EZ Server

The fact that you feel my name is derived from anything other than sarcasm, and then question any sort of reading comprehension that I possess is hilarious.  I probably should have just started a new thread, but seriously, if you want to make plat at a lower level, you can do it, it's just pretty boring.  But so was farming mcp a year ago, or killing t1/t2 for essences to sell. This instant gratification phase needs to slow down a bit, it isn't the point of playing everquest, that is what wow was made for. Now we may have differing opinions, and I am fully willing to discuss them with a degree of civility, but you calling me retarded because you either don't get my humor or disagree with me is pretty pathetic. 

I'll play reasonable for once. This is how I look at it, when I started playing - nothing was at all easy and I don't even see it as easy now. I do agree that there are some adjustments to be made, because I know I for one have had one hell of a time getting plat other than farming HOH, I can't sell essences because I need those, instances take up a nice portion of plat if you don't have 100 dollars to get a free way point. It all comes down to what helps better the server in the end, we can think about it as making this game EZMODE ACTIVATE, or we can think about it as giving a chance for new players on a growing server to catch up. Yeah its normal for any player who has been here awhile to have had to tough through bullshit, that was a testing period of the server before changes like these could be made or even in the process of being thought about. It takes a trial and error yearly process and this happened to be one of them in many ways, this server has changed a lot since I played, some for worse, and a whole lot for better. Its definitely helping new people catch up, but at the same time there is still nothing easy about it. I won't call it elitism like everyone else likes to call it, and I see a lot of high end players actually OPEN to these ideas to help tighten the gap between new players and veterans. I don't think it should ever be in par, but I think that new players should have a chance to get where others are in times work. Everything hunter does is for a reason and it has been working pretty good through some trial and error. I hate to see the fighting between certain people over changes that have been going on when really, they aren't hurting you are they? I'm not saying one side of the argument is right and one is wrong but i'm surely saying that those who aren't on board with trying to help new players advance, should try to see it from when you were new to this server and understand the necessity of whats going on.

TL;DR lets get a long and slow the gap down between high end players and new players.

I understand the desire to bridge the gap, but to get from level 0 -> t5 would take me a month with new toons the way the server is set right now.  The hard things are augs, charms, and to a lesser extent the t5 quest.  Augs you do not need to get to or through t5, and most people entering t5 didn't have many worth mentioning. Charms you have to do, will have to do on your own. T5 is annoying, but its a grind, and you can easily get help or find other people doing it and team up.  Pretending that it somehow got harder recently to get from level 0 till you finish t5 is frankly bullshit.  I remember randomly making 100k plat here, or there selling a dc BP, or maybe a 4.0 book, but there was nothing to spend it on other than augs, which really weren't needed till you hit t5/t6.  Now we do have the necklace and shield quests, but the idea was that those would be a pretty high end item, and if players are hanging up their progression to get these items (which are not needed), I cannot really find much sympathy.  The real difference between new and veteran players here, is that the veterans have shown the willingness to grind and work for what they have in game, nobody gave it to them.  You want to be a veteran player? Put the time in. Suck it up.

And i'm not saying your in the wrong and all and I believe that SOA and the necklace ARE luxury items that don't need to be obtained, while nice sure. The recent problem I believe being seen is that there isn't enough plat circulating among the players, I believe this actually was a discussion over a year ago. All our plat is going towards a vendor that sells ores to make the augs. There is plenty of grind left in this game for people to even get to t5, you at least need to have near max in your charms to handle it if no UC and then the 100 kill task in t5, biggest grind yet. I hate it honestly but i'll tough it out and if it got changed after I finished it, I may be ill tempered but i'm not gonna say LETS REVERT IT BACK. I'm not saying anyone is doing that either, it's just how you look at the situation honestly. Now things that used to be big ticket items sell for nothing. t4 bp chest? I used to see that in /auc for 400-500k, now if it drops, its usually given away or maybe 100k. You can't deny that plat circulation is a huge problem right now.

I totally agree

More plat won't fix that. it will only be spent on augs / shield /etc. You have to somehow lower the cost of augs or come up with some other item that is tradable that is also WORTH trading if you really want to see more plat circulate.  There is plenty of plat on the server, just very little other than ore to spend it on.

Well that was the whole idea to ores, we drop the prices. Yeah we already got the increase to GLS to make the SLS but really lowering either the requirement of ores or dropping the prices seems to be the only reasonable thing.

Which ores? Iron to Platinum? Across the board?

Dropping the price of ores is going to frustrate the holy shit out of noobs who will have to compete with veteran players (who suddenly have that much more free spending money) for tradable materials.

Sorry but I disagree with you on this.
If Hunter dropped the price on ores I would stockfuckingpile (ores) because I would like to get a SOTA on every toon and that is currently a decent chunk of pp for anyone to spend.

I have new set of my own alts I should work on so I would farm my guild instance of dragons/gods to get the essences i need.

Now my viewpoint maybe not as valid cause I only play a couple days a week but to say that the server is in "instant gratification mode" is just ridiculous. I've been playing for over 6 months, I'm still finishing up my 3.5's and have a few 4.0's and am mostly T2/T3. I'm currently working on a UC for my pally and warrior (which i realize is not needed for my current tier).

I think some veteran players forget how hard it is to start from NOTHING. Sure I can roll an alt and get it to my current tier in a matter of a day but that's with the help of a full group who's capable of taking down most of HoH and shadow before the respawn starts.

I've fully realized that I will never "catch up" to the current T7 players and I don't feel I or anyone is entitled to that. But in my opinion, it's healthy for the game to make the lower tiers just a little easier so the real dedicated newer players can at least take a stab at catching up. There will always be players like myself who will be lagging behind.

I also think that saying people are "riding the easy train", as a way of putting it, is just ridiculous. I came back from a 8? month break, and I discovered when I got back, it seemed like the holy hell had been nerfed out of GLS drop rate. When I was doing CG for a new alt I made to help me kill t3 faster, it took me a good 20 minutes to get ONE GLS. If you want to tell me that ONE gls per 20m is acceptable, then I, personally, think there must be something wrong with you. Also, every time I would try to farm GLS's, the drop rate was that terrible. With the new GLS changes, it's back to how I remember it being, maybe a little bit better than I remember. I think it's great that it's like this now.


lol, an amazing concept, teaming up to do things faster????? WHAT IS THIS, AN ACTUAL MMO??????? I'm sorry Marxist, I think you're a cool guy, but man, right here, RIGHT HERE, that's where you lose me. If you honestly think that teaming up with other people is a bad thing, then you really should quit playing MMO's in general, and just go to play skyrim or something. I don't understand why, in an online game, you would look down on the one who does what online games were BUILT FOR, and GROUPS UP!!! For example, I grouped up with my friend, and we did some t3 and MCP kills. I wasn't sure I could kill MCP on my own, but with our team going (him 7boxing, me 6boxing), we killed it with ease. We were killing t3 bosses in like 1m 20s, MUCH faster than I could on my own. Now that you know this, I suppose you think i'm a terrible person for grouping up, RIGHT????

I'm sorry, but just because you had to walk to school, uphill, both ways, in the snow, doesn't mean the future generations have to do the same thing also.

I'm not sure how you are interpreting that but it sounds like he's encouraging grouping in T5 not shunning it.

Hrm, I guess you might be right. I think I shouldn't read things early in the morning, especially when i've just stepped in dog poop. I'll leave that post there for examples of what not to do in the morning :P

I have to disagree with the "cool guy" statement. I have him on ignore in game (have since last spring) and wish I could do so here. But since I cant, I'll play along.

Again, the whole "reading comprehension" thing. Did I at any point in time state that YOU were a "marxist"? No. I simply compared your words to an ideology you derived your name from. In fact I didnt even allude to the possibility that you might agree with that ideology. If you misunderstood that then I should have stated it more clearly.

And as to the "out of touch" thing. Seems every time you post you prove my point....and many seem to agree with me. Look, I dont want EZ to be "easy" mode any more than anyone else. But I've been helping a lot of newer players lately....and they all complain about the same things. SLS rate was one of em. 100K for an SLS was a freaking BARGAIN. I wouldnt sell one for 200K. But then I can make more than that an hour with my team, easily. Thankfully Hunter listened (and because of threads and feedback like you see here) and made this a bit better.

But that leads to the second complaint: cash. You can sit there and claim all you like that certain things are "luxury items", but the reality is that Hunter, as with any decent dev, tunes the game around whats available in it. If he adds certain items, he tweaks the content with those items in mind. And we arent talking about an SoA or necklaces here (though I dont see the necklace as a luxury item....I see it as something that allows casters to approach melee in terms of rate of DPS, and impose the same conditions, ie spending of plat and farmed items).... we're talking about augs. If you think augs are a "luxury item" you again prove just how out of touch you are. Heavy dps is a must for middle and higher tiers (anything T4 and up) and the most effective dps bumps are charms and augs (both, NOT either or). Again, Hunter has tweaked these mobs over time with charms and augs in mind. He's approved Hateborne's spell adds with these items in mind, and tuned them accordingly. Two things cockblock gaining augs, and for most the biggest cock is plat.

So lets take a look at plat. Lets look at the top 5 ways people made plat a year ago. For many the BoT quest was king: make a raid, run through BoT and kill 20 ele's and make 300 to 400K an hour. Could be done with a team consisting of all 65's, but just 1 T1 warrior or SK. Hunter informed people this method was not how he intended things to work and removed it (understandable). So that plat method is gone. Another method people used was to just make solo or group instances in a fg/cg item drop zone, farm items and sell them or kits. People could easily, using this method, harvest 4, 5 or more kits a day (at 250K a pop, or more). I know a LOT of people who did this, though I've never in my career here sold an FG/CG kit (too many guildies or alts who needed em). I know of 3 "top names" on the server who used this method for cash for a VERY long time....usually on an alt while they were working in a higher tier zone. Again, not how Hunter planned for things to go, so he removed this option by removing the ability to make instances in FG/CG zones (which he has recently made possible again, but at 25 times the cost for a solo instance, 10 times the cost for a group and nearly 4 times the cost for a guild instance). Another method that was tops was farming Velks for gems. People would pop an instance, go into velks and mass clear the castle, and make 200K an hour. Could do this with a 2.0 character of almost any class, though the plat rate was slower. But because of the cg/fg zone limitation on instances, this alternative was removed. No train zone, public only, and hypercamped. We can again now, but 25K solo, 50K group or 75K group. And people are paying those prices to again be able to again make decent bank in gem drops. Another method people used was to run newer players through qvic or even LDON.....but with the amount of newer players in EZ, and the amount of old players making new characters because of class changes and changed group dynamics, you see a ton of tokens and pages rotting in both those zones, and players letting whomever loot away....so this method is also less profitable. Players also used to rely on gems from LDON and Qvic for a source of cash, but the drop rate on gems in these zones was GREATLY reduced to deal with lag. And while many harvested gems in T1/T2 this isnt a steady, reliable source of plat because of RNG. As for the last method....selling T1/2 armor drops....well, a year ago a DC chest sold for six figures EASY. Now? Last 4 trips to PoDrags for alts or friends we couldnt give them away.

Now lets take a look at aug costs. A rank 2 NS aug costs 170K and change in ores alone. Also 2 SLS, which (thankfully) recently became easier to get. A rank 3 is another 350K, and 2 more SLS, plus lesser dragon essences (around 200K a pop if you cant get one to drop). If you dont farm and just pay for the mats, thats 900Kish for a rank 3 NS aug (so get to farming SLS and essences!). A rank 4 is almost 600K in ores alone. FS augs are a little cheaper (not much) and IS augs are half the cost of FS augs. So....getting 2 NS4 augs will cost a new player almost 2.3 million plat in ores, 4 qvic, 4 lesser dragon and 4 greater dragon essences and 12 SLS. Thats for ONE character, and NS4 x2.

There is no doubt in the mind of anyone who honestly looks at the state of the server that 1) plat is in higher demand than it has ever been because of augs (a must) and other "luxury" items :P, and that 2) plat in the lower tiers is one hell of a lot harder to come by.

As to the solution? You could increase plat drops....but we all see how well thats worked RL for the US and other nations, and the economy here would be effected exactly the same way. I think, as I stated elsewhere, that the lower tiers of ores need to be tweaked a bit cost wise. New players in T2 and HoH are just starting to see the need for augs and charms....and to get over that "hump" into the real earning levels that allow them to purchase rank 4 and higher augs they might need a little help.

And to you, Marxist.....I dont like you, even a little. I think you're an ass more often than not. However, we dont have to like each other, and not everyone on such a game will like every other player. And.... thats no excuse for me responding to what I perceive as assinine behavior in a like manner. We can at the very least be civil to one another. My apologies to you and the forums for my tone earlier.

It is pointless trying to have any sort of civil discussion with you. If you are going to post your thoughts on the forums, be prepared to have people disagree with you. You make poor assumptions and continue to try and make juvenile personal attacks. Hunter will eventually do what he finds best for the server, and we will all support his decision. 

Unless this thead keeps getting dragged out im done posting on this topic. People need to see how these changes go for a few weeks before they start complaining, it isnt fair to hunter and the others putting a lot of effort into improving the server.

Maybe I'm missing something but where in this entire post is anyone complaining about the recent changes?

The only complaining I see is you are calling people out because they expect instant gratification....which I fail to see that in any of these posts as well...so yeah that comment is slightly out of left field.

Just ignore him, Matt. I'm not the only one who has in game. This is a perfect snapshot of how the guy reacts to....well, everything.

Back to adult discussion. The recent changes are for the most part fantastic. But as some have obviously failed to grasp, they are the direct result of feedback and posts like these. Not complaints....observations and suggestions. I hope people ignore the detractors and continue to post such. We may not always agree on the methods others suggest, but its the back and forth along with Hunter's judgement that make this server IMO one of the best MMO's out there.

Wait you mean I cant log in a brand new toon to find it wearing full T6 with 3 epic 6.0 a UCv2 and 60mpp in the bank?  :o ???
Fuck Hunter the game is to hard you need to make it easier.
/sarcasm off

To many failposts QQ'ing and hoping if they get enough people to QQ about the same non-issue Hunter will make the game easier.

ive only been playing for about 6 months if that. almost have first 5.0 and most of my t5 gear. some of it was easy some hard.but it all was for the most part fun to do. the problem is everytime hunter makes something a lil easier people push for more. you can only make things so easy and keep with the spirit of the game. i think most things are fine how they are and the stream of new content is going great.i have much respect for the older players that worked so hard to get what they have. thanx to players like bubbins and marxist ive gotten as far as i have.. i guess my point is new players should listen and be thankful the grind isnt as hard as before and old players realize things evolve and sometimes are easier over time.its kinda hard cuz i agree with alot of points from both sides.guess it dont make sense im just grateful to have the server and most of the peeps on it in general

Not asking for things to be easier....just pointing out that one of the consequences of some of the changes that have been made recently is that plat for lower level characters is harder to come by. Not impossible....just noticeably harder.

Another example. Since the delay changes have any of you tried leveling a brand new melee character without any higher level help? I had an old EQ friend create a character and see what it was like yesterday. Took him, as a monk, almost 2 hours to hit level 10. Some of that, granted, was being new to a VERY different server....but once in FoB it took him 40 minutes to do the kill 5 skelly quest. This isnt someone new to EQ....this is an experienced 14 year EQ vet. So I made a zerker to see what was wrong.

The 1.0 zerker epic is 275 damage....which in old EQ terms is one hell of a weapon at level 1. However, with the new delays it was SLLLLLOOOOWWW.....didnt hit often at all. But the higher damage should compensate for it, right? Wrong. Damage before 20 is capped. Every hit I made with the zerker epic was 20 damage. No higher, with a 275 damage weapon. I could literally watch the mobs health regen half the damage I'd done between every hit. By the time I hit level 10 I was doing a whopping 40 damage max. Killing anything took forever. I've already pointed this out to Hunter and I am sure he'll find a fix for it.

But the point of all this is....sometimes changes have unforseen consequences, and sometimes they can  be a negative game changer. Without players pointing some of these out to Hunter, who doesnt play every day, and certainly doesnt engage in all aspects of the game when he does, mitigating or reversing these negative consequences cannot happen. Its not complaining.....its discussing. I know the adults on the forums can understand the difference.

that does seem like a problem, i'd start a new thread for it though

There are rules that can remove the damage caps for low level toons.  Might help.

Again, wasnt trying to bring up a new topic. As I said, Hunter knows about this already and is addressing it. Was using it as an example: sometimes new changes have unintended consequences.

i agree with you on that. hopefully can find a good balance for all chars playing