
Running PR is boring hands down. Putting plat in new content IS a great idea. People would have mostly gravitated away from PR just by giving them another valid option in new content.
Instead, they decide to kill people who want to pay for subs with Kronos, in my opinion. Instead of being able to farm up a month’s subscription (for which Sony received someone’s $18), it would take hours and hours now (oh until prices come down because so many people will pay $18 bucks for 100-200 plat). I was actually considering starting a couple of accounts for family members because I had built up an alt army and could get the money for Kronos fairly easily. This had the effect of getting more people in the game or at the very least selling more Kronos and I was free to spend most of my other time doing things I really wanted to do instead of try to scrap and fight for every 50g I get.
Oh and I love those people saying how they could make all their money just from selling drops and collectibles. Making that much from PR meant I didn’t mind spending a few plat to complete a collection or buying a piece of gear just to try it out. I’m sure your mercantile business won’t see any dent at all from this nerf.
As Forrest Gump might have said if he were stupid enough to play this game “Sony is as Sony does.”
@Loch – Sorry if I come off like that, but I’m just kind of tired of the jaded bitterness and veiled threats of quiting of because of imagined scenerios… ‘Can I have your stuff?’ seemed pretty mild in response. And I did mention he/she could use the vendor arrows instead.
I designed my site to help folks optimize their characters and even more is coming. I even posted a detailed message here showing that I’ve been funding multiple level 95’s without farming any old raid zones for cash. And that is all prior to the current zone cash increase. It is possible, but some folks just see the easy way removal as direct insult by SOE.
This change is great. The fact that a vocal minority are whining about it is also great – it means it was a drastic enough change, and is effective. They will probably raise the coin drops in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, it’s going to encourage people to make plat the “old fashioned” way, either by running current content, or farming stuff like shinies and rares, shifting plat around from player to play, which is how a healthy economy works. I’m not going to include those who buy plat from 3rd parties, as they are a special breed of scum that is partly the reason the economy is in such a shambles to begin with.
I understand that those who have been reliant on the PR/SoH crutch are suddenly finding their footing a little unsound, but this needed to be done, and will be good in the longer term. Things will be a little haywire in the short term as people will be more reluctant to shell out 1+k plat on something, but give it a month and we will all be wondering what the fuss was all about.
If I was able to finance 12 max-level characters, keeping them relevantly geared and mastered before farming PR was a thing, I am sure I will have no trouble now.
I like the change. I had the ability to generate a lot of plat by a very boring and tedious run of extremely outdated content, but in practice it just meant I sat there lfg (or camped and looked at webpages) while other people who were willing to do that were off soloing for plat.
I really don’t see many people here complaining that the change was made – the biggest complaints are in the implementation of the change and the communication surrounding it.
Its frankly sad and pathetic that people who didn’t participate in the farming are now reveling in schadenfreude because someone they didn’t like got screwed over. Be careful how much enjoyment you take in the suffering of others – Sony’s nerfbats have spared precious few of us over the years.
Beyond that, I’ll state again that I did not personally run PR very often at all. Like Feldon, I ran it a few times close to the end and a few times in the very beginning, but I am not a plat hoarder and the work was just too tedious. I don’t expect free plat, but the small amounts currently given just aren’t sufficient, and that was Sony’s stated goal. Thus, they failed.
Up the advanced solos to about 4-6 plat per run in coin drops (including breakables). Up the heroics to about 25p per run. I think thats reasonable given the time and gear required.
@Pomma – I will mimic Dethdlr, where was it SOE’s stated goal of “equal plat for equal effort”?
@Dedith – I already answered this question in the previous thread. While they didn’t use those exact words, the implication was clearly that the impetus for this change was that “players should not have to run 5 year old content to get money for consumables.”
Would you seriously not infer from that that this change was indeed made to get enough plat for said consumables, and that therefore there should be a better than 1:50 ratio in the plat now dropped?
I’ve stated multiple times that I don’t expect 150p for 10 min effort and was not a plat farmer myself. Just that the new drops are insufficient based on Sony’s own implied or stated goals.
@Pomma
A very short math break down then explanation.
PR 150 plat about 10-20 minutes 150/24=6.25 (Raid)Once every 3 days
DC 3 plat about 10 minutes 3/1=3 (Solo Zone) Every 90 Minutes
So you can actually run DC(Advanced Solo) up to 48 times in those same 72 hours 48×3=144. You’re whole gripe that it’s not even is off by approximately 6 plat. Personally I call that pretty even. Of course the time sink involved is much different, I will concede that point.
There are still very simple ways of making enough plat to gear, repair, pay for alt guilds and still have plenty left over. You just have to be creative and not want it GIVEN to you on a PLATter.
At some point I’ll step away from the #EQ2 #Platocalypse forum trollbaiting and get back to adding cool stuff to #EQ2U. Soon I hope.
Preferably not Soon(tm), eh? 😉
Loot drop report
DC (Advanced Solo)
Trash dropped 22g
Bosses dropped 32,30,32,54 (gold)
Loot dropped sold for 1p 51g
Total for an 8 minute run was 3p 21g
I didn’t transmute or salvage anything, just sold it to the guild trash vendor chest that dropped was Ornate.
Did “lockouts” (usually this is done with two groups but a few extra were on due to the new content) last night, which included the first named in Harrows End x4. The chest drop was about 83p for 18 folks, about 4p each.
Not entirely sure if a full run will truly pay for all the reforges, pot-buffs, pot-cures, raid-level food/drink, repair bills, and other running costs or not. Considering that a lot of the cost is based on player made items, from cheap manastones to expensive potions (those using the Skyshrine horns), some of the cost to run is not going to be apparent for a few weeks still.
@Abatha
What was the point of saying that the plat drops for PR and a COE Advanced Solo are “pretty even” because of the reset timers? Your very next statement was that the time sinks are different. And not by a little bit. Your example involves farming for hours and hours on end for the same reward as 15 minutes in PR.
I’m not arguing for PR’s old drops. But I’ve seen many use this same faulty logic that these solo zones can be run every 90 minutes therefor they are somehow comparable or even better than PR used to be.
Of these job options, which would YOU take:
5 hours a week at 100 dollars an hour. (But you aren’t allowed more than 5 hours total.)
50 hours a week at 10 dollars an hour. (But hey, you can work every day!)
And just to be clear, I don’t think farming should be necessary at all. Rewards should come from playing the game and they should be high enough for you to continue playing. Whether you’re an adventurer, crafter, or whatever.
I read the above comments with interest; most were good points but almost all were from the perspective of raiders. If mentioned at all, solo/group players were ridiculed yet I would be very surprised if the cost of this game is not primarily borne by such peons rather than the raiding elite. While this update is questionably of benefit to raiders, it is disappointing for us peons. The gear available to us is not as good as the gear our better toons already have. The plat drops are marginal considering the cost of doing business. I’ve played for 5 years and worked hard to gear my toons since raiding is out of the question for me (and I do not purchase gear at auction). This update is discouraging and lacks incentives for most of us. I enjoy eq2 but am finding it very difficult to appreciate the direction this update is taking us non-raiders.
This is a game that I have put (Real) money into for a very long time. I didn’t need to run PR/SoH until very recently when the prices on the broker went skyhigh… I didn’t want to run it. It was necessary for me to do this because i have “LIMITED” time on the game, 6 Max level toons and a guild i inherited so i have to pay the upkeep on. Even WITH running PR/SoH about 2 times per week on a toon I STILL managed to only keep around 50Plat on my account at any given time.
I seriously can’t run DC solo zone 48 times in 72 hours. How absurd. The logistics of it is folly. Would that be my whole gaming experience? Grind out monotonous Advanced solo zones until your eyes bleed to maintain your upkeep?
Oh I know… maybe i should just disregard my other toons and my alt guild because I only need to focus on one toon now right?
I think i must have missed the point to be honest and i’m sorry.
I’m only trying to have fun with the money I spend on this game.
Shame on me
@Loch
My point was you have the opportunity to earn approximately 6 plat less over a 72 period. You just have to repeat the zone multiple times.
No matter how you slice it you can only do PR ONCE every 72 hours and in that time you can do DC (which is simple) 48 times. So if earning plat is what you’re so concerned about put in the time.
I have 2 alt guilds, one is level 50 a T2 with max amenities and the only members are my son and I. The other is a T1 level 31 with max amenities only member is me and I’m not whining about the upkeep on either. If you don’t want the expense GET RID OF IT. Pretty simple
I’m amused how people keep telling me all these various ways of keeping up with my PR runs, even though I’ve stated on probably 5 occasions now that I only ran PR a few times.
Sony is the one implying that the new coin drops can make up for these runs. That isn’t my statement – its theirs. And, that statement is inaccurate. I have also stated I don’t think it should be 1:1 between the new zones in PR.
To clarify for the comprehension impaired, I have 2 points to make:
1. Sony is deliberately vague and even contradictory about game changes. This leaves their motives up to interpretation, and that interpretation is often negative based on the available information/speculation.
2. Sony at best stated outright and at worst very much implied that the “problem” they were solving was that players shouldn’t be forced to run 5 year old content to make money for all necessary items, so they put in plat in the new zones to replace this “need.” However, the plat from these new zones is demonstrably nowhere near what was available from old raid zones. So, either Sony was not honest about the true intent, or they erred in their calculations, or they do not understand the true costs of play.
No one yet has effectively responded to either of these points, choosing instead to lump me into a shadowy group of “raiders” and “plat farmers” and “pro players” and then debate the legitimacy of the original PR farming, which I have stated over and over again I wasn’t involved in.
You don’t need hundreds of plat a week to play this game. The only reason people think they do is because prices have skyrocketed due to people making hundreds of plat a week for a few minutes’ work. Now that people are not making hundreds of plat a week so easily, they won’t be as willing to go dropping hundreds of plat a week on stuff. The market will react to this reduction in demand by lowering prices, eliminating the “need” to make hundreds of plat a week. Good lord, how is this such a hard concept to grasp?
Obviously nobody ever had plat prior to Sentinel’s Fate, right?
Actually, you do need hundreds of plat a week to play this game if you are a raider or even a heroic zone player only (if you max your toon out as everyone should in game). Repair costs alone can easily add up to a hundred plat per week, add in buying arrows, consumables, poisons, adornments, etc you will easily reach 200plat per week even at reasonable auction prices
I for one refuse to run solo zones to earn plat, I might run 3-5 a week at most. Running 30+ solo zones per week is not only a giant waste of all of my free time, it’s incredibly boring, even more than PR and i stopped running PRs a year ago.
Nevermind the fact that the new zones are completely untuned. The challenge mode heroic 6 man zone is harder than the x2 raid zone, hell harder than x4 HE and x4 altar for 1 group and drops worse loot. The new x4 zone is so untuned that less than 5% of raiding guilds will ever see it before the next expansion so they’ll spend the next 5 months farming the exact same zones as well as the 2 year old POW zone.
This game update is a total waste outside of some character improvements to classes.
So what you’re saying is, even before this change, you were able to fund your activities without farming PR.
I thought Kander was quite clear in several places about why this change was being made. What questions do you still have after reading and listening to what he has already publicly stated several times?
They said people shouldn’t have to run 5 year old zones to fund their activities. So they took out the PR ATM and added coin drops to current level zones. I think you made the leap that these two were supposed to be equal. They’re not. The new coin drops should be enough to fund your activities. If, however, your activities included having 150 plat delivered every three days for 15 minutes work, that’s probably a bit out of scope from what they meant. The “true costs of play” for this game are not 150 plat every 3 days for 15 minutes of game time.
But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong. 🙂
If you’re a heroic zone player only and your repair costs easily add up to a hundred plat per week, you really must be in a lot of craptastic groups. Wow.
Who has decided that everyone only deserves the bare minimum to fund their play ?
This isn’t about how much plat a person needs to survive in the game it is about folks spending time doing what they enjoy whether that be questing, tradeskilling , whatever floats the boat , instead of farming for plat for their toons upkeep , now the casual is forced to farm for plat in their time they have to play.
Folks are upset because their time they have is limited and PR is an easy way to keep up the incoming plat without having to grind solo zones constantly.
This is a game , let folks enjoy it. When people feel they are not broke , they enjoy the game more.
Lets say the casual solo or heroic player actually has the time to run three zones a day , 4.5 pp – 12 pp a day , between repairs , arrows , fuel , food, etc.. they prolly would net a gain of 2-8 pp a day . How are folks supposed to keep themselves adorned with that minimal gain ? With the current plat distribution they could get 1 -2 adorns a week if they have to buy them on the broker . With those numbers people don’t feel it is a good use of their time. Time is money , it doesn’t matter if you can actually gain the same amount of plat as PR if you were to run the zone 24/7 , the point is that would be a waste of their time.
This game is dwindling in subscribers as it is . It isn’t time to make it harder to feel like you have attained something.
So what if folks were logging on to make easy plat , at least they were logging in.
I have a TON of toons , I’ve ran PR maybe 10 times total ever. Could I have ? of course. Do I think it is unfair if someone else logs in 30 toons twice a week to do PR ? absolutely not. they leveled them , they put the time in . Why do I care ? Tradeskillers could log in all their toons a while back to try for colossal reactants , if they got more it was because they have the tradeskillers to get them . Back then they were going for a lot of plat.
To me this isn’t about plat it is about time spent doing what we enjoy doing because we want to not because we feel we have to.
@Dethdlr – I was really trying to resist replying to that, but you beat me to it.
“I’m amused how people keep telling me all these various ways of keeping up with my PR runs, even though I’ve stated on probably 5 occasions now that I only ran PR a few times.
So what you’re saying is, even before this change, you were able to fund your activities without farming PR.”
You all aren’t getting the fact that PR funded most of the money everyone made by selling stuff on the broker slr etc. and soe’s people shouldn’t be forced to run 5 year old stuff, no one has ever twisted my arm to run PR I ran it when I needed some quick cash to do other things since I can’t devote 80 hours a week farming like some can. I pay for this game and I should be able to play how I want to play not have to spend every min I can play running a solo make 2 plat. They should have just left PR and the rest of the zones alone and added a fair amount of plat to the new zones, now the rich will just get richer the poor will stay poor. But hey who cares soe don’t so why should I just another nail in the coffin to the game
I’m amazed at the strong sense of entitlement on display, and disappointed. Not one person has mentioned earning less plat than they spend without throwing out their perceived NEED to have their own guild hall, buy overpriced stuff from the broker or bid on SLR gear.
Suck it up, Buttercup! You don’t have to use expensive food and arrows or even have adorns to play. Maxing your potential requires it, but it’s a damned INSULT to people who burn every spare hour on this game to be the best when others expect to pop in after Friday night drinks and be on par. I’m not putting the effort I once did into the game, and don’t expect to get the same out… only a jackass idiot would. It’s a shame how many we seen to have.
@ Striinger
no matter how you put it time spent is time spent if its farming to get gear to be on par or just raiding to be on par, so if you feel that you don’t want to farm to get up on the list or raid then so be it but why does your style take over mine? I still put in time no matter how you put it and pay the same price as you do
You opened my eyes. I will call my university and my gym right away. I spend as much time and money as some body builders and straight a students. I’m entitled to the same level of fitness and grades.
Doesn’t make sense you say? Huh.
well if you really spent that time and money in those things then ya you should get some of those results, but since you are taking the game to real life your point is invalid we are talking about a game that people play to have fun, how much fun is it to never get anything in the game you want cause you have real life stuff like jobs, wife, kids, the whole point behind a game is enjoyment and to leave the world behind for a bit. now the people that don’t have a life and have all the uber HM gear and avatar loot good for you, you made your job and life the game I don’t see everyone running around in hm gear, im happy with the 187, 179 or the stewards gear its not the best but it enables me to do more then what I could in crafted gear and lets me dabble in the higher end stuff when I can and its just play dumb to make it to force someone to farm 24/7 in a decade old game to get a little bit of the high life
There’s so many comments here that I’ll probably be repeating what’s already been said, but I’m just gonna throw in my perspective.
Personally, I’m not affected at all by these changes. I prefer to earn my loot from raids, though I will purchase the odd piece from Auction (SLR) if I have the plat. I know I’m one of the poorer raiders, usually carrying around 3-5k pp. I also had no desire to run PR for money and if I did, it was out of boredom.
The primary place I made money from was by selling in Auction. I would run in a guild group or a pug ‘sell’ group, and sell the valuable loot that we did not need or want. This has funded my raiding efforts and left me plenty of plat to make alts, deck them out with masters, gear, etc.
— A side note for those saying they can’t afford adornments anymore… Start transmuting and adorning! I have NEVER purchased an adornment from the broker. Equally, I have rarely (I won’t say never because I cannot be sure) seen anyone publicly call out for an adorner.
To me, these changes are good. They should do a couple of things.
1. Deflate the economy.
This won’t be instantaneous, but eventually, we should see raid gear being sold in Auction for less. Admittedly, this could take some time.
2. Encourage more people to group.
If plat is no longer freely available to anyone with a Lvl. 95 toon, they’ll have to look elsewhere. One of the more profitable (and enjoyable) ways to make money will be from running actual current content. People should be more willing to do pick up groups, join pick up raids or even join a raiding guild.
The game is focused around end game content nowadays and everyone seems to have a sense of entitlement to raid gear their toons. I’ve even heard people in channel 1-9 say that they’ve been forced to buy SC cards to trade for plat. This notion to me is completely insane; if you feel SC cards are your only viable avenue for attaining plat, you’re not playing the game very efficiently (ie, you’re buying raid gear and equivalent consumables to run solo zones) and might like to head to a Korean Pay-to-Win MMO.
These plat changes are here to stay. We knew they were coming. Before being told about the changes on test, we knew they had to be coming. Just like the SC Subscription gravy train ended, the Platinum Express has been decommissioned.
Had a big argument about this in server channel.
I’m not sure what the plat drops in heroic/raid instances are like, but the advanced solo instances are far too low right now.
Frankly, I get really annoyed with people that feel that if you don’t raid or group, then you don’t deserve anything.
Apart from my full time job, wife, house and other real-life commitments, I also have two infant children. I spend a fair bit of time logged in to the game, but most of it is spend randomly AFKing to tend to a crying baby or to clean up an unexpected mess. I don’t have the luxury of having uninterrupted play time to sit down with others. I often leave the keyboard with no notice, and sometimes no time even to put up an AFK tag. How many groups or raids do you know that will tolerate that kind of behaviour? Please tell me, I play on Everfrost, would love to AFK leech some Greater Spirits and Essences…
I solo because I have to. I have paid to play EQ/EQ2 since 1999, I have as much right to play it as anyone else. When I was single, I raided 7 nights a week and had all the best of eveything. Now I’m married with commitments. If running advanced solos is the only way I can experience current content, then the rewards for doing so should be enough to fund my gaming experience. Sure, I’ll never compete with the raiders as far as toon strength goes, but my time is just as valuable as yours and I pay just as much as you do to keep my account active. I also run a small guild aimed at helping new players. I have to pay the upkeep (obviously I’m not gonna tax new players to fund the hall, it’s a service provided by me, for them), which is just another cost on top of my food/drink, fuel, ammo, merc upkeep, housing upkeep and so on and so forth. I’m funding 9 crafters and near enough to 25 level 95 adventurers. It’s not enough that you get more plat for each kill, better gear and spend less time doing it, but you also get plat splits from selling loot rights to get you don’t need. Is there anything else you feel you’re entitled to that I’m not just because I don’t have uninterrupted time to spend at the computer?
If anything, I’ve probably put MORE effort into the game than many raiders, some of whom log in, smash a trivial raid that’s been on farm for months, get their raid gear, take their plat split and log out. Yeah, you get the better gear because you raid, not gonna try to take that away from you, but if you think you’re also entitled to an abundance of plat while I have to scratch around just to make ends meet, you’re severely deluded. Sure, I don’t have to fork out for top notch potions and consumables for high end raids, but I have other expenses that need to be covered, and the measly ~30g per named in solo instances barely covers the cost of running them.
How many advanced solo instances do I have to run in order to buy the 1k plat dislodger from the Steward merchant? That’s a cost that won’t change with deflation because it’s a fixed cost on an NPC merchant. These are the plat drains installed by SOE to remove plat from the economy, and there’s a good chance I’ll never need to buy it, but the fact that I’ll never be able to afford it is pretty sad.
What about those people that hoarded hundreds of thousands of plat before the nerf? Slowly, as the economy deflates, those people who continue to hoard their plat will become gods, as the price of everything drops, their money becomes worth more and more, and all the while, the little people who just want to casually potter around and enjoy the game are scratching around trying to fund leveling their crafters or buying food and drink, or paying for their mercs.
I craft everything myself. As I said, I have 9 crafters, max tinkerers, max adorners, max transmuters… Unless I specifically set aside time to generate income now, I won’t have enough to actually buy fuels for them to craft anything. I already work a full time job plus overtime in real-life, and now you expect me to set aside more hours just to earn an income in a game? LOL.
Sorry, if the advanced solo plat isn’t tweaked soon, my 14 year old account is going bye-bye. I don’t want plat coming out of my ears, but enough to buy what I need without worrying about whether or not I can afford my upkeep would be nice. Anything less than 5p for a cleared advanced solo instance is an insult, given the current state of things, and a little more to allow us little folk to enjoy a few luxuries if we are wise enough to save up would be much appreciated. So we lost the PR plat train, that’s fine, good even, but reducing the minimum wage to a dollar an hour when my mortgage is three grand a month is ridiculous.
Before anyone starts with blaming people like me for ruining the economy, I’m not condoning the bloated plat chests of the Kunark raid era, but the cost of living (if you can call it that) is far too high for 30g per named to be viable. Just stick 5p in the chest of the last boss and that’s that. At least then I can cover my costs and with a bit of a tight belt, save some plat too. Surely 10-15 minutes for 5p is not unreasonable, it’s a hell of alot lower than the 10-15 minutes I’d spend running raid zones for 200p.
/sits back to wait for SOE’s decision.
Wouldn’t it be cool if you got 20p for every day you did NOT log in to a gold subscription account? They’d make money without server loading and plat would continue to rain down in game. Come on folks! Join in the fun. If we can’t agree in what’s a GOOD idea, maybe we can have fun drumming up the worst ideas we can muster?
If people type swear words near someone with their profanity filter on, it splits all the plat you’re carrying between them.
If you’re the first person to zone into a public zone instance you get a 50% chance to get 1 plat, gold or silver for every AA you have.
Add a chance with every bank transaction to end in a bookkeeping error that gambles a percent of you loot. You could win out lose.
Add a big tax to fund well fare, free housing and soup kitchens for the poor. The more you have on your account the higher percent you pay. Everything over 10K gets 80% tax. Poor toons get free food, housing and heal pots.
Set a gold standard far currency so only so much can exist until it’s mined like BitCoin. Mobs stop doing loot until someone spends some (or gets taxed).
Robbing banks possible to take from others but you lose ability to group if treetop gets top bad. Some stats become permanently encumbered versus PCs and NPCs of city who you rob too many times, and you are always PvP killable even on pve servers.
Install plat ATM in game where you give it your credit card number and it spits out plat at points of need. You get a permanent title that cannot be hidden that says, “paid to win and I only got this lousy shirt”.
@Gbad
I too have a job and a family. I don’t raid. I don’t own CoE. I ran PR for play constantly. I still don’t claim to be entitled to anything because I pay the fee allowing me to play for the chance to get something. If you decide not to do the things giving the best rewards then don’t blame that on someone else.
This is going to kill Krono sales. The new players who valued plat over Krono now have no market for their purchased item, as the demand for Krono drops due to a lack of plat.
It’s a classic case of the market destruction due to commodity implosion, which itself results from the choice to destroy the supply of money. The monetary base will shrink and individuals will not be able to afford the plat price of Krono.
Why do they shoot themselves in the foot this way? This is going to cost Sony real-world dollars and euros.