Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

ho0ked

Newbie

Posts: 17

Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« on: June 12, 2012, 01:01:12 pm »

Hunter,

I am still relatively new here, thank you for this world it is fun to play, I enjoy it alot, untill now.

I like everyone else really like the UC you made. BUT you have stated many times it is the server defining item here, which means to me its the highest of awards for the hardiest of veterans. I am totally cool with this.

However, it is also basically required to finish T4 and to progress beyond that point, unless you intended us to all box 24+ toons and zerg everything beyond T4?

The issue is simple,

1) It takes a herculean 46+ man hours to complete 1 UCv1 and this is with a full army of the right toons to support this rapid pace. I was told this figure by some of the uber players here, for me its going to be months Shocked

2) You have to go BACKWARDS in progression to get this item done effeciently, trying to do it when your getting you 2.0-3.5 is a joke, it could take years at that gear lvl.

3) You have made this "Server defining veterans item" a requirement to progress, how is that fair? we all want to play on your server, but once you get to T4 its pretty much game over for most of the players here, unless they go backwards and spend months doing uc's for however many toons they have.

4) Its rather unfair to have an item both be the best trophy for veterans, AND be required to play here, it really should be one or the other.

5) Since you have already tuned your T5+ content around having this item when it should have been treated as a bonus making you overpowered in that content, there is to much work to tune down all that content.

The only viable solution I see is to either cut the items required for UCv1 in half, or to increase the drops rates for ldon drops/coins, and hoh drops by 100%

You can and should make it this hard for the UCv2, and you should NOT build new content around having the UCv2, so it can be the veteran reward/server defining item you want it to be, without being required for every single toon to play here.

I understand that people are progressing to fast for your liking, I get that, but your holding this item hostage forcing us to no longer have fun, if people don't have fun here, they will leave.

I do not want to leave, but honestly I get physically sick playing in ldons for hours on end endlessly pulling the same mobs. It's to the point now that I don't even want to log on and play because its sickening, boaring and totally not fun at all.

Perhaps its a change to how you aquire the charms thats necessary, but honestly its still way to long for a required item.

You might take this as complaining, im sure all the uber players will, having walked uphill in the snow with no shoes to get there UC's But I really am trying to provide contructive feedback, playing on your server went from awsome fun to I don't even want to play anymore because this is not fun, or entertaining.

You have other options, there are other ways, please consider them thoroughly.

I came from 12 years in EQlive, since beta, eq taught me computers, and has provided me with over a decade of entertainment and edjucation, untill I gave up last year and retired for good. We all know the many reasons for this.

Please consider my thoughts Hunter, you have proven to be really reponsive to your playerbase in a way I could have never imagined before finding your world.

Regardless of your decision I am honored to play on your world and call you god.

Thank you for having me,
Your subject, Ho0ked


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Brokyn

Sr. Member

Posts: 405

Artificial intelligence beats real stupidity

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2012, 01:50:27 pm »

There was a time before UC... People got their 4.0 epics and T4 gear without teams of T4 geared toons with 4.0 epics and UCs...

I can remember going up to T3/4 with my guild and taking 30 minutes to down a boss with 3 groups (made up of, gasp, 4 or more people). Every piece of armour, every new bit of dps, and every success made it go faster and faster, and we got better geared up. We made alliances with other guilds to share the drops (because you didn't know which boss you were spawning back then) and we helped each other out. Eventually, we got to the point we could kill fast and we moved on to the next thing.

I guess my point is this... When faced with adversity there are two options... Overcome, or do what you did.


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We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?

ho0ked

Newbie

Posts: 17

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2012, 02:12:07 pm »

Quote from: Brokyn on June 12, 2012, 01:50:27 pm

I understand and respect where you are coming from, but.

The bottom line is times have changed, people don't group much, and run alot of there own toons to play eq, all types of eq not just live or emu.

What was once uber elite is now required and simply is not fun, its time to streamline old ideas for the future health of the world.

We all did things the hard way in the begining. but times and climates change, it is best to adapt to them for survival, imo

I feel the structure of this item and its requirement is holding people back and diminishing their desire to play considerably, to me that is a negative impact to an otherwise awsome world I totally enjoyed up untill recently.

Not everyone agrees with me, and thats ok, but I feel its an important issue to discuss as it defines my continued presence here.

Ho0ked


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Solbash

Sr. Member

Posts: 371

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2012, 04:22:40 pm »

Quote from: Brokyn on June 12, 2012, 01:50:27 pm

And remember, we did get to use these fancy augs to pump out extra dps, we used raw dps from players and pets.

I just see this as another player that came here and in a weeks time did up through 3.0's, bought 3.5's and t3/t4 gear for some of his toons and is now trying to farm it and he can't. The content up through t3-t4 is already dumbed down and simplified about 10 times that what it use to be when us "veterans" did it. Everyone thinks that hunter handed us everything since we have been here for a long time. TBH, i don't think i've ever just been handed anything here in over 4 years of playing the server. My advice, suck it up and grind it out, or just quit. Hunter isn't going to make the game changer easier for noobs.


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Hampage

Newbie

Posts: 39

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2012, 04:30:48 pm »

I can see both sides of this argument, I've advocated making v1 charms tradeable just to add another market for people to get charms since its not always possible to stop what your doing and go to the zone or instance and buy it right then and there, I dont think that would be game breaking because the cost for the charms would still be out of reach of someone who just started on the server, I didn't start massing plat until I got to HoH.

But having done my own UC and over halfway on another I can say that the charm itself isn't all that hard to get once your geared up enough, it just takes time. I've spent over 93,000 LDON points on my first UC and on my paladin I've only spent 6000 because with the UC I can mass pull an instance of LDoN 6 and I average about 2 charms an hour in actual charms and another 1000 points in cards if I bother to loot those.


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hateborne

Legend

Posts: 2282

Don't nerf me bro!

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2012, 08:07:16 pm »

Nothing personal friend, but no.

I've got only 3 UCs, cleric is nearing his (4th). Take time to read through the forums. Hunter has already said that the revamp of ToFS will become the alternative to LDON for UC (with some new goodies mixed in). It is designed to give players a challenge while giving a similar (if not slightly faster for top-level players) time frame.

1) 46 hours is nothing compared to live. You said you played live and should know this. Hell, even some of the vanilla/BC raids in WoW took this long to clear and gear up. Here you can be in T3 in a day or two, so why shouldn't there be something time consuming?

2) What is your gear looking like? >_> You mention in 3 that this is supposed to be a "Server defining veterans item", but mention it is too hard for 2.0-3.5 players? Also, 46 hours isn't months unless you are sitting at ~1h a day max. Even then, that's still not bad considering that would get you NOWHERE in any other game.

3) Actually it's T5 that seems to be the requirement. However, technically warriors could skim by with a combination of the Shield of the Ages and the 4.0 epic...but warriors are whores, so we won't count them.

4) Nope. WoW requires a useless ilevel average across your gear and/or some trash achievement to consider you good. Despite the fact that you may be god awful or mind-blowingly amazing, if your item level doesn't average out to a certain score and/or you don't have some achievement for downing a raid end boss...you won't get in. Meaning you need to be overgeared for the raid being run to be allowed in. Is this WoW? Thankfully not. Is this EQ live? Also thankfully not. Is EZ a cakewalk the entire playthrough? Nope.

5) An UC is not required for T5 if running a whorrior or loladin (maybe). If running a shadow knight or a lower-geared paladin, you will need it. EZ is quick and fun is, but the time investment curve increases in somewhat of a bell curve as you advance in tiers.

I think you misunderstand the intent of the UC. It was not designed around a certain content level, but it is VERY strong. It is not technically a requirement for any certain tier, but at MCP/T5, it should be closely considered such.

Again, this boils down to where are you in the game, what are you running (character(s)), what epic(s) are equipped, etc etc.

As for the grinding, don't try and faceroll it out. Bits and pieces. Get an hour here or two there. If you don't, you will burn out and quit. Keep in mind, you probably got up to or near t2 in less than a week. What other game allows you to max level and then advance THREE tiers of gearing in such a small time frame?

-Hate


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I'm so sorry Hunter, I tried...

Pukagiz

Jr. Member

Posts: 75

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2012, 08:43:55 pm »

Quote from: hateborne on June 12, 2012, 08:07:16 pm

What other game allows you to max level and then advance THREE tiers of gearing in such a small time frame?

-Hate

lol WoW anyone? Tongue


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Dethundrel

Full Member

Posts: 177

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2012, 09:35:27 pm »

Quote from: hateborne on June 12, 2012, 08:07:16 pm

3) Actually it's T5 that seems to be the requirement. However, technically warriors could skim by with a combination of the Shield of the Ages and the 4.0 epic...but warriors are whores, so we won't count them.

5) An UC is not required for T5 if running a whorrior or loladin (maybe). If running a shadow knight or a lower-geared paladin, you will need it. EZ is quick and fun is, but the time investment curve increases in somewhat of a bell curve as you advance in tiers.

Myself and 3 other guys I play with all broke into T5 at around the same time. All of us were running full T4 4.0 toons. Each with a Warrior with a lvl 50 Guardian charm, and 2 Paladins with lvl 50 Oracles. None of us were able to survive with any regularity. Sure we could down a few mobs here and there, but we got slaughtered. I added a UC to the War and main Paladin, and now I can survive 90% of my encounters, a much more managable rate of what seems to be intended. IE: I'd say it's required.

Now if you run a group with 2 Paladins and a Cleric, or even 3 Paladins, then I would say a UC would not be mandatory.


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Strix

Sr. Member

Posts: 273

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2012, 09:39:17 pm »

Quote from: hateborne on June 12, 2012, 08:07:16 pm

...but warriors are whores, so we won't count them.

-Hate

I resemble that remark Cheesy

Strix


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whatzizface

Full Member

Posts: 167

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2012, 11:16:08 pm »

I wanna know where the 46 hour figure comes from? Ive spent 46 hours straight walking through the snow up hill both ways fighting raid mobs with broken weapons for a stinking 50 token. Maybe i just suck.


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Dimur

Hero Member
Hero Member

Posts: 699

Re: Dead Horse, why the UC needs to be made way easier

« Reply #10 on: June 13, 2012, 12:32:09 am »

Sorry, I just have to add my take on the whole NEED for UC to advance in T5. I rock a 6 box group when I play...2 paladins, warrior, monk, bard and shaman. 2 of the characters have UC, main paladin and my monk with the other characters max charms being warrior with a 50 sorc, bard 50 sorc, second paladin 50 oracle while the shaman rocks a guardian 4. I started actively doing T5 about a week ago and decided to focus on gearing the warrior first since I switched him to main tank after T4. I got my ass kicked pretty consistently not just from named mobs, but from the trash too. I kept pushing and have been able to get armor drops for the warrior, every drop making it easier to survive encounters and in the last week I've geared the warrior in full T5, knocked out coral event for warrior and UC paladin and picked up various upgrades for the rest of the group. Would it be easier if I sucked it up and finished the warrior's UC? Fuck yes! Is it absolutely required that I UC the main tank in my group before I even consider setting foot in T5? Fuck no!
Sorry about the long diatribe, but my point is that UC grind sucks, it sucks so bad that I went into T5 expecting to fully get my ass handed to my because of all the horror stories I've read/heard regarding the NEED for UC and still was more willing to do that than finish the mindless grind that is UC. I don't enjoy doing LDON, but I also realize that doing it isn't required to progress but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to do so. Suck it up and take your beatings while you push forward or shut up and slum it in LDON a while to make it easier on yourself, but I don't think the system is broken.