EZ Server

Recently I had the pleasure of leveling another set of characters through all the tiers except t9 and wanted to provide some suggestions as to how the experience could be made potentially more enjoyable for future and current players. Addressing these issues could reduce player burn out/frustration and further increase the population of the server. Most of these changes are not making the game easier, rather they're addressing the issue of time investment vs. reward. This game has never been hard, just time consuming.

New ideas:
1.) Add crystal quests to progression zones
2.) Allow more classes to throw down ae damage similar to zerks
3.) Make paladins and Sks beefy enough to tank
4.) Reduce hp of mobs in Velks lab
5.) Add a quest that rewards an arch type beneficial item that may be upgraded in each zone from 1-70.
6.) Make lower level charm upgrades stackable.
7.) Make resist Augs stackable by rank
8.) Remvoe aug combine recipes from t1 and add in augs to treasure chests.
9.) Implement XP mask earlier in the game and allow players to upgrade via quests as they level. (E.g. rank 1-10 = 2 rare drops from first zone / set amount of aa)

Waypoints:
Add NPC that sells waypoint item and explains how to use it.
Reduce cost of instance creation/reset.

Tserrina tank pet buff item:
Remove this item from tserrina's loot table and make it a quest item for T1 pet classes.

Crystal quest:
Implement some kind of one time quest that rewards newly leveled characters with 200-500 or so aa.

SoT quest:
Make the reward yield a rank 3 or 4 scepter instead of rank 1 and make rank 1s rare drop off lower tier bosses. Rare drop scepters could increase in rank as players go up in tier maybe 1 rank per tier like resistance stones.
Add more ranks past rank 10 attainable via higher level quests.

Qvic:
add armor exchange vendor like in T1
Change rare boss to spawn after x amount of bosses killed.

LDON:
significantly increase drop rate of all cards since ldon armor is under used.
reduce the amount of cards needed per armor piece

CT:
add armor exchange vendor like in T1

T1:
increase drop rate of essences to 20%
Change ancient dragon spawn to spawn after x amount of bosses killed

T2:
increase drop rate of essences to 20%

T3:
increase drop rate of essences to 20%

T4:
Add armor exchange vendor
increase drop rate of essences to 20%

T5:
increase spawn chance of triggered mobs

T6:
add Jelvan's keepsake to list of chests that may be opened with /open

T7:
Increase respawn time of zone to >8hours

T8:
Increase drop rate of scales for UCv3/add rare spawn chests containing scales
add armor exchange vendor
Increase drop rate of essences on bosses

So lets get this straight, you leveled another group all the way through to into t8. You did it, that's almost the end of the line. and you want to make it even easier? From also having just leveled my third group to into t8, i would like to comment on a few points.

The pet buff clicky from Tserinna should stay there. its a 75k hp item, that's around t7, to much for t1.

You get AA form farming that last piece that wont drop in qvic, then ct and so on. I know my toons had something like 20k aa by the time i got around to turning in the ring for the first time.

The SoT quest, Hate has stated he was going to revisit, so leave alone till he gets to that.

Armour exchange. yes, there is one in T1. no idea why, that is only place it exists. Because T1 is not class specific, it might could be argued to take it out there.

Essence drop rate, the only one i might agree with is T1. all the rest were recently adjusted way up, 10% i believe not long ago.The tiki's used to take 30 MINUTES to respawn, now it's 30 seconds.

QVIC the only rare boss in ancient sand monster, and he spawns when you kill the regular sand monster. it is for the EPIC. this seems like a good mechanic. almost to easy. there were people the other day who turned their epic's into 3.0 augs, but could not yet get into pod.Maybe make it easier to target the sand mosnters on the map.

Illsalin this is the first big weed out zone. you need to hav 4.0's all around. need most/all toons to have UC. need to be working on strike augs, preferably up to 4? wherever Gods majors stop at. Hate already added a lotto bot. We all know that some of these bosses can be a b!tch to get. Took me 38 clears to get riptor for my second group. Maybe some sort of i have spawned Exobeast 25 times, force spawn Riptor now type quest? But not anything that makes it too easy.

Anguish, yes add Jevlan chest to /open seems good to me.

Lopingplains extending this to 8 hours seems like a good idea, mostly. There was some discussion in the past that this forces you to get together and work the zones with friends. However no other zone really requires that. Recently working this zone solo, with my 16 toons, first 12 strike 10's full t8, war with UW9, it still took every bit of 4 hours, and i was getting boss chains well into respawns. there was also alot of dead time right after trash clear with little or nothing up. So yes, agree with 8 hour respawns here.

Templeveeshan Shows that is what you are working on there, want more of everything. This place takes me about an hour to clear to just the armour bosses, leaving stuff up in east/west wings. I average 1.2 Essences, 8-12 scales a clear.seems like a decent number to me. This was Recently increased, with adding 3 scales to Vulak. (Yay plat drops here!!) If you get stuck on one piece, say the wrist, make a few instance, clear to Telk? and bounce/repop kill till you get what you need. Or just clear over and over for scales/essence to work UCv3 until gear is done.

You obviously spent alot of time thinking about this. Please do not take this as merely disparaging, just trying to look after the health of the server. To easy and you get nothing but people crammed in t8/t9 complaining there is nothing to do. To hard and well, what is to hard for EzEq, UW11? yeah people will do that anyway. 

I did the same thing recently....leveled a war/clr/ench/zerk/zerk/monk without high level help of any kind, as a way to see whats changed on the server aqnd what I might need to alter on the EZGUIDE.

I'll tackle these one at a time:


Agree, partially. I get questioned on this a lot. Making the waypoint a part of the QRG quests would help new people a ton. I DO NOT agree on lowering costs for instances. They SHOULD cost, if nothing else than to get phish used to the idea that everything here costs one way or another! Besides, instance costs are cheap, and higher costs further on encourage players to invest in the server by donating and buying a free instance maker.

That said, one thing I'd agree with: make the waypoint creator a quest you can get before 70.....perhaps by handing a quest npc a few SLS (which ANY newbie can get in JP quickly enough).

Oh, and one other thing: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make a way that within 24 or 12 or whatever hours of an instance ending you can restart the instance back to three days (at full costs of creating a new instance). That or bring back deleting instances.


No. HELL no. The necklace of dragons spell mages get in T2 is strong enough at this tier. Adding the pet clicky from ToFS is overkill.


Meh. Maybe. In all honesty getting a minor crystal to a player as part of a 60's QRG quest isnt game breaking, and would make handling LDON and Qvic for new players a lot more doable. But.....it really doesnt take much to get a team of 6 (doing Time 6 times) enough AA to get them started.


Lets wait and see what Hate has in store, as Red said.


No. This is "Gut Check One". DO NOT make Qvic much easier than it already is. The difficulty served a purpose, and an important one. Besides, as it stands there are plenty of ways around it now.


This wouldnt increase use of this armor, anyway. Wanna make the cards useful? Add rank 1 HRA to what you can buy with points.


Not needed. This armor isnt class specific, and drops like candy. If you're having that hard a time getting armor in CT then chat less and kill more. T1 I can understand, since the armor ONLY drops from a triggered boss, and the trigger drops are somewhat rare. There is absolutely NO reason to make CT easier than it already is (VERY).


I have a better solution for essences: put adds back in to T1 boss kills, and give adds a chance to spawn mini bosses, same as T2. Otherwise, yes, T1 essences are way out of line on drop rate, especially for newer players trying to aug up.


Sure, if those essences are used for anything OTHER than UW, and UW uses another item thats every bit as rare as it is now. Punishing players trying to get the "must have basics" of the game just to balance UW difficulty is silly. UW and everything else SHOULD NOT use the same tiered essences. Period.


Sure, if those essences are used for anything OTHER than UW, and UW uses another item thats every bit as rare as it is now. Punishing players trying to get the "must have basics" of the game just to balance UW difficulty is silly. UW and everything else SHOULD NOT use the same tiered essences. Period.


No, and see the above 2 replies.


No. T5 needs to be another gut check, since the difference between t1 to T5 and T6+ is so profound.


Sure, why not. But honestly 1 to 2 seconds to /open or 3 to 5 seconds to kill it. Not that big a diff.


Agreed, especially since by the time people hit T7 they probably have the ability to repop at will.


No. Should be hard, SHOULD make you take your time and get all you need from the zone to make T9 doable.

No, i was referencing the AD like boss I could not remember the name tho.

I mentioned the Tserrina tank buff item because I think it is dumb that a player would need to kill tserrina to enable a pet class to buff their pet to a more tank level so that pet can tank. Why would that player need a pet to tank if they already have tanks beefy enough to kill tserrina? This item should be obtainable for the players that are trying to progress through content with a pet tanking. Though I agree this is not the most feasible of strategies, I think it should be more accommodating than it is. Certainly the changes to buffs being implemented right now will help, but I think the tserrina item should be reevaluated.


Its not that anything in this game is easy, rather things take time. A player forced to run 10 more qvic/ct/t4/t8 runs because they are having problems farming 1 specific piece of armor is ridiculous and could be easily addressed.

I addressed all the essence drop rates because I feel that players should be more encouraged to do UW. While the damage and stats alone do make the UW worth it, I think it is okay to reduce the time investment necessary for the ranks. A lot of players only commit to farming essences in T1-T4 during double loot time periods because of the low drop rate.

I have to disagree, 100%. This issue isnt there by mistake, live or here, and its important in both places. Some of these should take time, and RNG, as annoying as it is, SHOULD kick you in the ass from time to time.


Again, I disagree. Even after the nerfs the UW is a game changer. It should not take less time. If anything it should take MORE time. My only issue with drop rates on essences is how it impacts people making strike augs, mana necks, SoA. I think the UW system needs to move off tier'ed essences as a throttle to something thats not tied to pretty much necessary equipment....and the time invested should stay as it is or increase, NOT go down.

Oh, and I still say UW needs to be level limited. No reason at all for someone to be able to UW before T5 or T6. I'd probably make UW1 to 3 doable T5, UW4 to 6 ok in T6, UW7+ not doable til T7.

Kruciel, who has completed 4 or 5 Ucv3s now I think?, was saying his drop rates were much lower than that which is why he made that post about an alternate ucv3 quest.

Uw probably should be level limited...but i'd say you can't do it till t7, its not needed at all before that (isn't needed anywhere really) and gets people to not focus on their group too much.

I agree with needing the armor exchanges, especially in lower tiers, but one in t8 would be nice as well.  Needing 1 set of arms or whatever to move your raid over into a new zone and spending hours farming it is kind of pointless, the reason plate/chain/leather/cloth armor was introduced was to eliminate this, and even that was eventually changed to just slot specific, and then points good for whatever slot (on live).  Farming for a few rare slots or essences is good, spending hours for 1 generic armor piece is not fun, and the game is supposed to be. 

Most of the rest of the changes I don't think are needed, except maybe an eye towards t1 essences, but discussion on some drop rates could be productive.

I'd say that one change that isn't listed is adding essences to the black priest and zerka in t9.  Farming to spawn a HG usually is counterproductive to gearing out your group (more plate/chain than leather/silk by a large margin in most raids).  This won't really speed much up, just allows for farming mats you actually need and being able to earn essences

yea I did not venture into t9 at all so I held from commenting on any suggestions.

Essences have been added to black priest, just not guaranteed. Since its possible to afk farm black priest. I could see zerka having a guaranteed essence, considering how incredibly rare she is. I see about 1 zerka per 10 black priests and maybe 2-3 hill giants per 10 black priests. And I don't even actively pull undead, that's just from defending against the undead event. I have looted an essence off of both zerka and black priest so far this week.

I'll comment on the other stuff when I get home.

I like the idea of an in-game waypoint information npc, even if all they did was give some chat dialog. I think the cost is fine early on. SLS are always going to be the recommended farm path for new players to get ahead of the curve.


I think a better option would just be leave it where it is, but give them something similar and less powerful. It could be a rare drop off all the bosses in say Plane of Storms, similar to the old Tacvi Arrow for hunters.

On a similar note to Tserrenia adjustments, I do believe the v1's and v2's should be removed from Svartmane's treasure NPC that spawns after he dies.


This isn't a bad idea, but doesn't really seem necessary.


Never liked having this item, never liked the quest, I wish it would just die. New bows are better than rank 10 for now, and warriors can put Epic Augment 3.0 in their offhand to gain the same clicky effect for pulling.

I think Rot vendor here would be setting people up for the wrong idea of what's ahead, similar to what Chunk said.
Also if the Angry Beholder got changed to that, nobody would ever spawn him if they're repopping instances. I have no clue how he spawns now, but I've seen him just wandering around Qvic in pub with nodoby even in the zone.

I think the buff to the card drop rate would be fine, excluding the king's chest since those are already common enough dropping from the Froglok Ghost and Evil Eye. Doing 2 full clears of all 6 floors and looting all cards and coins on 1 character was enough to buy 1 v1 charm. Then again, the droprates on charms is a complete joke from what it was when I did my UC (1 in 666 drop rate).

meh, you need essences from here like crazy to start your augs, doesn't seem like it'd shave anything off of a new group going thru the zone.

This is the only essence I'd agree to see buffed up, but I like Chunka's idea better. Having the bosses spawn adds like T2 which spawn more mini's is what makes T2 essences so easy to farm compared to T1. For years these have sold for more than T2 essences for that reason alone.

Pretty much the easiest essence to farm imo. No need to change these. You can slam 100 out in just a few hours during double loot.

Essences from T3/T4 got a huge buff since I played last. I did 100 gods minors with slightly over 1000 tokens. In the past, that shit took 1000 tokens during double loot when I did my warrior's UW. The prices have gone down TONS on them as a result. I didn't even flinch when I spent 13 mil on my last 6 god's majors just to get out of there with the old drop rate.

I wouldn't mind a slight bump in the rare spawns, but this would make the zone easier when it's supposed to be a brick wall. The goal of the zone is to make players STOP progressing, go back and farm UCs, farm strike augments to max level, start SOA, and start farming ToFS floor 3 and up. There's a pretty good reason it's brutal. I've helped tons of people get thru this zone, and then they get to T6 a month faster than they should, without doing any of the farming they should have, which ends up frustrating them or making them quit. For that reason, I don't want to skip anyone else thru this zone, because it ends up biting them in the ass later, even though instantly gearing their warrior up thru T6 and T7 helped them go back and farm UCs much faster. So, I guess I'm saying the zone is a pain in the dick, but it's for a good reason.

Sure

This one I'm a little mixed about. My strategy in this zone has always been: If you get an ungodly clear with tons of boss chains, and they're still going as trash starts spawning, just take a break, AFK until ALL OF THE TRASH is done spawning, and then continue by tacking on another clear to the super clear you already have going. The reason for the break is: the trash all form chains to spawn stone droppers, similar to how Tier 5 works. If you start killing trash before it's all done spawning, it will end up with you spawning 0 stone droppers. I guess what I'm saying is, the current respawn can be used to your advantage if you let it all finish spawning and just take a quick break until the very last mob spawns. I always loved the DPS race aspect of the zone. It pushes your to max out on your ucv2's and strike 9's so you can start getting 20+ essence clears going (when RNG allows it).

I think instead of armor exchange, the bosses could just drop an extra piece say 30-40% of the time. That's what makes gearing and backflagging here pretty brutal. BUT, in a big picture standpoint, you'll finish gearing any amount of toons ever before you finish UCv3s. Essence droprate is decent off trash. I think the bosses have the same % droprate for them as the trash. I don't think essences need a buff here in any way. Doing 5 UCv3s I was able to finish 2 Ult Weapon 10's, finish all Stirke Augs, level up my SOA and sell 40+ essences. I'd guess I got around 300 essences in the time it took to get Epic 8.0 on 16 toons and 5 UCv3s. So that's 300 essences and 1650 ish scales. @Hateborne The reason you are seeing people skipping the East wing trash is you get your most bang for buck out of finishing the clear ASAP, looting your 3 scales and 1 Essence off Vulak and repopping to go again

Yea but most players going through qvic the first time do not use instances.

But if you do it outside of double loot it takes much longer and is not worth the time investment. Players should be more encouraged to turn in trigger items outside of double loot. Maybe bump essence drop rates to 20% and remove them from double loot table.

I disagree about not having waypoint by the time you make it to qvic. I tell all new players i talk with to farm SLS the second they hit 70, buy a waypoint, and THEN use the waypoint to knock out Fighters Guild / Casters Guild items. It saves them days and days. I can't honestly imagine doing FG / CG without a waypoint.

yes but people do because they do not know about it. All you have to do is read people complaining about farming camps for 4+ hours spawn rates in ooc to know they dont have the wp. Repop in Qvic is 10ish minutes? new players are not able to clear the zone that fast and do not have to repop it.

I cant really see putting a waypoint quest into the game.  if folks coming to EZ cant take the frigging time to read the forums to understand how a waypoint works then tough stuff.  I am tired of people having to hold the hands of people playing on EZ because they are too sorry to read the damned forums in the first place.  They have to come to the website to download spell/server files...so read the newbie section for goodness sakes!  Maybe it would be easier to put it in BIG BOLD FONT when you on log in for /say EZGUIDE for new player information/walkthrough.......the rest of the stuff seems like you are just wanting the server to be easier than it already is.  Basically the server is a grind fest...if that were changed then we would have the 500+ players all at end content and Hateborne pulling his hair out and wanting to quit because then people would be bitching about not enough content.

updated

want to make the game better for the new... make it so once you purchase your 1m waypoint you can make a free or very low cost solo instance...give the newbs a chance and lets them save some plat for other things.....You ever try to buy a waypoint in TOFS? i dont think 600k+ is cheap considering you can start this at what t4?


so free solo instance..

Considering that farming 1st floor for a couple hours, even on lower tier players,  is 1 mil+ easily, the cost for tofs isnt that bad.

Agree 100%. Would be nice if instance timer would reset each time u log into that instance( for FWP users)

why did we get away from being able to delete instances?

I remember the why on no repoping and staying at the same point, which, ehhh I'm still not fully seeing why, but I got over it.

This should all go in the 'what do you want' thread found below.

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=4340.msg55853;topicseen#new (http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=4340.msg55853;topicseen#new)


-Hate

IIRC there was some super annoying bug where the last toon left in a dead instance would essentially need the char mover to rescue, and considering the char mover is functional every third monday from 4:30 to 4:42 AM PST.... well, you get the idea.

Like most the suggestions already.

I'd like to see Greater Lightstones dropping in tier zones and frozen shadow.  We need soooooooo many of them for every item, aug, upgrade etc.    Running around Jagged Pine continuously isn't fun.    Maybe something like a very small % chance in lower tier zones and raise the % up as the tiers go up since you need more and more to keep up with the tiers.  

Raise the % chances for essences in lower tiers and frozen shadow...just a tad.   Doesn't have to be much but it seems all out of whack.   A lot of people stopped playing over these grinds that were created from the new items.   Fine line trying to keep hardcore players, semi-hardcore and casuals happy at the same time.   The #'s on the server have dropped though so this may be an indication.  

Allow the Delete of instance -  Make it a long timeout or something.  Maybe after 24 hours you can delete it.   This last double loot weekend my guild instance for a zone was rendered useless because it was started before the double loot.   No big deal though since there are other things to do.    Would just be cool to do so you don't have to fall back on plan B.  lol

This thread was created long before that post.

And I'm pretty sure Hateborne asked for them to go in 1 thread for a specific central location reason.. what do ya think?

You necro'd bumped this post.. instead of just maybe cutting and pasting into the centralized post HB asked to post in.. (bumped it the same day HB posted what do you want to see)

People are posting on 2+ different posts about the same shit

^This^. Locking this thread, quoting the first post in other thread. Fugitive quoted it first. Whore...


-Hate