500+ posts and counting

[Zacatac]

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/po...opic_id=123181

Very long and probably going to continue thread on the SOE boards about how the new cultural needs to be nerfed.

I had to post a few times, but I think I'm done reading it now.

[Shadrok]

I ain't gonna read it all ...

Basically, the uber raiders think that their's is the only way to play the game. They think raiding and slaughtering is what the game is about and look down their nose at tradeskillers.

Please don't tell them about all the time I wasted factioning so that my Iksar can wander freely through most of the old world ciites.

[EloMist]

Birth of a Norrath with room for groupers

Not all the raiders in the game are "ebil". Some of them actually realize that there are ways and ways to play the game. That serious player does not equal raider and raider does not equal serious player, serious player = serious player and each one chooses how to enjoy and spend their hours.

That said, is it possible that the complaining is because of a definitive database (aka eqplayers) that the bean counters can look at and guide the game towards where the money really comes from? Do the ride-along elitists hear a death knell?

I present for consideration... TBS - strongly aimed at groups, and not raiding groups, not weak ones necessarily but not top end either. Not that there wasn't content for the raiders. But what was the selling point?

And now... SoF releases and where is it aimed primarily? I would bet there is some fine raid content, but I for one am chomping at the bit to get my wife and son in there... oh wait, my son is already creaming dragonscale (grumble grumble, necros, grumble!). Not just group gear but tiers of group gear. Granted there is also tiers of raid gear, but the gap is closing between them. Our household is seeing a definite shift anyway.

So all the 85'd, afk'n, lay-about, 54 count makers can whine away for all of me. As long as there are reasonable folk interjecting into those threads that only a few key people actually make a raid work or fail (and they are usually guild leaders and a tight group of regular play togethers) I won't worry about it.

(If you're sitting there saying "He's bashing all my hard work! grrrr"... If the shoe doesn't fit, don't put it on. I know a few folks that play key raid roles, including leading them... it's hard work, nothing but props! But usually they don't waste their time griping about uber tradeskill gear. They may not understand the reasoning behind the time vs reward but they don't complain about gear equal to what they HAD last year or the year before.)

[Itek]

Basically, the uber raiders think that their's is the only way to play the game. They think raiding and slaughtering is what the game is about and look down their nose at tradeskillers.

You are equally, or more, guilty of looking down your nose. And probably more mis-informed.

At least 50% of the 2100 club on my server is in top end raiding guilds. I'd say well more than half are 1400. And they would love to hear your faction woes. Ask someone to tell you the joys of Jenray factioning.

Some folks in every group will complain. Folks will complain if you give them a new rope with which to hang. (Personally I'd like the oldest, most decayed rope you got if you figure to try to hang me.) Case in point, Jewelcraft got a MAJOR upgrade and will be extremely useful (and profitable) and folks complained about the change.

And, as an aside, more than a few "uber" folks I know are already dusting off their banked TradeSkilled gear to put the new augs in once they start being available. And only because I used binary counting can I count on one hand the number of folks (in the top 10, if not top 5, in their class on the server) who are grinding away on tradeskill drops, tasks, recipes.

If you think the ubers aren't interested in tradeskills, look around. More than a few post here.

[EloMist]

If you think the ubers aren't interested in tradeskills, look around. More than a few post here.

Point!

Top guild on Drinal has many high end tradeskillers, and ENCOURAGES well rounded characters in addition to flags/playtime/*add other requirements of choice*. I'm pretty sure they are taking advantage of their *uberness* to tradeskill right now. Thereby side-stepping the debate and offering up an excellent example of the best way to deal with the issue in the first place. Oh, and they are most likely helping people not even in their guild do the same thing while at it.

Using a broad brush either way can make a less than clear portrait of the situation. Let's hope they don't pour on the turpentine like they did with Ward of Tunare... gahh!! Not going there, it was just an example.

[SincroFashad]

I read portions of the insanely long thread in question, and I think the loudest howling wasn't from the end game raiders, it was from the mid-tier raiders who are seeing folks buying armor/symbols and ending up with gear twice as good as they can acquire.

Mostly what the thread contains, tho, is whining. :P

[Shadrok]

I'm sorry

I meant to say:
Basically, the "uber" raiders, who are whining in this post ...

I did not mean to imply that all high-end raiders are "ebil" or uninformed. Of course not; the best high-end raiders include many hard-working tradeskillers.

[Leana]

I think that most of the high end raiders, and maybe most of the population have a significant misunderstanding of what happened and why. The issue as I see it is that SOE for a long time went with a principle that the group armor should not be more than 75% of the power of the average raider. This decision is a good one if and only if the raiders in the game are progressing at a good rate. The problem came in the fact that the raiding environment changed and most of the guilds on the servers stagnated, locking up about Anguish, demi, and DK level. Since the average raider wasn't moving upwards, then all group gear could not move upward so long as the 75% constraint was in place.

This in turn created a second problem, which was worse. As the upper end of raiding progressed, the power spread between the top and bottom got too huge, making it difficult for the developers to make content that served both communities. This was really apparent in TSS where the original Frostcrypt and Ashengate were insanely hard in order to suit raiders, but dropped crap loot, because to give loot appropriate to the challenge would introduce changes into the group community that were too good in the eyes of the developers. Their response, after a lot of bickering among players was to nerf the difficulty of AG and FC, which pissed off a bunch of the raiders.

Now the developers were in a bind. They really couldn't improve the group content, due the their self imposed constraints, and they couldn't improve stuff for raiders without further expanding the gap. Raiders were losing interest in anything outside raids, because nothing outside the raids would be any kind of improvement. So, the split in power was hurting the game.

So, the solution they chose in the last expansion was to relieve the constraint and allow group content to improve past the point of the average raider. How this is going to pan out will be hard to say.

The first and obvious affect will of course be a lot of whining and gnashing as players who gave up the group game in favor of the more lucrative raiding game now find their choices to have less value. Of course, there'll be a lot of backlashing on this. Some raiders, who feel their efforts were marginalized will bicker, wail, even quit the game.

Other raiders are working as hard as possible to leverage the changes, which brings us to the second obvious affect. For the first time in a while, we'll see a significant movement in the power of the average raider as well as the power of the average grouper. Essentially, SOE radically changed their policy and changed the slope of the power gain in the game. This is the most significant change we've ever seen, with gear in the expansion growing by as much as 100% in power over the last expansion. I can't remember a single expansion since maybe Kunark where that has been the case.

I personally think the slope was too steep. Maybe a power increase of about half what was done would have been better. The group power would cross the average raider plane still, but it wouldn't cross it so radically as to significantly impact the value of two expansions worth of raid gear in one fell swoop. Raiders' power jumping so radically will probably introduce balance issues we haven't considered before. Time will tell what affect all this will have on the game.

While I think the changes were a bit too radical, I think the removal of the 75% constraint was a significantly good change for the game. I think that one rule stagnated the game and made it hard to itemize and improve both group and raid gear.

Don't worry so much about what happens in that thread. I think SOE knows full well what they were doing when they made the changes to cultural armor, and it is unlikely that a long thread on the issue is going to make much difference in their plans. Change is hard for people as they find the things they valued most have less value. They'll gripe and whine, and when it is all over, they'll either accept it or move on. There is nothing anyone can do to change that.

[Zacatac]

[Great post Leana]

It's just another "mudflation" event. Like so many other things before. EQ has been getting easier and easier in certain way.

Like me walking from Felwithe to Halas at level 8, with no maps, back in 1999.
Like running back and forth between Freeport (where the molds were sold) and Highpass (where the unstackable metal was sold) to do smithing.

Like doing all our combines the old fashioned way, 1 ingredient at a time, before the new tradeskill UI.

Now you have people who are basicially "I had to do Demi with level 70 and crappy gear, and so should YOU!" & "You can't have 500+ hp/mana gear!! Only raiders can have stuff that good!!"

[Flehmen]

I also agree that Leana has a good point.

I'll add two cents. It has been my experience, having recently re-started, that there is a barrier to new/displaced toons after level 50. Much of the level 50 content in the newest zones is nigh on impossible for so so equiped toons to play in. My standard group is my wife's warrior and my cleric(I so need to box some DPS). There is nothing in the baz that I can buy as an upgrade that isn't req level 65, even the stuff I can't afford.

What this has accomplished is putting me in much older zones, hunting loot which isn't valueable while grinding out. Very often there is no one of my level to group with. It seems like the only way make it in the new zones is simply level and let everything go lightblue or grey to hunt there. I don't have regular play times, and tried and didn't like the family guild thing, so regular friends to play with are few and far between.

A reduction of the gap between uber geared and "regular folks" isn't amiss when new zones TSS onward have been made significantly harder. Unfortunately, due to the gear that IS out there, nerfing the zones makes no sense.

I forsee the "barrier" ending by 65 but I'm currently with 4 new toons near that area so the issue is dear to my heart.

BTW, Big N, Global drops are very very nice. I love being able to get my spell research, tailoring, and smithing stuff while XPing at my level and I hope to see more consideration like that in the future! It adds value to some of the time I spend in the old world zones.