Cyliena A recent beta forum discussion revealed that crafting and adventure writ status will not contribute to progress starting at guild level 101. EQ2 Senior Designer Gninja explained the reasoning behind the change:
Repeatable quests such as writs do not add to guild exp once you hit guild level 101. We are adding a lot more ways to get status from normal gameplay though. It was just way too easy to sit and do writs over and over to level the guild making having a leveled up guild a little less meaningful.
He came back to clarify the position a bit better:
The plan is to make status gains come from a lot of different places. Having lots of things you can do is a good thing. Having one thing you can do over and over without any sort of limiting factor is different. These things are still being adjusted so hang in there.
Commentary
From Cyliena:
I’m sure Feldon will have choicer words about all of this, but as a member of an extremely small guild, this change will make guild leveling quite difficult. Whatever method is provided will end up being grinded out, so I’m unsure how this change will make leveling a guild more “meaningful”. -Cy
From Feldon:
The EQ2 team has twice tried to stomp out old “grindy” ways of playing EQ2 and encourage playing of newer content:
- Removing Plat from older zones like Protectors Realm
- Removing adventure XP from out leveled dungeons
The first was successful. The second was strongly derided and silently reverted this summer. I wonder which route this “new improved” guild leveling avenue will take.
Once again the devs are telling us how to play this game. My 20 level 100 crafters should be able to assist our two person level 97+ guild. Thank you DBG for reminding me how happy I am that we cancelled the renewal of this weeks four subscriptions.
Cyliena’s note is exactly why this is a positive change. When any crafter with a pile of raws and a bit of free time can RSI their way to a max level guild, without even leaving the hall, guild levels are surely meaningless.
Nobody’s saying crafters will be unable to contribute after 100, they’ll just have to do things other than writs.
kono
Guilds have been leveled by writs for a decade. There’s no “meaning” to remove.
Well, you know the saying. The squeaky wheel gets the grease? There have been a lot of squeaky wheals asking devs to find more ways to force people to play in groups or need large guilds.
Don’t you love it when a) people don’t give a !#%$^ that other people might not enjoy playing the way the whiner wants them to play and b) Some entitled SOB wants people to be forced to play with them because every one normally avoids them due to the self centered personality that leads them to not give a crap about other play styles…
I am DAMN proud of my lvl 100 guild with a tier 4 guild hall. I had a bit o help from one friend, and some help from my husband up to lvl 95. Large guilds don’t even need to try to level up. How exactly am I harming the game by not wanting to be surrounded by drama queens and epeens? -.-
You’re not. What you are doing is having a fun on a pretty much obsolete game. Clearly that’s not allowed. So instead of making actually needed improvements they instead choose to just make changes.
About sums it up. :\
No kidding. Spellbound (the one true Spellbound) crafted its way to 60, 70, 80, 90…usually managing server firsts in the process. It can be as much a guild-building exercise for working together as any raiding or dungeon crawling. Yet another short-sighted decision from Daybreak.
Where did I say there was any meaning to remove? There isn’t. This change is an attempt to inject at least a little meaning to the post-100 levels. Just because they’ve been meaningless for quite a while doesn’t mean it’s fine to leave it alone.
It hasn’t always been a writfest, by the way. Back before you played the game, guilds were primarily leveled by guild patrons completing heritage quests, and grouping up to do missions for factions within their home city. It took quite some time after launch for any of us to hit level 30, and it was worth going out of our way to get it done.
When AoM launched, people topped off their guilds as a side effect of grinding their crafting alts to 100, and somehow people think that’s the way it should be. Kudos to the team for aiming higher.
kono
I thought people leveled guilds running Nebulous Newsies now. 😉
I don’t think much changed with the method people leveled guilds. People always did writs, sorry to burst your bubble. I was a patron way back in the beginning I can’t even tell you how many freaking scarecrows, timber wolves and grizzled badgers I killed in those early days.
People did heritage quests because 1-50 the writ status was much less than one would get doing the heritage quests even though heritage quests took much longer to complete. And well the game was new and it wasn’t the 15th time running through Ruins of Varsoon or Nektropos to do the heritage quests there.
They also changed the curve and possibly amount of xp needed to level a guild a few years ago.
I love the game, but I am so ticked over this change that I hate to comment on the forums, for fear I’d actually get banned. Getting groups together & doing adv writs was always a guild activity. /pout
Hey, at least General, Casual and Crafting Guilds won’t be bothered with unnecessary Guild Recruit Inquiries of, “Do you raid?” They can just look at the Level 150 guilds.
fwiw my guild has never been max level and we’re currently in the 80s. We don’t exclusively level it via crafting writs but instead as a blend of adventuring and crafting. You assumed a bit too much from my comment.
It will be interesting to see what they come up with for all playstyles, but no matter what it is, I think it’ll be a grind.
I’ll agree I assumed too much – I assumed your “extremely small guild” was max level, because they all seem to be these days.
I suspect the new methods could feel grindy if they are activities you wouldn’t normally participate in, but I guess we’ll see. A good long grind that requires some kind of interaction with the outside world is still preferable to the current situation.
kono
Fine then any adventurer needs to have a minimum trade skill level to be able to go in to certain dungeons to do quests. Truthfully if you want to torture everyone and tell them how to play the game and how they should level and such then your TS level and Adventure level must be the same. Level 100 raid zone requirement then you need to be a level 100 tradeskiller also. Wouldn’t be a problem for me on my main 12 toons so why should I care how it effects anyone else.
No matter how much you want to paint it as such, this is not a crafter vs. killer situation. Crafters will still be contributing, like anyone else.
In the end, the main difference will be that when there are world broadcasts that has reached guild level 110-150, there might be actual reason to congratulate them.
kono
Well if it’s not crafter vs adventurer then my idea will work brilliantly. But it is a play style vs. play style set up and has been for years.
Come on, they crap all over crafters. When they made the tokens from the collections in the last 2 expansions “lvl # required” to avoid people deleting and recreating toons to get the tokens from cheap collections, guess what; crafter level didn’t count even though crafters could get the tokens from their own quests.
The beta rewards announcement was left ambiguous on the “something” that crafters get after pictures of the ghost pegassi that adventurers get. You know what crafters get? 3 crappy consumables.
When a crafter gets a big questline, we get thrown to the mobs. Insanely frustrating when the original big “innovative” thing EQ2 flaunted was how crafting and adventuring was so separate.
Pardon me for being frustrated when a company turns hypocritical.
I am using this to like your above post and the post that you put on the Beta Forums since I can’t hit like there.
They introduced a *lot* of new ways to get status in AoM, I assume with this change in mind they’ll be adding even more in the new expansion.
I’m sure there will be options for “pure” tradeskillers, but if I was concerned that they’d forget I’d make a point of bringing it up (repeatedly if necessary) in the beta forums.
Of course, I don’t believe that you can post in beta forums if you’re not on beta, which you can’t be without already purchasing the expansion. If I had done that and then saw this I would be very disappointed.
Their efforts to remove repetitive behavior, while applaudable, is futile. That is the very nature of games and gamers.
As soon as players discover the most efficient way to level guilds post level 101, that is all they will do.
So in the end, all their efforts will really do is replace writ grinding with some other form of grinding.
Unless they add some artificial gate to each method of status gain so that one must rotate through ALL methods of status gain- but then you are alienating players that are unable to do certain methods. So whatever they end up choosing, it better be something that everyone can do.
Personally, I’d like to see city factions become meaningful again. Maybe they can add public quests that give exorbitant amounts of status that require players to defend their city. Adventurers can attack the mobs while artisans can craft items to be used against them.
I agree Sands with you what you wrote, especially your last paragraph, but therein lies the problem. They do not seem to either have the will, time or ability (you choose) to put these types of events and challenges into the game.
I haven’t seen the “Play your way” logo in a while. :\ Funny coincidence?
(I happen to have a one person, lvl 100, tier 4 guild hall. I like playing an MMOG since I occasionally help friends, get help from friends (or my hubby), and I LOVE looking at houses and publishing a few of my own.
I don NOT play MMOGs so someone can dictate how I play. I particularly do not enjoy my way of play being squashed out. -.-
I’ve met to many dick heads to have any desire what so ever to PUG, and raiding simply does not appeal to me. I’m glad it’s there for those who do, but I’d very much appreciate it if the devs would stop trying to force less social people to fit in with the herd beasts.
I like options myself. One clear avenue should not be the norm in a robust game like Everquest. I’m hoping to see increased status from groups, raids, maybe even solo zones, because personally I’d rather go play other game than ever be forced to craft.
Admittedly I haven’t played EQ2 in a while and have zero interest in this new content they are tossing out, but I thought there was no level increase this time so why is this even a conversation right now? Have they broken guilds away from everyone else’s progression? If so, what’s the new max level (and point of leveling)?
Yes, the max guild level after ToT will be 150.
There will be perks associated with those levels that may not have been appropriate to offer, had the triviality of earning those levels not been addressed.
kono
I wonder what perks could be on offer for guilds past level 100. Our wee guild is level 83, and we’ve pretty much got most things we want or need and certainly will have everything by 100 as it stands now. Hopefully they’re going to create some interesting new perks / cool stuff for Guild Halls past 100 to give a reason to want to level beyond 100, I can’t imagine what though.
Any ideas anyone?
WoW has a variety of guild perks. I forget what they all are, but examples are instant mail between guildmates (they already have that between your own characters), a bank anywhere (summon a chest that acts as a bank for a few minutes), a slight speed increase to fast travel mounts. That sort of thing. Handy, but not game breaking.
I don’t understand the purpose of this change other than to once again remove something that people enjoyed doing (and are used to doing) and force them into doing something new.
chant after me … you must you must you must play like us ..again you must you must you must think like us… again you must you must you must play like us… repeat till you learn not to question the mighty day break!
Leveling guilds is a chore, plain and simple. No matter how you try and pretty up a chore, it is still a chore. It’s already a PITA to level and keep up with rent.
They should make questing and experiencing game content as more meaningful.
I always cringe when developers talk about changing dailies and other “chores” to make them meaningful. Typically what it means is they are going to make it more time intensive and grind.
And that being said, hopefully they will stick with leaving it alone below level 100.
EverQuest 2, where people gain experience from questing or crafting. Until November 17th.
This is another scheme from this Dev to ‘expand’ content by making things take longer to accomplish for no good reason. Sorry but this is another example of the wrong people being laid off.
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https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/let%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s-talk-tradeskills-in-game-update-63.528620/
May 21, 2012
Now that Game Update 63 is on the live servers, we wanted to revisit tradeskills with a bit more depth. A ton of tradeskill content was added as part of this Game Update, so we sat down with Designer Brian Ferguson to get his take on it all.
“Piestro: So let’s go with the controversial question… If you only had one level 92 tradeskiller in GU63, what would it be?
Omougi: *pauses to think deeply*
Gninja: Asking him to play favorites huh?
Piestro: It’ll help get discussion started!
Gninja: Just say Assassin.”
I think this has something to do with guilds leveling in a day using crafter bots, it was get to 92/95/100 in 24 by SploitzBotz.exe
This is just one more way DBG is bringing this fine game to an end. This whole thing is absurd. Not only by trying to change the game play style but how and when you can play the game. Seems to me they are trying to force migration to one of the other games in the stable. I noticed they are terminating Dragon’s Prophet mid November. They have even removed it from the launcher already. The thing that burns my azz is DBG’s total disregard for the game community by not so much as a forum post whenever there is a problem. I love the game but seems like it gonna be lights out and DBG thinks we’ll just move on to EverquestNext uh huh that’ll be a cold day in Norrath.
In all fairness, they did an exceptionally poor job of running Dragon’s Prophet even while still SOE, often going months between patches and the only new content being in the cash shop (judging by the announcement section of their forums). The European version is run by a different company who actually keeps up with it from what I can see.
SoE/Daybreak doesn’t MAKE Dragon’s Prophet, they have no part in it’s develepement or maintence. They only publish it.
Come, now, Mermut. We can’t let a little thing like verifiable facts get in the way of a good ‘gloom and doom’, can we? 🙄
play the game, your way… as long it’s the way we want you to play.
WoW was my first MMO. In my third expansion, Cataclysm, the developers started telling us how to play the game. I came to EQ2 and never looked back. This recent commentary from our developers is sounding familiar. How sad for the game.
this just doesn’t sound good — if you didn’t want crafters to craft and help get guilds leveled, then you should never have opened that “barn door”; that can be said for a lot of things they’ve changed recently,(or better yet, just never have started guilds to begin with; or not give guild harvest bots )
it worked fine for how many years ? ( and I’ve played since 2004 — day live 3 ) so I’ve seen them all …. Daybreak / SOE opened those doors, people used them for years; “working as intended” , remember that old saying ?
— and now you take them away ….
I’ll stick with SWtOR — it may have it’s problems, but it’s fun …… EQ2 is getting less and less fun for me
“We are adding a lot more ways to get status from normal gameplay though.”
The inference of course being that tradeskilling is not “normal”.
Thanks for nothing Gninja.
@Wirewhisker “The inference of course being that tradeskilling is not “normal”.”
Yes I got that impression too. Why didn’t they just add status to the Raffik and other TS quests so that those would contribute? Does the weekly Mara quest still offer status? What if every one of them did? Ship Out, etc? Since TS already has quests, and repeatable quests in various zones, it seem like it would be an easy fix.
Another way to make this less painful is to add status to the Tinkerfest and other TS events. Or to TS elements of usual events like Frostfell. I’d be a lot more into some of the events if they all gave status, or if some aspects did.
As any of you that read my Forum posts know, I love EQ2…that said, I’m not a happy kitty about this change. The reason? First in our Freep Guild, then later when we created a different Guild on AB, it was great group fun dropping a Flag, getting everyone to run writs til they dropped to achieve a goal.
We’ve been maxed awhile and one of our older members was just saying how they looked forward to those runs again….good times. Ah well, the wheels of time. Hmm, ya know, that might make a good title…oh, wait, it was…hehe.
I don’t understand the logic here why DBG would make this change…I have been playing this game for about 8 years and tradeskilling used to be an important aspect of this game…when I started if you wanted to stay alive at a lower level you NEEDED mastercrafted gear…now days the gear made by TS sucks. And now to take away guild XP from some people that enjoy writs and tradeskilling…bad decision in my opinion. I play and tradeskill, and have several guildies that only tradeskill…what part do they have in the guild if they don’t get credit for what they do? Tradeskilling is what sets this game apart from may other games why change it and force people that enjoy it to play something that they may or may not want to do???
What DBG should do is bring back the group TS instances and allow guild XP and rare TS drops!
Dare I say I like this change? Unfortunately the rhetoric has crystallized about whether levelup is meaningful in pretty much any game whose levels are above 100. It’s always, why bother, because it’s a meaningless grind, etc etc… I remember when they added some kind of quest for guild status, it’s been years now, sorry I can’t remember, but it had something to do with bags and hidden people in cities. Anyway, people loved it and leveled their guilds with it. I was surprised when I saw the status granting quests, but I was also glad because I was the only one doing kill writs in my guild just to keep the door open while it was disintegrating, and I must say, that’s mind-numbing. It’s not something that should be removed, but it’s not the first choice of many people.
I don’t like that they say “adding some new ways to get status” when what they mean is, after 100, “we’re swapping to a new system and only door payments will be helped by writs.” Sometimes I think they say these things in a way that strikes the picky gamer public the wrong way and leads to unnecessary negativity. I guess I’m trying to be optimistic.
I also miss the “guild raids” system and I’d like to see that made relevant again. The way we leveled guilds to 95 was to run Skyshrine until our brains were bleeding. It’s a somewhat good memory though because it was effort that was shared by anyone able to contribute, every night until we capped. Much earlier the method was to run Heritage Quests all together in lockstep, and do them 3-8 at a time so you never waste a step (like having to mine something) and have to do it twice or more times. I still do them that way for new alts, but I’m starting to forget how. The documentation isn’t so smart about the efficiency aspect.
That old method was possibly my favorite because you could get a lot of multiplication going with a group, and it took some forethought. It’s also something low levels can do to help level up, if they all go together with an experienced guide, and it’s a good way to learn the game. New players still do join although I’ve noticed it’s a rougher start now.
If DGS offered that as a guide quest for lower levels, it might be a good way to start out for new players. There’s nothing like the feeling of helping out your guild, even when you’re level 30-something. It could be on the calendar 4 times a year maybe, over a weekend, with requirements posted (must be able to craft xyz, mining at level reqired, etc). Something for our kids to do, but I wouldn’t mind doing that myself.
I hope that HQ’s will still contribute to any level of guild. It’s a lot of work to finish one of those, and it certainly isn’t boring.