55 thoughts on “Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Update Notes”

  1. It’s going to be awesome when all the people who complained that content was “too hard” because of crit mit find out that even with crit mit gone, the content is still hard.

    I eagerly await to find out what they will complain about next.

  5. He has a point that is right, Removing of Crit Mitigation is not changing anything at all. For High End (Non Raid Content) like Drunder will be hard as before, because with low HP you just get onehitted. Also in the End the only change is the now Stat is named HP instead of Crit Mitigation.

    He sounds like a typical raider that does not get 100% of the game only designed for raiders. Did you know that they are other people with other interests like you? Or are you assuming you are the only people worth anything? No casuals was complaining that non-Raid gear was good Enough for Raiding, that would be not the right thing.

    The big problem on DoV was that Non-Raid Content Requires Raid Gear to survive, that’s because only the last Hardcore Players plays EQ2 now, on my server…is now very low populated because mostly left since DoV and his Hardcore Raider direction. I know you will now say im whining:) But i know too that most Raiders cant accept Critical Facts and says about everything that is Critical against raiders..they are whining. Not all, i know but 90% (i’m a raider too btw.)

    PS: sorry for my bad grammatic, its not my native language and i learned it about 15 years ago, never used it after that really.

  9. I know there were people whining about crit mit, but in this case I’m not so sure that they were influencing the devs decisions. Because it seems to me that crit chance and crit mit both served as progression gating stats, so in a way one of them was redundant.

    Definitely worried though by the affect the whiners do have on the difficulty of the game, yes the game is designed to appeal to a wide base, but I would find it boring if I could just stroll into a HM raid.

    The point is I think most players need something to work towards or is still out of reach, allowing “everyone to experience everything” (like wow) is a recipe for bordom and burnout imo.

  10. I don’t think anybody would mind having CM as long as it was implemented in a good way.

    We all remember void armor where gear actualy worked and was good balanced.
    Everybody had a chance to get T1-T2 and even T3 (WOE) armor wasn’t that difficult to get for non raiders. Raid armor was availeble in the form of T4 for those that wanted.

    CM on itself was ok but having instances drop gear that is needed for that instance (try to tank a full drunder zone in ry’gorr) was just wrong.

    What ever they hope to do with lvl 92 i hope it fixes gear progression

  11. I am a casual player and I’m glad to see this gone. I am a fairly good tank but I could never get high crit mit gear because I didn’t raid full time. I know the zones aren’t going to get easier, but now I have a chance to play in those zones.

  12. Can people REALLY not express themselves without pissing all over everyone?

    Casuals suck… Crafters suck… PUGs suck… I am awed by your level of discourse!

    I’m starting to think people learned how to talk from watching Beavis and Butthead.

  13. This was a stupid change. Am I glad to see it go, hell yes, it was an bad mechanic in the first place that punished good players and helped bad ones. But in the end its effort spent on the game for very little gain.

    It never would have been such a hot button issue if drunder was doable with heroic gear – I’m not saying there shouldn’t be difficult heroic zones for people in raid gear (I thought that’s was HM was for), but a lot of group-only players (i.e.: non-raiders) want to be able to run all the group oriented zones or to complete the signature quest that actually tells the overarching story of the expansion. In the end, bad design begets bad design.

    More or less they are going to remove one bad design from the game (CM) and then use the 92 cap thing to forget all about all the other bad designs (the weird overlapping mini progression that is dov, the itemization, etc) and then never ever fix it.

  14. Lakoda,

    Crit Mit was the alternative to level cap raises. It was an artificial progression. The problem is, the Crit Mit and Crit Chance requirements were absurd. Then they overreacted and removed those requirements from the Velious launch dungeons. And now they are overreacting and removing crit mit from the game.

    If they had left the requirements, but lowered the Crit Mit requirement by 20-25% across the board, and made Drunder mobs killable in Heroic gear, we would have been in pretty good shape.

    SOE uses a wrecking ball when a scalpel would do the job. SOE. We don’t do subtle.

  15. So, since everyone is saying removing CM won’t change the drunder experience for non-raiders, what IS going to change it? Getting to 92 and all your fancy prestiage AAs, I guess?

    I haven’t been back since I petered out before Christmas and I’m waiting for something that indicates my group can finish drunder II, drunder III and the Temple of Rallos Zek using the gear we got from the previous instances. With one really skilled healer, even. :p

  16. So, since everyone is saying removing CM won’t change the drunder experience for non-raiders, what IS going to change it? Getting to 92 and all your fancy prestiage AAs, I guess?

    I think the 2 level increase and gear mudflation (Skyshrine quest gear = Velious EM raid gear) will allow players to resist or mitigate more of the damage, and do a higher amount of DPS. To quote Xelgad, the Prestige points aren’t intended to be as powerful as the Heroic tree.

    Any content gets easier when you gain levels, just through the mitigation and chance to resist effects.

  17. Too bad the gear that drops in Drunder still won’t be worth the effort.

    I’m starting to suspect that whoever calls the shots on this doesn’t know what they’re doing.

    …okay, you got me. I’m absolutely certain they don’t…

  18. I disagree. Overpowering of the stats on items is was replaced level caps. CM was a cheez way to quickly give gating mechanics that broke when they broke itemization in DoV. The stats got SO high SO quickly that CM followed pace and created the problem we have. That that being said, I still stand by the statement that it had been a straight progression: tower -> velks -> kael -> drunder -> x2 -> em -> hm; we would have avoided CM being a problem. The issue isn’t itemization (this time) its piss poor progression. Instead they created a bunch of mini progression where you have to complete raid content before you can get to more heroic content. That was bound to piss people off – the raiders who are getting loot below that required to enter the zone and non-raiders unable to even enter the zone. It also made itemization problems worse, since now there is heroic gear better then raid gear. The overlap experiment was a complete failure.

  19. …. once there is heroic gear better then raid gear there needs to be better raid gear. Perpetuating the cycle and just inflating stats higher and faster. Stats are out of control, as evident by them having to add small fractional percentage based blue stats to stuff just so that its “better” and worth getting.

  20. I can not see that raising the Level Cap to 92 will allow the casual non hard core raider the opportunity for end-game loot, unless it is SLR, which is pretty much what we are seeing more common now. The crit mit idea was bad from the time it launched in SF, in no way was it ever working properly, but this is EQ2 and what has ever worked correctly?

    I refer to some basic numbers and that would be resists. Say you have elemental of 40k, this equates to absorbing 75% dam from a lvl 90 mob with a elemental spell, however the higher you go the better the resist, well in theory it sounds good but on paper and in act it doesn’t work that way. Crit Mit should have worked together with the resists and then given that number, been the basis of you actual inc damage. All to often we have seen a mob that requires say 140 cm, one shot us to now end even though we are capped or over cap, and no im not talking the red script of doom. So when you see act it shows a negative for crit but the actual damage is still the same. So the 65k you were taking under crit mit was still the same ole 65k with crit mit. It really did not mitigate mush if any at all, now I am not saying this is all the mobs, but it certainly was a few. Just glad its gone.

  21. For those who complain that the progression is out of order… maybe it’s a matter of people who won’t do hard content until its trivial. Feldon had long since but out a chart of difficulty by zone. Besides some real mechanic tweeking and the heavy-hand remove crit mit from the zone methods, it naturally takes (some) people time to learn strats and learn zones and make progress.

    A continued balance of varying difficult content with varying rewards is necessary to keep content relevant. Hardcore raiders and players who have 24 hours a day to play/craft/socialize place a higher demand on developers.

    But in the end, it’s fun, functional mechanics and promotion of goal-oriented play, craftin’, groupin’, AND raidin’, that’s keeping people around. Which is why I like (at in theory) the advertisement of the new content to have solo, group, and raid version of their content. Also, why I like crit mit removal as a ‘gate mechanic’ and to allow better player style customization through adornments.

  22. So I run a guild. Now we raid 10hours a week, We have 11HM dead and the issue of not progressing has been attrition. Mostly people retiring. So this means we must replace players. And for my guild we dont have pregeared people waiting in line. So we must gear people up. Now with crit mit gone the only real difference is going to be max HP. So a healer can heal thru a little LESS hp. I think with out crit mit high end guilds wont see any change but guilds like mine, it will be much easier to manage attrition.

  24. Shimmerman

    Crit mit didn’t get introduced during SF it was earlier during TSO that SOE premiered Crit mit also it was when Crit bonus first started being added to gear. BTW potency during then was still in its ___ % increases to ____ items and armor effects stage.

    As for non Crit one shots. Mobs and players have a min and max hit with there abilities / auto attack IE “Damage spread”. Both can roll for a max non Crit hit.

  26. Feldon
    “Can people REALLY not express themselves without pissing all over everyone?

    Casuals suck… Crafters suck… PUGs suck… I am awed by your level of discourse!

    I’m starting to think people learned how to talk from watching Beavis and Butthead.”

    Spot on Feldon, could not agree more.

  27. @Taka I agree that some zones just take time to learn. Drunder is a perfect example. Even though my primary group have worked its way through the first two zones, the last encounter has stopped us cold. We had to work our butts off to get through rage in Ry’Gorr & x2 but we did. But the truth is, we never would have been able to do it in solo jewelry. And we certainly can’t finish the 2nd zone without raid gear. It got to the point were we just stopped trying after weeks of failure.

  29. The CM change ups raid wide dps, making it easier to kill things.

    The CM change allows you to bring slightly under-geared people along with your geared ones on challenging encounters. Previously even buffed to 60k hp if you were 40+ CM under the requirement for the encounter, you were a grease stain on the floor.

    The CM change does slightly expand the content you can attempt with your current gear level, but it for sure expands the content you can do while grouped with others beyond your gear level.

    The issue with this change was not addressing the itemization issues caused by removing the stat. In many cases Item A was only better than Item B cause item A had 5-10 more CM. With CM removed Item A no longer has value (even when it comes from a far harder encounter than Item B).

  31. Having just shy of over 100CM this change does help me get into new content again, but there is a downside: I can no longer negate all crits in old content. It was really fun to solo old group zones with that safety net.

  32. Drunder IS doable with heroic gear. Not easy, but doable IF you have the perfect group of highly skilled players. I’ve done it, so I know. Not often, but I’ve done it. That perfect group doesn’t come along often. So to say you had to have raid gear to do a heroic zone isn’t really true. The AVERAGE group needed raid gear to do it.

    I’m all for harder zones mind you. Perhaps maybe they just set the bar a tad high for the AVERAGE player.

    Same with CM imo. It wasn’t a horrible idea. I actually like the ‘gear check’ aspect of it. It was just implemented wrong. Like Feldon said, 20% decrease across the board woulda been the better fix.

  33. @ Zordor, they changed Thieving Essence because with it, you were siphoning Crit Bonus from the mob you were fighting, which is what the mobs were using to defeat your Crit Mit (which is now gone). Crit Bonus is still very much relevant in the game (as Crit Chance still is), it was just how the ability worked. I agree however, I would much rather have CB then Potency.

  35. I’m whining? lol, no.

    I actually welcome this change because ultimately I know, in the end, the removal of Crit Mit is not going to do anything. Content will still be hard, you’ll still need good gear to survive, and you’ll still need to be a skilled, competent player in order to actually progress – which is where most of the casual players, no matter how much SOE changes EQ2 will always be completely lacking at. They’d rather complain and make excuses as to why they can’t survive/do any content than actually figure out what they need to do to actually become a better player.

    And honestly, all SOE really needed to do was to nerf Crit Mit requirements across the board by 10-15%. This would have lowered the requirements enough for EM to get more people into raiding, and would have lowered the requirements enough for the guilds currently in HM Drunder to clear that content, move on to Plane of War and Skyshrine next month. But, because the playerbase cried that they can’t get enough Crit Mit to do the Drunder heoric instances and get into the raid zones, SOE ultimately decided to nuke a problem that could have been resolved with a fine scalpel.

    Why do you think Crit Mit was removed from the Velious overland zones and the Velious and TOFS heroic instances? Because players complained that they couldn’t survive the content. Why do you think Crit Mit was removed completely? Because SOE grew tired of listening to all the complaining done by the casual player base. No matter how much SOE simplifies the game, no matter how much they nerf the content, casual players are their core will always be a group of whiny, horrible, unskilled players who add absolutely nothing to the game. In fact, they repeatedly take things away from the game.

  36. Once again, everyone is heated and no one is listening. Oh internet, you’re the best. Speaking as someone who has all the crit mit they need, it is frustrating to know the hours and effort I spent getting there were partially in vain. The gear I have garnered however has really increased my abilities and the fun I’ve had getting the gear can’t be negated.

    The thing about most of these raid zones, or even group zones is that CM really didnt matter that much. The complicated strats and teamwork environment mattered a lot more. Sure you can survive now, but can you figure out the strat and burn the named down fast enough…

    Now, those people that have 100CM or less right now. I can not even understand how. DOV has been out forever and SOE practically gave away the Ry’gorr armor. which even unadorned is over 100CM. Even the casual player has no excuse for that other than lack of play, or no attempt to achieve this feat. CM has been out of the DOV zones for months, can these toons successfully run through Fortress Spire with ease? I’m guessing not.

    However the complaints about drunder are valid, the difficulty between Kael and Drunder zones is quite varied. However, once again the strats and DPS are there as a check the whole time. Soon shoutouts for scouts & mages will included DPS requirements (expect 100k minimum raid entrances) for tank HP (expect 50k). There will always be some sort of gear/skill check used by the player base to quickly determine people to group with.

  37. I know this really isn’t the place so I have will keep it short but Necromancer, have a little bit of a clue before you say something. You seem to complain more than the so called casuals. I hate how some people, especially you, always knock casuals like that. My whole guild, 234 of us, are casuals, and guess what, we are knocking drunder out without raiding. Not every casual is worthless. I know a lot more casual players that are actually more skilled than raiders but the raiders have better gear. The people you SHOULD be knocking are the people that are too lazy and don’t want to do anything for themselves. Again, sorry, this wasn’t the website for this but people like Necromancer needs to back off the casuals a bit.

  38. “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”… there ya go! A legitamet whine (about nothing in particular, just giving something for all the haters to flmae on ;-P Go Nuts!) – Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk.

    *You have become better at Smartass! (402/450)*

  40. Removing Critical Mitigation =! Removing the need to be able to play well.

    Frankly, there are some players who are better skilled players who could not enter zones for raids due to Critical Mitigation requirements. This change removes an artificial barrier to play, and increases the pool of available players to Raiding and Grouping.

    Additionally, the metric does not scale as a good future barrier of entry, due to the extreme exponential rise in requirements. Implementing Feldon’s suggestion would have been a good short term (~2 expansion packs) solution, but in the end, would delay the inevitable realization that this is not a substitute for player driven FUN mechanics. Player driven means that a person playing solo can achieve useful progression that can equate to entry.

    In other words, when was the last time you put on 10% more critical mitigation and had words scroll across your screen? Never. But you hit another level or AA or Prestige point and you get a cool announcement that makes you feel good.

    True, gear does allow you to make some mistakes while playing and gives you wiggle room on things, but it should not be the BARRIER to play. Access quests already perform that function. Keying for zone progressions do that function. Raid size and player skill already perform that function. Why have something that has always been about player CHOICE become something that is a progression metric?

    One of the most popular things that players like to compare e-peens on is DPS output. Keeping Critical Chance in the game as a permeable barrier is still useful. By permeable I mean that the player does not HAVE to have 100% Critical chance to be contributing. A Boolean check against Critical Mitigation meant you lived or you added to the mob’s health. Now the focus moves back to things like your healer’s skill at keeping you alive, as well as paying attention to the encounter.

    An excellent change.

  41. For the record, if a heroic zone “is doable” in heroic gear but only with the perfect group, it is not a doable zone. The perfect group does not exist for a vast majority of the player base.

  42. @Malade

    A dev said that it’s because they missed a few files when shoving the patch live.

    Probably shouldn’t take em long to get the other files in.

    I’m happy crit mit is going if only because it opens up adornment slots for me to put other stuff in. Crit chance is by far the easier to get and will get even easier to get when the timers on zones are droped to 90 minutes. Just farm rares and you’ll get plenty of crit chance from that gear.

  43. I agree with Achilios, the only difference between (most) hard core players & casual players is free time. (Notice I said “most”). Skill is what sets them apart. I’ve seen uber-geared HC raiders fail in Ascent & talented casual players do Tower of Tactics with mediocre gear. Lumping casual players in one ‘whining, complaining’ group is a mistake.

  44. @ThatGuy

    You didn’t even consider what will be happening when these zones are attpempted by the people that are not geared for them when they are lacking in crit chance.

    Heals will not be critting.
    Powerflows will not be critting.
    DPS will suffer because hits will not be critting.

    Additionally ALL of those items that say they proc “On a critical combat/heal/spell” will not proc as often.

    This will inevitably lead to fail conditions, and the whining and crying about being blocked from content will continue.

    I can’t wait until the threads start when people are not even able to get beyond the trash in HM Drunder. El-Oh-El

  45. If the game is that bad, if it stresses you that much why not just quit? Go play Farmville or Mafia Wars or hell for that matter go take a walk. Just quit crying… it’s a game!!!! It’s not perfect, it will never be perfect. This game (NO GAME) will ever make it’s entire player base happy.

    Log in, play for what time you have… enjoy that time even if it means you’re dying because you’re trying a zone you shouldn’t be in or because your healer isn’t as good as he/she thinks or maybe your Wizard thinks that they’re the TANK…. Damn people try to enjoy the content put in front of you …. offer constructive advice/criticism to the devs and hope some things improve.

    Again I say if you’re not happy MOVE ON… there are tons of games to try. Or perhaps since we’re all experts why don’t we just develop our own game…. oh yeah that takes a bit more than $15 a month… sorry my bad.

    Am I happy with EQ2 sure I’m happy… not totally pleased but I’m glad I have a game that I can actually get into and for the most part enjoy. Hope there are more out there that feel the same way.

    & to FELDON & the others that do so much extra on the side to improve the game and the knowledge base of the fans THANK YOU. It’s much appreciated.

    1. Folks please don’t tell other players what feedback they can or can’t post. If you have a problem with a post, use the contact us form. I’m looking at an upvoting system for comments.

  46. @ Achilios

    Um……. sir yes some casuals are better than raiders …. but on that not many are, I say this because i went from family>Casual>Hardcore>Normal Raider, I know what casuals are capable of not that many casuals are that great that they can go into a raid zone like drunder and think they can live and dps.
    I agree some HC raiders suck, I had the pleasure of telling one of the tanks from one of our top Raid guilds how to tank ToFS, but those are group zones you put them in thier element and they will rape face everytime.
    But i will bash some casuals, a majority of casuals will do anything for gear they come into pick up raids and think there entitled to every peice of loot that drops for thier class, I’ve grown tired of all of them saying “oh your a raider, I bet you cant play your class better than I can” (Exact Quote), they then proceed to think they can form a raid guild to out do a already established raid guild on ther server….. it sickens me.

    but im done venting soooooo carry on.

  47. Crit Mit is an unnecessary content gate that makes players who may not be ready for the content exponentially worse off than they had to be based upon their actual gear. There are ways to make the game harder and make content last longer without putting artificial progression gates based on one universal ‘must have’ state in all over the place. IMO that’s lazy content design if nothing else.

  48. Hey Lempo,

    You’re right, I didn’t consider the problems with Critical Chance in those zones.

    Critical chance is a permeable fail condition however. If you have enough folks that do qualify, the folks that don’t qualify for the required CC amount still contribute.

    The Critical Mitigation stat however is Boolean, meaning either you have the number or you fail.

    Obviously, as you point out, the folks will be significantly LESS effective, but not necessarily a detriment due to dying instantly and healing the mob.

    Players who play well, and other players (or perhaps the same folks) can now survive to a point where they can contribute effectively for a time, even if the total amount of time available to them is less than it could be. It is not, however ideal, and I would completely agree with you that Critical Chance is a new gating functionality.

  49. ^^ @ ThatGuy and all the other people that say “Yeah, No more CM, I’ll get a grtoup now”

    You are all fooling yourselves thinking CM wsa some magically difficult unattainable stat which only the driven people could acquire with hours upon hours of work. CC has always been more difficult to maxout than CM, hell CM was all but assumed until you got into Drunder HM. The CM levels required for zones were easily surpassed in gear from progression zones beneath them.

    The CC, on the other hand, has all ways been the strugle to max our where some zones would require more than 300 CC just to be effective. Can you be partly effective w/o CC? I’ll only answer that by saying you will be dead weight, and if that is something you can live with or expect/demand 23 other people to carry your water, then more power to you. CM has never been an issue outside of Drunder HM for any body that gave two shits about being part of a group rather than being carried by a group.

    Drunder Heroics are FULLY clearable in Heroic gear … Fully.

  50. Trust me, CM going away will not automagically mean more groups. Especially now that anyone can log into EQ2U and see that half your abilities are Adept or worse, you have 190 AA, and half your gear is from Sentinel’s Fate.

  51. I agree the heroic instances were not hard… Including drunder! You did not NEED raid gear for anything heroic. You needed to learn how to play your character. And someone said cm was broken when they introduced it in SF… It was TSO.

  53. The only complaint i have is this, how hard would it have been to give us a token for the crit mit adorns that were now….worthless? A white hp adorn is 295 hp….a yellow is 150, and a red 200….a white ma is 4.6, a yellow is 5 and a red is 7….anyone see any issue with this? Now i don’t have enough blue shards to replace all the crappy 200 hp red adorns stinking up my armor lol…just sayin

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