Field Report - PoP

We're not in disagreement, but there's a difference between educating new players about some of the shortcomings of the game, and scaring them off by bitching about why the game sucks ass and should be sunsetted.

 

The game would be fine if the devs understood math.

Their process is:

A*C^6-8/E+14*6/B

hmm this does too much damage

(A*C^6-8/E+14*6/B)*.85

nailed it till next gear cycle.

 

Finished the quest line and one faction, access to all the zones. However tried a PQ and a duo zone and was going to try another, it appears a few are broke and not possible to finish at the moment.

Not really looking forward to finishing the other two factions, I think they put a lot to block the orange adorns and some other things. Looks really grindy.

 

Ohhh, but there is more to block the orange adorns.. You can only buy orange adorns that you have already looted.

 

Ahhh, I see what they did - maybe.

We sniffed out that DBG was going to build in more cash shop pressure by requiring stepwise spell progressions similar to ascensions.

They did an about face on that, but, returned to the more familiar tactic if making these drops highly rare.

Don't know if that's really the case, kind if looks that way, though.

Be interesting to observe comments about how spell levels perform on heroic zones.

 

The claws are coming out in the official trade skillers section.

Appears the inclusion of fish in sage recipes has provoked the creation of pro-fish and anti-fish camps.

Stuff like that and the guy who posted a rant about f2p asking him to post things in chat for them are the reason I still check in.

Top notch entertainment

 

There is probably actually a link to fish in a lot of historical inks. soo.....

 

I am sorry, but I can't believe what they have done to this game. It's like every one involved from the top down is dead from the neck up. SMH.

 

Well, in truth, the game has been horribly mismanaged from day 1.

It's just that they had great player numbers in the beginning and SOE to dump money into it.

The player attrition really started to kick in around DOV and has accelerated ever since.

They had some really talented development staff, and still do really. BUT, they also had, and still have a culture that is aloof with respect to their customers and decisions that just don't make a lot if sense.

All CN did is see all this stuff and turn off the money dumps.

Now, we still see the decisions without the big budget to mitigate them.

 

When they jacked all of the stats up with DOV, they basically made all the content prior to that irrelevant and not worth doing. I never understood why they did that, unless sales were down and they were trying to herd every one to the newest expansion. As far as the present is concerned, if they would stop wasting time on these quick cash grab/specialty servers and put all of that wasted time into making a great expansion, I really think more people would come back and/or stay, hell we might even get a few new players. Also, if they are going to continue to offer us tiny expansions, at least reduce the price on them and/or lower the monthly sub. At least then we wouldn't feel like we are getting the shaft six ways from Sunday.

 

I'm getting an Xbox for Christmas so I'm going to try some of that after seeing the resolve reqs. etc.

 

The claim/excuse given, at the time, was to prevent raiders from having a 'leg up' over non-raiders at the start of the expac.. they wanted an 'equal playing field' and a 'gear reset'.
From there they seemed to go from 'if a little isn't too bad' x10 more must be great!

 

The high population is probably attributed to harvesting bots. Maybe that was their plan all along.
Actually I'm surprised they didn't make harvesting a sub only perk. That would teach them there pesky crafters!

 

Hit 110 SK/Alchy, it wasn't horrible. I think the solo zones are only worth doing for the daily. I've heard orange adorns can drop, but I assume that is pretty rare. I think the balance of mission coin vs cost of items is off a lot. Takes way too many runs to buy an item.

Took them a week to fix some duos and a broken PQ. Advanced tradeskill 101-105 drops really need to be increased.

I've harvested quite a bit an have gotten 5 planar energy, the new ascensions take 200 per. Ouch, no way. Recipe books are 3 time use then poof. Really they need some serious reworking on tradekills on top of make a tradeskill timeline.

Haven't even touched heroics yet. Waiting for guild to catch up.

PQ's are okay, no mercs which really sucks in PoD when you can't get in a group.

And PQ's have merc gear rewards bleh.

 

Seems the adorns are a real mess in Pop due to the mess with tradeskills. Are there meant to be new green adorns as well from dungeons ?

 

I doubt the 'mess' with adornments has anything to do with the lack of a TS timeline.

 

I was hoping that many (okay, most) members in my guild that dropped out after KA would come back with PoP.
Sadly, I was the one to tell them not to bother. There is no reason to spend money on so very little.
Just like KA, complete the (very short) sig line, than what? run instance after instance after instance? How is that worth while?

RoK, DoV, AoM... Those were expansions, with content, and not simple boring grind leading only to less than a handful of repeatable instances. ToT was far better than KA for content, which was far better than PoP is.

Seriously, this should not have been an expansion, it should have been a quest pack for 500 coins on the store.

For the next expansion, I'm sure they are going to have one, square room, with one npc offering a repeatable faction quest that you have to do 1000 times, before being allowed into the single instance that you will get to grind over and over till your eyes bleed.

I really think DBG is done with EQ2, and just wants it to die.

 

The team has lost even more since the initial layoff, as well, and it shows.

The expansion was nowhere near beta ready when it went up for 'testing' and not all of the content was able to be tested in the insufficient time alloted for it. What was tested wasn't tested adequately (not for lack of trying on the testers part) due largely to year two of pay up front to test an expansion you know almost nothing about (I mean, that worked out so well for KA, why not do it again!).

Measures that folks thought were just to make testing possible - the addition of a single writ to grind for tradeskills from 101-110 - wound up being the only real tradeskill 'content' added at all. (No, I don't consider PvE achievements that require a single combine each to be tradeskill achievements).

With the overwhelmingly disappointed to downright negative reception this expansion has gotten, I can't imagine the game is going to get the resources it needs to get back into shape. It would be a terrible investment, the damage is done.