Server Round Table (Community)

[Slaybackaskani]

First of all, thank you guys for everything. I have really enjoyed progressing on this server.

I was able to get through t4 by myself just fine and never had too many issues. I box 12 personally and enjoy boxing that many. I wouldn't want to have to do too much more personally.

However, once I got to t5 and started working through the avatars I realized I had to donate to survive on my own. I have a few RL friends that play now and then and we work together but they are fickle and switch between EZ and P99 and THF so often times I get left alone to play. In t5, certain avatars would one shot me so I am glad to hear about the slight nerf to their damage. In all honesty, even once i had donated (war weapon, immortal shield, double exp neck), i can still get one shotted from time to time but thats fine. however, i have read a head and already know that i won't be able to solo after t6 so i either will have to be active enough to make friends and have a real guild or hopefully convince one of my RL friends to fully devote himself to the server lol.

when it comes to repeating quests, I'm not a huge fan. I don't mind doing it a few times but after a while its pretty miserable. things like the 1.5 are fine to repeat. that was easy enough. getting 12-18 chars keyed for everything was less fun but still doable. the 2.0, only my warrior has it. I have started it on other characters but after mass slaughtering icewell keep for hours and hours to only see one sometimes 2 drops of the piece you need there, i gave up and decided only my wrrior had to have it. if the pieces dropped more it wouldnt be so bad. however, i still wouldnt want to have to do it 12x plus.

Another note is the armor pieces that cost money. I have skipped 90% of it. I don't have much money as it is. if i have extra pieces i tend to just give them away. I dont farm LDON enough to have a lot of money. Any money i did make was spent on the 4 t8 pets i had to buy and the t8 spells for my other classes so i dont have money to gear up every character at 40k a character. If anything, i will just gear my warrior and the rest of mine will be gimp for a while. I dont mind gathering pieces like TOV (however, i liked having the option of stillmoon temple which i used first), I just don't have the plat to spend. I preferred though that even in TOV, I had the choice between BPs that dropped and the quest BP. I loved sleepers tomb and looting the pieces. It made me spend time there in order to gear my people which i was completely fine with and really enjoyed. that was the last tier that i really enjoyed farming sleepers tomb. Pofire I did it once for the sake of having the flag because i knew the armor pieces i wasn't going to bother with which is sad because i enjoyed it on live. However, i know that is a personal choice and one not everyone will agree with.

as for ways to balance things, I know the changes to pets were needed but i feel like hte mage got the short end of the stick. What was my most powerful pet became my most gimp, both in surviving and dps. my mage t8 rk 1 does way less damage than my necro t8 rk1 and the bl t8 rk1 to the point where if it wasnt for COH, he would be dropped entirely.

All in all, I love this server and enjoy my time here. I look forward to the changes you have coming .

[Safiya]

This is a little off topic, more directed at this part of the OP than anything else.

healthy progression curve

IMO, things start to get wonky at T5/T6 level. Everything before that can be single grouped. T1-T4 is mostly doable with a single group and some of T6 is (Ascent, SolRo Tower).

Personally, I'd rather see 6 people playing 6 toons and fighting content geared for 6 toons than 4 people fielding 24 and trying to macro/dps their way to a win. Wouldn't it be far more advantageous and enjoyable to have the content designed for the number of actual players instead what we currently have? If content was designed to be tackled by 6 then people who are great at boxing maybe could pull it off but 6 real people would stand a far better chance. Content can be designed to be single grouped and still made quite challenging. In fact, I have played on servers where 6 man raids were the most difficult. Though they do bring their own pitfalls that need to be taken into consideration....like a potential reliance on cookie cutter groups for certain encounters leaving the less than ideal classes on the sidelines with no real way to obtain loot from a specific encounter. Guild tradeable loot or loot tokens and cleverly designed content can alleviate that.

I loved logging in and getting 70 across multiple toons, getting AA'd, then doing the early tiers. I went from T1-T3 normally, played a little in PoFire then went to some T6 (Ascent, SolRo Tower)...then stopped. I'd love to see more zones that are difficult and rewarding for a single group of characters (real or boxed). T1-T3 had what in my mind, was great progression...i would say perfect but Emp Ssra is a ridiculously insane fight for T-1. After T3/T4, things seem to go off the rails.

I'm far less concerned about donator gear being OP/trivializing content than I am about seeing this server content consumed by mostly only those who can write spiffy macros for their bot armies.

[Xorp]

[1] How many real people do you typically progression raid with?

Denizen's go with anything from 2-5 real people, on average, I'd say 2-3.

[2] If you box, how many characters do you typically box and what is your latest progression tier?

Rafe has 24ish, I have 18, Airion has 10, Crede has 6?, Jenkem has 6?.. Or thereabouts. we've cleared all of Nadox, and have done I believe 4/6 of the HoH bosses, and just the first boss of DSK3

[3] If you box, how many characters would you prefer to box?

I like 18, but want to keep it that way and not have to add more DPS. 1 of each class with 3 cleric healers (one for each group). Pssssst, BUFF RANGERS ! ;p

[4] If you box, how many times would you be willing to repeat the Epic/Flag/Aura/<insert tough quest here> quests and still have fun doing it?

Repeating quests for each boxed toon is just part of the territory / price for boxing. Stuff like the automation, WoS pets, or other quests that also net you decent exp and/or cash/loots aren't a bother at all. But long travel oriented or kill rares type stuff like the VP key, epic2.0, getting through Ssra for non-tokened toons (that annoying emp key, but mainly because those swimmy tubes makes boxing more difficult), etc. are quite cumbersome when doing them all over and over for each toon. So my best "final" answer would be that I don't mind requesting / flagging / farming if there's more to it than just traveling all over the world handing in quest items, or picking up groundspawns (pretty much anything like VP key sucks - I like VT key better as it's more grindy allowing to fill out some AA's for your alts) - Oh and never make quests requiring tradeskills that can't be done by others and traded back to you. That's a boxer's nightmare.

[Niixnec]

First off, as with everyone else, would like to thank you for taking the time and energy to put together a place for us to gather and play.
I have truly enjoyed my 3+ years here. Also thank you for taking the time to listen to all player's opinions even if we don't always agree (with you or each other).

Questions:
1] Real People - normally 4-6

2] Boxed toons 20 (Started with 1 and did solo progression, started a new 1 then went to 6, went up to 12 after hitting Nadox and boss 3 since we had very few donors in the guild at that time, went up to 19 when guild was down to 2 people playing on a regular basis, added 2 more due to boredom)

3] At this point would prefer 12 but don't want to let the others go then have to bring them back up to strength if people decide to take a break again

4] Depends on the quest - I have done the 2.0 on 19, Raid aura on 19, VT keys 19 (2 maps from Chaos), on my last 6 I did the HoH quest on each of them because I like the fight and didn't mind giving away the other 5 fragments that dropped - overall 14 times for HoH quest.
I didn't mind most of them as you had a good chance at drop or guaranteed drop if the mob X was up (blood on Nagy, sword on Chardok Royals) while you may not always find them up it didn't take much to determine if they were up.
I haven't completed a 3.0 quest yet. Spent 22 hours in Dragon Necropolis for the cleric hearts and finally finished 1 cleric have seriously thought about just buying a donor due to that quest, very live-like in drop rate/time sinks.

Other items already brought up
Distillers - I wouldn't mind seeing them available as a rare drop from one mob per tier or as a reward for a quest (1 distiller with the 2.0, 3.0, Headhunter aug, DSK aug, things like that).
Maybe a quest person that when you hail them they check your inventory and provide distillers for items (see above). This way those that have done the quests or whatever can still be rewarded + easy to add new items to the quest.
I don't like the idea of platinum for them as it still limits who can readily get them and a donored group should be able to get platinum alot easier than a non-donored group (hivequeen for instance or selling tier tokens).
Same with removing the no-drop, people that donate still get an unfair advantage as they receive more but now can move them about as they need.


Changes -
I think you need to have a little of both - reduction in X (hp, damage, ac) for the Progression mobs and a direct alternative to donor gear.
I would really hate to see a nerf of any kind, people have donated for a reason and are used to now being able to do certain things / kill certain mobs. If all of the sudden you couldn't do those things I think the majority would be upset.
So the alternative is boosting non-donor gear to at least be somewhat competitive so you don't have to tone the mobs down so much it makes those with donors bored since everything is easy to kill.

For instance, the Donor 2.0 weapon for Warrior gives an extra disc with a fast cool down that is a huge thing for fights. Outside of that you have one disk with a decent cool down, 1 drop (T3) - 1hr and 1 quest (T5) - 1hr?.
There were many times when we failed on X mob or already did mob Y and we had to wait for discs to become available again to do a new fight since the fight would last 2 discs (this was with 3 tanks around the time HoH came out before 2.0)

Wizard mana regen I don't remember a mana regen item that is easily available until you hit DSK1: Even if you started at 50 and went up to 200 at T9 the donor would still give a distinct advantage which is what is needed to make the items still desirable.

Haunted Force - 50 mana per tick
Wand of Darkness - 50 mana per tick
Turyn, The Dawn Breaker - 600 mana per tick

Shaman HP Regen while not game changing can be a huge bonus if your gear is not quite where it needs to be

Spiritstaff of the Alchemist - HP by 1500 not to mention the other skills / attributes it affects (1hr)
Champion's Perseverance - HP by 120 other modifiers are close (7 min)

Thoughts - Could you have an item that evolves as you go up in tiers (should it be connected with actual boss kills in tier similar to achievement or would you allow tokens to provide the update?) but is still less than the donor:
War: T1 - 25% mitigation 15minute refresh, T2 28% 14 minute refresh, etc...
Wiz: T1 - 50 mana regen, T2 100 mana regen, etc.
Shm: T1 - 150, T2 - 175, etc.



When you get to tanks depending on how many donors you wanted to donate for the discrepancy can be quite large as well.
Non-donored tank T8, HoH+ augs geared about 15.5K AC, 60k HP
Another T8 geared , HoH+ augs with a total of 5 donor items (bp, shield, arms, weapon and weapon aug) is around 17.5k AC, 66.4k HP -
Now a tank that is fully donored including leafs can hit approximately 28 - 29k AC, 128k HP

Thoughts - make non-lore augs that are 1/2 or close to that of a leaf readily available. There is a huge difference between a leaf and an 18 slot neck / wrist HoH aug.
For type 8 you have a good number of augs available (aviaks, kodiaks, sharks, xmas, halloween, enomuth/hivequeen, etc.) and 16's for AC can use the HoH 10k point bought aug but a bump in HP for those would be nice.
It's the 17 and 18's where you start to lose out.


I think the biggest issue between donors / non-donor is when you start adding donors together, even if they are not on the same character, it starts to add up this is especially true of DPS.
For instance a rogue with a donor weapon is nice.
Now add donor aug for rogue
Now add donor bp for rogue
Now add Bard donor weapon to the that group
Throw in Enchanter donor weapon
Add Shaman or Druid BP (believe those affect melee damage)

How many non-donored rogues are needed to match that DPS? Unsure but that would be interesting to find out...


Pet peeves

Short duration buffs - having to cast gladiator/lion every 7-10 minutes sucks regardless of group spell or not (new AA's?)
DT / Insta-Kills: Give players a chance to survive that is why we do the solo auras, raid auras, cast DI, buy donor shield

Wishlist

GM events for guilds / groups: pick a guild or group and see if they would like an event - Kill mob X or kill wave after wave, etc. It seems when you throw out a zone (prize wheel) the player base is eager to participate but the zone can't normally handle it.
Guild hot zones -- Only reason for guild hot zones is due to the lag issues encountered if the server decides they all need to be in one zone (see above)
Event for March or April - we have something to break up raiding, etc with 4 of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas but nothing else for 6 months (least that I remember - think there might have been giants in 2011 but was just starting then)
More item / bag slots -- too many clickies

regards,

niix

[burzum]

[1] How many real people do you typically progression raid with?
[2] If you box, how many characters do you typically box and what is your latest progression tier?
[3] If you box, how many characters would you prefer to box?

Quests should be fun and have a rewarding feeling to them. Doing a quest 18 times is a chore for most people. Developers don't like to develop chores So here is my final question to compare to your answer to question [3]:

[4] If you box, how many times would you be willing to repeat the Epic/Flag/Aura/<insert tough quest here> quests and still have fun doing it?

1: 0 (solo-boxer)
2: 12ish
3: 6ish
4: 6ish



Another idea could be to overall balance progression could be to introduce inermediate difficulties zones.
For instance, The Ascent has been for me a really helpfull zone when I was not able to tank T6 bosses. There were very good upgrades (belt, mantle, bracer, weapons). These upgrades helped me to fill the gap between PoA and VP.
I think SH was the same although I was a bit too geared when it was introduced to fully benefit of it. I made the automaton quest for all my toons which really helps!
These zones were great improvements IMO.

Maybe a similar zone to fill the gap between VP and DSK1 could contribute to reach the balance goal...


cheers.

And if you miss ideas for such intermediate tiers loot, I alreay suggest you a 75% save death clicky with a 1hour reuse time or something like

[Lillithe]

Some of this may be soap-boxish, so I apologize in advance. I see where some of this conversation is going, and it disappoints.

Personally, I don't understand the joy in boxing. I play 3 toons primarily, 1 is a pet sender (necro), 1 a buffbot (shaman), and my tank (warrior). I'm also bringing up a chanter because we're stuck in progression until we get one.

I would play just 1 toon if we could get away with it, but the simple fact is that the population isn't there to support that. Regarding the plea to tone down the content to support single players handing all raid content, I strongly disagree. EQ back in the day was 75 man raids, not a single player boxing. The community is what made the game. We're all grown up now with real jobs/families/lives/etc., but I would like to think that if some of that was reintroduced perhaps guilds could combine forces and build a strong community.

I've done a fair bit of server recruiting, and we have probably 20 active members, but they're not all raiders. I'd love to see some more content that can't be beat by MacroQuest. Perhaps some mechanism like WoW...easy mode and hard mode, whereas hard mode requires mechanics that can't be beat with MacroQuest and holds greater reward. I know this is a tall order, and it won't be very popular either, but that's my opinion.

In support of some of the above messages:
+1 to larger bags!
+1 to distiller access
+1 to extending Gladiator/other short duration buffs

[Sian]

Without flaming or criticizing you at all, just know that I started with only shaman/necro on this server, then I added a warrior, then a cleric so I could do a little more. I was in a guild with almost no-boxers and we were a lot of real players. That was the same for many players around here. But only few old players are left on the server. Not that it's not a great server, but I think it's just life, or maybe some prefered a server without any kind of donor thing and came back to P99 (which ends up doing little bit the same now).
Like you, I could have picked a very low number of toons because keeping track of augmenting/quest/stuff is hard when boxing many. But there is not enough people around.

I will just say that you are a bit new to the server maybe and that you are a bit too optimistic about having a large real players guild working on the long run. There is no offense at all, you know me I think and I deeply wish you to proove me wrong
That's why I think it is a real great idea to have made VT or epic stuff cross guild. People can do stuff on their side, with their guildmate or with outside friends.

On the other hand, having zone set with hard/normal level like Xmas/halloween/4th july events would be great and could also allow people to progress normally...but then what to do about the stuff that drops there ? If you put same stuff dropping in both modes, then there is no point for donor teams to do the hard way but a challenging feeling so they will just do normal things, so you come back to what we have already discussed about , and if you put different stuff, you just make donor teams getting better stuff.
I really think that making dps/tanking more acceptable for "normal" toons is the good key. And if donor teams make it easier than before, then what does it change ? If everybody is happy and can progress (even at different speed), I think it's the purpose of this server

[Lillithe]

I guess you could say I'm a bit of a romantic in that view. I completely understand that the boxing has become a bit of necessity.

I guess what I'm saying is... come join us in LoZ Sian

Send one or two toons over that you'd like to raid with and help us build a community! Of course this invitation is open to others as well.

[Sian]

Hehe I am very happy in my guild and won't let down what I have helped building Just missing fun some cause very close friends are afk. But get to VT so we can raid together

[PKinternet]

[1] How many real people do you typically progression raid with?
0 or maybe 1, in the past five or six.

[2] If you box, how many characters do you typically box and what is your latest progression tier?
I box 18 regularly. Started with 2 characters, then moved to a full group by the time I got to tier 2. Moved to two groups when I got to the Minis in HoH. Moved to three groups when I got to HoH/Nadox bosses.
I have completed Tier3 of Vex Thal…. Waiting on final boss =)

[3] If you box, how many characters would you prefer to box?
I would have a hard time moving back to a smaller number now, so I prefer 18 =)

[4] If you box, how many times would you be willing to repeat the Epic/Flag/Aura/<insert tough quest here> quests and still have fun doing it?
I don't mind doing quests for every toon, however, I enjoy them more if they are in line with progression. All epics up to 2.5, HoH access, VT access are all examples of quest that are in line with progression. I have a hard time motivating myself to do the side quests for all toons. I get bored with very quickly and typically only do them on one character if at all.

Kudos
I like the changes made already. I remember there was a big jump doing Avatars in Air. We could not complete it until one War donored up. The next big jump was HoH. Moving from trash mobs to bosses was also impossible if you asked me without donors. So seeing these changed is a good thing.

Also big thank you for Twins and Gatekeeper. I always thought these were the worst fights on THF and I bet if there was a utilization report these two are at the bottom of the list. Having the whole event reset just because of a 1% mistake was too harsh. Plus as your DPS increases it actually makes these two events harder. I had to drop to one or two toons if I want to do the Twins successfully.

Asks
Epic 3.0 - I currently don't have any and am not really working on them. Sitting around in a zone like Crystal Caverns killing the same lame mob over and over and over and over just to get one drop is terrible especially when considering I would have to do something like this 18+ times. I think it would be better to see quests more like the Epic 1.0 - 2.5. Give bosses in HoH/Nadox/DSK3 some drops, maybe have a few collection type components, then deep in VT, have the quest turn in guy.

Vex Thal Augs - These are very hard to get. I think they should drop more frequently as you progress in the phases. For example, phase 1 bosses should be at least 50% chance to drop 2-4. Phase 2 - 75%, phase 3 - 100%. Especially since half of the augs are useless if you ask me. Topaz, Onyx, Pearl and Ebony I just let rot as you only need a hand full of these.

Vex Thal Bosses - Their special attacks are just fine but I think they should hit harder. Aegos (Rog) is quite stacked but If he grabs aggro I don't worry about it, they can't kill him so I just let the halfling tank. This is not true in DSK3. If I don't slow and debuff Vule, he will own Galdace. Seems that if VT is suppose to be past DSK3 they would hit harder. =)