Dethdlr 
I’ve got big hopes for EQ2 itemization and what we’ll see in the “Everquest II: Itemization Evolves” panel at SOE Live this year. For me, there are several things that go into itemization. It’s more extensive than just the items themselves. Here are a few notes on itemization that I hope will be included in that evolution:
- Go back to the days when gear was less cookie cutter. The days when you looked at more than just the Stamina stat to see if you were already wearing better.
- Bring back heroic zone progression meaning make the top level heroic instance hard. As in “need to gear up in the easier instances before you have any chance at clearing it” hard. Remember zones like Palace of Ferzhul, Estate of Unrest, Tower of Tactics, Elements of War? This was something we used to work towards so it gave us a goal. Lately, we can clear the harder zones the first or second time we go in. If we can clear the hardest zone, what are we working towards?
- Put the items in places that make sense. If zone X is required to get access to zone Y, and the quest sending me into zone X rewards me with boots, don’t put worse boots in the loot tables for zone Y. Nobody will ever wear them and it makes it seem like nobody was paying attention when placing the loot.
- Put ultra-rare items into the heroic zones again that are desirable even by raiders. This gives us something to do. I remember people asking to run zones like Cella, Maidens, Najena’s Hollow Tower, even Obelisk of Blight way back when because they wanted an ultra-rare item that dropped in there. Quite often the next GU or expansion would come out before everybody got what they wanted out of all the zones. Again, this gave us something to work towards.
These don’t sound like difficult things to do and they used to do things pretty much like this until the last couple of years. Hopefully they go back to this way of doing things and will give us heroic group runners something to work towards again other than Obols, Spirits, or whatever other new currency they come up with.
Seconded!
At this point to have gear better than raid gear to stick in heroic zones I think it would probably require a gear reset in the expansion. Raid gear is just that much massively better than heroic gear, unless something akin to the original Najena ring clicky can be seen again without causing huge balance issues (imagine that + 750 potency + 500 crit bonus + timewarp). Something on par with certain generic slots such as secondarys could work but likely wouldn’t work as an incentive for the majority of raiders.
The rest of it I do totally agree with though, particularly the heroic zone progression. I remember when Temple in Kael was like wow you must be amazing and people didn’t believe somebody had managed to go get through a Drunder zone without raid gear.
I’m not suggesting they put entire sets of raid gear into the heroic zones. Something as simple as a charm, ring, etc. per archetype would work. Not counting ammo and food, there are 21 slots on a character. All I’m asking for is one slot out of twenty one. IMO they shouldn’t need to do a complete gear reset for a single slot.
Even just consumables. I liked how you could get quests at entrance of certain DoV dungeons, eg. Berlon’s Brew in Hold of Rime: The Ascent.
Now that I started raiding in CoE I basically have no motivations left whatsoever to run the usual dc/fear/faceless, even when I am bored, because those dungeons are so linear and feel so empty (very little lore or side quests going on there).
The Wurmbone zones have an interesting scenery and layout and are definitely a little more challenging for PUGs but nobody bothers with them because the heroic rewards are the same than fear/faceless as far as I can tell (WEx2 is pretty good though).
So progression yes, but to add to your list I would say that to me, Chains of Eternity dungeons felt extremely linear. And when there is a choice, whichever path you take, you get a nifty teleporter back to the entrance. It’s as if they wanted to make “dungeons for dummies”.
I miss the older dungeon layouts which had multiple levels with pits leading to the level below. Dungeon layouts that are more realistic with corridors and rooms and staircases, that you can go around in a circular fashion if you want to.
Dungeons which have a progression even in the same instance, from one floor to the next…
In terms of itemization I am not so much bothered by the simplistic stats that you highlighted, but that there doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable really. From what I gather there is a rare chance of getting a piece of gear with a red slot in CoE heroics, and the mercs, and that’s it. It’s as if all items were generated by a script (which they probably are) with some hand tweaking. Not even items with purely appearance/illusions/low utility clickables.
I’d go as far as saying that after coming back on my level 90 DoV geared character, levelling 90 to 92 in Skyshrine and riding the drake in the depths of UD felt much more epic and satisfying than the story line of CoE. I just didn’t get the progression in CoE it didn’t seem to have any coherence.
Thirded! Nicely presented. Appreciate the work.
Nice post, agree entirely. I was hugely disappointed with CoE and made a lot of posts on the official forums about what was missing in the heroic game before I got sick of it and quit EQ2. I may come back for the next xpac if they get it right.
I agree
Mythical weapons in Sirens Grotto are rare drops that even raiders find appealing. Too bad there werent drops like this in the original CoE instances.
The ultra-rare platinum keys and very rare version3 yellow adorns in Clefts of Rujark are a nice touch too.
They seem to be headed in the right direction, hopefully they continue to get away from the cookie cutter stuff
I think people get misguided with the “mythical” tag…and the “ethereal” as well. This gear is still part of the cookie cutter template with procs that don’t stack or the “when equipped” effects that don’t stack either.
Total agreement.
Does Sirens Grotto drop mythicals other than weapons?
And I wish we could see an ultra rare myth jewelry piece on mobs in the instances rather than the contested CoR where most mobs can be soloed/duoed with a merc.
You should require groups to get mythical pieces. Instead CoR has turned into spawn camping, training people to get their spots, and general fighting for named to have a chance at keys.
And no, I’m not saying this because I’m bitter/jealous/frustrated etc. I disco’ed the fabled platinum key on the Butcherblock server, so it’s not like I haven’t seen the key. But I have seen the worst player attitudes while spending time in there.
I just want to have to collaborate with people to get a chance at awesome gear, not fight against others for a chance at it.
Wait, there’s mythicals in heroic Siren’s Grotto? And cool yellow adorns in CoR? Time to get my guild into heroics again instead of just running the mini-boss in SG raid.
Only the 4s scout mythical is really appealing to raiders over Teku/Pirate Kings weapons. I still think only really belts, secondarys and ranged weapons could be put in heroics actually as good as raid gear without most people getting epicly annoyed.
Clefts yellows are from the all soloable trash mobs rather than the epic x2s you actually need to group for.
215 stat belts or something like that would probably work quite well, with procs like those from Milas HM.
Here here!
Thirded! Fourthded? (what number are we on now?)
I get where people are coming from with these complaints, but, at the same time, I’m confused because there are super rare heroic drops, ect. Tavalan Abyss [Challenge] is probably pretty hard without raid gear, and it drops some great loot.
i completely agree, need more zones that had rare drops like in TSO. something that every player in game wants. and/or bring back rare mobs.. and make them super rare with super rare drops like drunder zones in DOV.. if even just a few peices here and there. the chance to get rare loot that you would wear for raiding end game content would probably get me back in game to run herioc zones. because as of right now i really only play to raid. because herioc content has lost all appeal for those reasons
Disagree with number 2, where are you that everyone can beat the challenge mode version of sg? Never see people grouping for that because of the difficulty, you have to have raid geared people for a heroic zone, which is backwards, why would raiders want to do a group zone? Waste of time.
I’m a raider. I dont raid 24/7 – of course i want to do group zones.
Its nice to have at least 1 or 2 “Challenge” heroic zones that I can run and not plow through on autopilot. Even nicer if there’s a rare chance for an upgrade in said zone. I dont think its too much to ask for 1 zone like this per content release.
The challenge duo zones have been a huge success and I guarantee we’ll see more of them.
I don’t see anyone playing the challenge mode of SG. It’s not made for your average raiders. It’s made for a very niche selection of classes in the most top tier raid gear (avatar ect)
Remember when challenging zones like Outer Stronghold were around? Remember when those zones were challenging and didn’t require avatar gear but at the very least Tier 3 TSO shard gear? Yeah I miss those days too, though SoE doesn’t it seems. They’re fine with creating a broken zone, slapping a billion HP on a mob with outlandish damage procs and then calling it a day.
EQ2’s most current content is slowly turning into GoD EQ1 days.
I highly doubt any of these suggestions will be taken seriously by SoE. EQ2’s itemization is so bastardized that I don’t think you can properly fix things unless there’s once again another hard reboot (like DoV & SS).
Is there anyone in charge of itemization on the EQ2 development team? There us to be, now everything seems to be itemized by a computer. Why are Scornfeather Heroic gear inferior to Cleft gear? Why is Cleft gear superior to everything that’s come out of CoE group zones?
Because contested loot should be better than instanced loot.
I’m curious, have you been in either of the zones yet?
The contested loot can easily be solo/molo’d. The lesser bosses on the first floor have around 1,000,000 hp, with gear ranging from 170-177 STA stat based items on a 10 minute spawn timer. The greater bosses up top on the 2nd and 3rd level range from 3,000,000 – 24,000,000 hp drop gear in the 180-183 on a 15-20 minute spawn cycle. Not to mention the chance of dropping keys. I so far have gotten 5 gold keys, 8-10 silver keys. Gold keys drop jewelry are slightly superior to that of EM raid stuff (excluding procs). SIlvey keys are superior to anything in the CoE groups zones minus some HM encounters with 177 sta.
Scornfeather has 2 names (The Matrons) with 24,000,000hp and 4 names with 135-205,000,00hp that drop loot inferior to that of the stuff you can easily solo in Clefts.
This is idiotic. I don’t care if its contested, its SOLO contested content. Solo contested gear should never be superior to that instance group gear.
I hadn’t done Roost when I posted that. The difference in HP between the two zones is pretty striking, but Roost is solo’able without the best gear, too (at least up to the boss). The fights take a while with all their HP, but you’re guaranteed the kills every 90 minutes. /shrug
I took out the first two names, probably could take out the other two snakes and matron as well via soloing as a zerk with a merc. But it isn’t worth sitting afk for 30 mins while i auto attack something to death to get an item inferior to stuff i can ko in seconds in Clefts.
One of the reasons why Scornfeather is solo’able is because SoE just raised the HP when they scaled them. That’s it. It’s still based around pre-EoF mechanics.
I think confusion in this game puts alot of players off. my wife plays a warden and I play an SK. we want to play with the others on the server but alot of them are so up themselves it is really off putting. we don’t know our characters inside out and take alot of stick when I ask for advice on my SK. people are commenting on how hard it is to find a group but just look at the way the community treat new players or players who have played a while but want to better themselves
Happy to help you with an SK questions. You can find her on U.eq2wire under Liepha on Butcherblock
And by this I mean you can check her out and if you’re interested in what you see or have questions you can then contact me in game if you want! (Should have clarified that better)
“Go back to the days when gear was less cookie cutter.” SCREW THAT. Carrying a bag full of gear, switching everything out all the time, got extremely old in T6, T7, whatever. You could never keep your favorite item on 100% of the time. Fun? No, that was horsecrap.
And this game is already completely overloaded with stats beyond belief, most of which are completely impossible for a beginner to learn on his own. You have to practically be an engineer to understand what the hell is going on, and the rules are always changing behind your back.
You could get rid of green stats entirely.
And this needs regurgitating: Saying raid gear needs to be massively better than heroic gear, or that raid zones need to be massively harder than heroic zones, is completely arbitrary and has no justification at all.
Sounds out of touch, like a non-player…you, like most, prolly clear he and a few em zones, and act like thats it?
Nice idea, but I highly doubt it will come to pass.
Instead we’ll get another 5% stat boost with the “Naming Name of the Named Name” convention still locked in and the same old haphazard proc and stat distribution.
They need to pay someone to go back and look at gear, not give it off to a dev already working on a myriad of other things..but goodluck with hiring anyone at this stage of EQ2.
I’ve /bug’d literally hundreds of items that either were not revamped by the Loot-o-Matic 9000 or were broken by it…I can’t remember a single one I’ve checked since that has been fixed.
Problem is that classes aren’t balanced for groups, meaning raid with 24 people requires one main tank class, so if divided by groups only one would have raid geared tank. Challenging zones are wonderful idea, only if you can find a group, that can pull it off. Raiders would like to group as well, but not many raiders are interested in group runs if there are no rewards worth the time, which means that people who play the game well are not looking for groups, PUGs suck, rewards worth the trouble are only during the raids, and with lockouts and drop raites it takes too much time even for raiders to be rewarded for their effort. And yes, mobs do not have enough hit points yet….
This may come as a shock to you, but just because you play the game well, doesn’t mean you raid.
If you recall, I said Bring back heroic progression. As in progression from zone to zone for heroic players that don’t raid. We used to have that for a long, long, time. Heroic, non-raiding players used to have to spend weeks or months gearing up in the easier zones of an expansion before we could move on to the tougher zones and eventually the hardest zones. Raiders could usually trounce those same zones due to their superior gear (lets not get into a gear versus skill debate here, if you can autoattack for 500k dps, skill has nothing to do with it).
I am not missing those times, weeks and months plowing through same content to gear up.
And yes, I forgot about players, good ones, that do not raid. I feel that it would be great if game would reward skill rather than gear, you should not need to be a raider to perform well, if anything- before game rewarded determined players, now it rewards players that raid. Player base is severely divided, casual players have no chances to match well geared raiders in performance in group situations, due not to skill difference, but gear difference. I know raiders would say that it is fair, but as it is everyone wants their time and moneys worth, and doing same repeatable quests or instances are no fun, having no way to get good gear if you play in off hours solo is not much fun either, spending hours a week raiding and doing same stuff- having to go through trash and more trash then named encounter is not much better. Meaning it feels like work if you raiding, and feels like work as a delivery boy if you solo.
Maybe I’m close-minded on what progression should be. What’s the alternative?
If you can clear all the zones when they first come out (first or second try), you don’t need to “progress” since you already cleared it. What goal are you trying to accomplish?
If you can’t clear all the zones when they first come out, then why can’t you?
A. Encounter’s broken? – That’s not a plan.
B. Encounter’s too complicated but still possible? – I play with a pretty good bunch of players, that’s rarely the case. We’re used to doing encounters that some people think shouldn’t be possible with our gear.
C. Encounter isn’t possible with the current gear of your current group – This means you need better gear. How do you get better gear? By running easier zones over and over again until you get the right drops.
I’d love to hear a more fun alternative to this, but this is what progression has been in my mind for years and years. Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 was a great example of a single zone offering progression. We took down the first three names the first time in. Had to work on Digg while gearing up off the first three nameds. First time we took him down, the fight took half an hour. Then once we could kill Digg, we started working on Dayakara. Took quite a while before we could pull that off. We continued this until we could clear the whole zone every time we went in. We had a great sense of accomplishment out of this because we started with something we couldn’t do, and through working at it and persistence, were able to pull it off. When Skyshrine came out, we followed the questline, eventually went into the Underdepths, killed the final named, and did the final quest turn in. Then we thought we would be ready to start working on the instances. Unfortunately, we discovered that we had just finished clearing the instances. We were thinking those must have been the quest versions or something. I realize that was a GU and not an expansion, but once you’ve cleared it, what are you working towards?
Honestly the best way to do heroic zone progression, imo, is/was raising the level cap by 10 levels every expansion. This means you can have lower lvl zones and higher lvl zones. You do the lower lvl ones first and slowly progress into the higher lvl ones as you lvl up. Its all very natural and easy to tell what zone is appropriate for your gear & level. It always felt much more organic. More intuitive.
This works best when it takes a long time to level. I know, i know — everybody wants everything right now and cant be bothered to grind lvls every xpac anymore. Shame.
Level cap raises are such an artificial mechanism and really don’t contribute much to MMOs. When Kunark came out, how many people stuck around at levels 71-79? Nobody. Those levels were just an inconvenience on the way to level 80. No group or raid would take you unless you were 80, so you had to rush to 80 to even play. If they are going to do level cap raises, do it in 2-3 level increments tops, just enough to invalidate the bottom half of the gear and make room for more gear. Also 10 level cap raises completely invalidate content that took months and months to develop in a matter of days.
I agree.
Whole phoenix saga ,remember Silent City?, Sanctum of Scaleborn progression, Mythicals from VP, there is nothing that long and complicated anymore. What is a raid compared to a couple of months work? Yet all those old rewards are not good for anything now, not even an appearance…