Ornate armor and new proposed flag dropping

[Rendael Brigh]

With the new proposed dropping of flag requirement for pre-elemental zones, this would change the ornate armor quests as well.
They required some of these flags before you could get them.
So how is this going to be worked out oh great SOE / Verant tradeskill dept?

[Cantatus]

Well, there are two possibilities with this. They could remove the requirements and allow you to complete ornate armor regardless of what you have killed or they could leave in the requirements so you'd still need to kill the same mobs as before to get flagged for it.

[Lilosh]

Re: Ornate armor and new proposed flag dropping

So how is this going to be worked out oh great SOE / Verant tradeskill dept?

This is not the Sony Tradeskills department.

This is a fan-site, with a message board. :-)

You're looking foir the boards over at www.everquest.com


-Lilosh

[Rendael Brigh]

oh gawsh.

I am a long-time poster of EQ Traders. Go put down someone else somewhere else.

[Danthen]

oh gawsh.

I am a long-time poster of EQ Traders. Go put down someone else somewhere else.

Well said :twisted:

Anyway, I'd assume they would keep the flag requirements for the ornate armor. Since thats the only requirement (im guessing theres no req. level to do the quest since the armor has no req. level) for questing it, I doubt they'd just let anyone 46+ get it.

[Lilosh]

*grin*

You asked a question directly to Sony/Verant, as I quoted.

I suggested where the correct place to ask THEM would be.

Don't tell me that I am "putting you down", please.


-Lilosh

[Sylphan]

I have to agree that addressing SOE directly is a little inappropriate on these boards. (no I'm not a moderator) Usually we rephrase questions so they seem to be addressed to other players, while secretly knowing that SOE employees sometimes browse these boards.

But it's a timely topic, especially since increasing ornate drop rates is the most logical first step in improving PoP loot (as they promised to do).

It is already sufficient to do the quest with Askr in PoS for the flag to BoT.

Even if they somehow forget to change the Ornate quest, you'll probably be able to do the BoT quest with a little effort if you somehow loot an ornate mold and want to make the armor. I'm not going to go on and on about how easy the BoT quest is, but it's not something that requires a large guild effort and lots of AE damage in the same sense that killing Aerin'Dar or Grummus or Saryrn does. So I'm not worried.

[Tenrin]

Youll have to excuse lilosh, its not easy being short

[Niami DenMother]

Ok folks, let's settle down a bit, m'kay?

So how is this going to be worked out oh great SOE / Verant tradeskill dept?

{gentle nudge} It WAS poorly worded by others, but please remember that we'd really, really like to discourage folks, even oldtimers like yourself, from posting questions to SoE/Verant here, as some of our newer folk take that as a cue to do the same, and get bent out of shape when they don't get a direct answer back.

That having been saiid, the flags for the planar armor quests are different than the zone entry flags ... nonelemental zones may be having their flag checks removed, but flags for killing specific mobs, and completing certain scripts, are still required to reach the elemental planes, and will *likely* still be required for the planar armor quests. This is, of course, subject to change by SoE/Verant, but that will have to be something that they should address on their site, not over here.

[B_Delacroix]

Regardless of what happens. Should I be lucky enough to recieve an ornate mold before I am flagged such that the dwarf will allow me to purchase from him, I will still keep them in the bank until that moment. It is only a matter of time before the proper flags are achieved.

[Quaras]

Aid Grimel

On a similar note, I wonder if the change to the flagging system will influence the requirements for the Aid Grimel Quest....

[Angelsyn]

Re: Aid Grimel

On a similar note, I wonder if the change to the flagging system will influence the requirements for the Aid Grimel Quest....

I would have to agree with Denmom's thought that the various quests will still require the person to have the appropriate Flags to do them.

I see no reason at all for them to change that.

[saraden]

Flags

I've been thinking about the upcoming changes to flagging and wondering how it would affect progression to elemental planes. They are changing the flagging system as such:

"Planes of Power has provided us with valuable insight into the group and guild dynamics that are involved in large scale games. The way that we had expected guilds to advance through the story of Planes of Power has become a roadblock for some guilds, and some members have fallen behind and found it difficult to catch up. Obviously this was not our intention. We want players to play with their friends and guild mates.
To correct this issue, we will be removing the flag requirements for entry into the following Planes of Power zones:
 Bastion of Thunder
 Plane of Tactics
 Halls of Honor
 Plane of Nightmare
 Plane of Storms
 Plane of Torment
 Plane of Valor
 Crypt of Decay
This will make the majority of Planes of Power zones available to everyone, and should allow most guilds to travel and adventure together. We understand that those that have already earned the entry flags for these zones have put some effort into that accomplishment. We will be giving a reward to those that have done so, though you'll have to wait to see what that reward is. "

Also they are changing the access to the Plane of Time as such:

"Now that the Plane of Time has been entered, it's given us an opportunity to look at what's involved in getting there. One issue that's been brought up is that once a guild gets into the the Plane of Time, it's a bad idea to have them going to kill lower-tier gods to get story flags for their new members. This has two real issues - first, it means the Plane of Time capable guild is killing gods they wouldn't normally fight anymore, and second, they're taking those gods away from lower-tier guilds who are interested in experiencing them.
We're making some changes to zone entrance requirements throughout Planes of Power soon, in order to make the lower tiers much more accessible to players and to help with the feeling of being "left behind" if you miss certain raids or events. We'll be detailing those changes in the next week or so, but we're going to make this change to Plane of Time access tonight:
In order to gain access to the Plane of Time, each character simply needs to have killed the four elemental gods and have a Quintessence of Elements.
This change should maintain the difficulty of gaining Plane of Time access, but decreases the amount of lower-tier content needed for reflagging new members. This leaves the gods in the lower planes for the guilds who want to experience them, and keeps the Elemental Planes guilds in zones more appropriate to their power level. We feel this is a good change for the game and benefits high-level guilds of all types. As noted above, we'll be announcing additional Planes of Power changes next week that address many of the common concerns we've heard about planar progression. "

Clearly with these changes and the others that they announced they are wanting to address the issues that have upset people about PoP since day one. However, I wonder how this will specifically work--will they totally revamp the flagging system to reflect the changes? Or is their plan simply that uber guilds could bring new recruits along on raids to kill the elemental gods and get a Quintessence of Elements (sorry I have no clue what that is or how its obtained) via the ability to bring a few non-flagged people on a raid and then those people would have access to the plane of time. That solution makes the assumption that all a plane of time capable guild is going to do is raid plane of time. Sure this might be the case initially but clearly they will do other things including killing other gods in earlier planes. So new members to uber guilds would still need flags for these zones. The solution of bringing a few non-flagged people on a raid is a non-solution as it is buggy and can lead to obvious problems with link deaths and other occurrences that can hold up a whole raid or lead to a characters corpse being trapped in a zone they can't access. What needs to happen is that the whole story-line and flagging system needs to be re-evaluated so that the flags for elemental planes begin in 3rd tier zones with no pre-requisite flags. They of course will need to be careful as many bugs could easily arise in this system. Also they will need to evaluate how it affects related things such as the fact that ornate armor quests require being flagged for zones where these patterns drop and now those flags won't be required to enter those zones. Also the Aid Grimel quest should be re-evaluated as no uber guild is going to go back and do earlier flags just to help members do this quest. Inm fact this quest requires flags that won't even be needed now. This quest should not require flags as the effort in grand mastering all 7 trade skills (both in AA and in skilling up) and the needed components (which should all be droppable if they aren't) are enough of a challenge and pre-requisite for this quest and its end rewards. Sony should look as how well received the solstice earring quest and the coldain progressive quests were received and apply that logic to this quest. The requirements are steep by any measure and it would still be limited in the number of people that would get very far along in it even if it had no flagging requirements. I hope that Sony carefully looks at the flagging system and adjusts it along with the elimination of flags for entry into 3rd tier zones. Also as one side not their list includes plane of nightmare--by that I hope they mean plane of nightmare B and eliminating the hedge maze requirment otherwise that plane has no reason to be on this list.

[Anneli]

Rendael's basic question was a good one though.

Keep in mind, EQ is a very intricate game. There are so many details and interdependencies that it would require very detailed record keeping for SoE's EQ-personnel to make all the changes correctly the first time.

It wouldnt be out of the realm of possibilities that the designers had forgotten the flag requirement for making the armor. As I understand player message boards (as a general statement) are read by people at SoE (and we would hope this one), I view the question being posted as a nice "heads up" to SoE not to forget this detail.

It also allows us to speculate on different solutions, and to conduct a general debate- which I view as being beneficial to SoE (again- should they read this board ).

Shaiel/Anneli etc...

[Gargazon]

I thought this was a tradeskill question, I mean I know you can pay the NPC to do it for you for 3k, but you can also do it yourself if your skills are high enough, thus it becomes a tradeskill issue, yes?