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Producer's Letter: Expansion 17, Beta and Preorders!

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Feldon, Oct 27, 2020.

  1. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Took a look through the crusader and pally threads. A lot their stuff, especially with respect the heals, wards, and death saves (well, death save) is flat-out broken or made practically useless.

    I like Clementine's characterization that class "flavor" is being removed from the AA trees.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
    • Agree Agree x 2
  2. Anaogi

    Anaogi Active Member

    Hoo boy. It sure feels like this is intended to finish EQ2 off for good. This is just mind boggling.
     
    • Agree Agree x 4
  3. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    I still cant find a stream or anyone telling us what the content is like and if network lag is gone. What is going on? Can people still not play the beta?
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  4. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    Things seem to be back to normal now. At least, all the 'can't login' threads have given way to updates on beta threads so people must be in there. I'm only following a handful of threads for issues that affect me so can't give an accurate overview. And you will need to login to see beta threads so have fun with the silly captca nonsense :(
     
    • Informative Informative x 1
  5. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    Yes. The only place where they're not supposed to be the same is on a TLE server, and nobody here believes that for a minute :)
     
    • Informative Informative x 1
  6. Glasscannon

    Glasscannon Member

    So I decided to pre-order and jump into the beta. I can post screenshots of the new prestige AAs when I get home but they are not that interesting. Basically a top row of stat boosts, turn you unlock a couple procs, turn you unlock a proc/damage combo that you can only take one of.

    The revamped AAs, for sorcerors anyway, are at least interesting. The first tree has more abilities that I want than points to allocate. And that's the way it should be in my opinion. Choose between good options to augment your playstyle. The funny thing is, since they only modified the first two AA trees, now the third tree (shadows) is almost totally useless.

    My potency from just the starter crate gear was almost 200k. So expect stat bloat to continue unfettered. As a top tier raider through Chaos Descending I ended that expac around 118k potency. Starting potency for BoL was like 140k if I remember right. Now one year later starting pot is nearly 200k. And this is to say nothing of the other money stats. The gear rewards quickly increase stats as well.

    I did a few quests. Seems like more of the same play style. Many of the zones are recycled, for example the bazaar. It is immediately noticeable how few npcs populate the zones. For example the city of Fordel Midst has almost no one in it. You can't even hail a bunch of them either.

    The depth of the game, even Kunark Ascending to now, has plummeted. I get that it's beta but what's getting added in the next 6 weeks to fill out the game? I'm doubtful it will be much.

    I can post more later.
     
    • Informative Informative x 3
    • Optimistic Optimistic x 1
  7. Errrorr

    Errrorr Active Member

    Potency inflation isn't a major issue really, as long as they inflate Combat Mitigation & Potency Mitigation at similar levels.

    With the loss of reforging, it should actually see a large stat crunch in a lot of places now honestly.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  8. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    It is, at it isn't...
    Heals and wards still appear to be capped at the same place they were two expacs ago, so there is STILL ZERO 'progression' for healers are far as their primary role goes.

    Reports I've had are that the new prestige abilities kind of hose hybrid classes.. because combat art buffs and spell buffs are seperated.. so bards, crusaders, melee priests, etc are going to get less benefit from them.
     
    • Informative Informative x 3
  9. Just Curious

    Just Curious Member

    So the newest thing is that, apparently, all AoD features were unlocked yesterday. That includes the Beastlord Class, the merc feature (without having to purchase anything), tradeskill apprentices, and reforging (which they had already said everyone would get). What isn't clear is if it was done on purpose. There was a bug after yesterday's patch that made some AA lines unusable unless you had previously purchased AoD. People started noticing the new free stuff after that was fixed. It's possible that the fix opened up everything. It's also possible that this was intentional, but it really seems like the kind of thing they would tell people about.
     
    • Informative Informative x 2
    • Shocked Shocked x 1
  10. Clementine

    Clementine Active Member

    I find it hard to believe that it was intentional if there was no announcement that they were going to do it. You'd think they would jump on this real fast and clear things up...
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  11. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    The merc feature was unlocked for everyone in BoL I believe. The other two, especially BLs, are going to cause some upset folks if it wasn't intentional. There are already people assuming it was unlocked because BLs came into EQ1 during the Luclin expansion.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2020
  12. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    It doesn't really matter that they unlocked reforging.. since the changes to it make it mostly useless.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  13. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    How is the actual game play though? Are there enough quests? How is group content? Is there any clear gear progression? Any unique gear? Tradeskilling sorted? Network performance sorted? There is a lot of talks about the few AA changes, but what about the actual gameplay and performance?

    Also Dreamweaver about unlocks:

    We'd post in News and Announcements if it was intended, I can tell you it wasn't but I don't have an official word yet. My best guess is they will try and fix it before next patch so I wouldn't assume you get to keep the access.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  14. Glasscannon

    Glasscannon Member

    [​IMG]





    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Here are the new Prestige AAs. The top row of 6 are in the first screen shot. Basically they are various stat buffs.

    10 points between those abilities unlocks the two outside abilities on the bottom row. All four bottom row abilities are in the second screen shot. They are shared expertise and ready up. Each of those can have up to 3 points put in. Basically one is a big groupwide fervor proc and the other is like your own brew of readiness. Both are random chances to proc.

    Once you commit 18 points, the two inside abilities become available and you can only pick one. That is winter's grip and hoarfrost. Both do damage but one adds group wide fervor and the other is a self ADC buff.

    I also screnshotted some of the interesting revamped sorceror AAs to give an idea of what they look like. Oh and I also included the new level 120 warlock ability Decimation, which as I understand it can be unlocked through BoL content that I didn't do. Not sure if these will just be given to everyone at the start of RoS. But as you can see it is an explosively powerful ability. With the way spell upgrades work, the ancient version may be about 150% or more of what is currently shown.



    I said in my earlier post that it is immediately noticeable how dead the game world is. I don't mean players, I mean NPCs. This is a 20 second clip just running around a main area in Fordel Midst. To me it really jumps out. I don't think this clip even does it justice but I wanted to share.

    I also wanted to say too that the gameplay is exactly as I remember it. That is, sprint through the zones, faceroll trash to spawn the named, kill the named sprint to the next area, rinse and repeat until done. There is no common mob that stands any chance in combat, unless you lag out, which did happen to me several times and cost me one death. Basically you just round them up then drop an aoe, and move on to the next batch. I also blitzed almost all of the named mobs in the two zones I completed. The only one that killed me, killed me because of a mechanic in which I killed a trash spawn while under the effects of a curse. Other than that the scripts didn't matter one bit. To be clear I am talking about solo zone runs, I'm probably not going to be doing any heroic or raid content on beta (or live for that matter).

    Anyway, these are my thoughts for the curious.
     
    • Informative Informative x 2
    • Appreciation Appreciation x 1
  15. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    Tradeskills will never, ever be sorted. They are as sorted as they're going to be until they spring for an actual TS dev and that, in and of itself, has just as much potential to go awry as it does to cause improvements.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  16. Glasscannon

    Glasscannon Member


    Game play is about the same. I don't think there are many quests but truthfully I've lost interest quickly. It seems very much in the mold of Blood of Luclin, a straightforward signature questline that is focused on running the solo zones.

    I can't talk about group content, sorry.

    Gear progression is exactly the same, as I understand it there will be no more infusing. But stats go up quickly along the resolve chart. Tradeskilling is largely non-existent from what I've seen. Network performance has been about the same. I lagged out so bad I died, lagged out other times and just had to wait it out. Other times it's been fine.

    Just overall on gameplay, I would say that it doesn't even compare to, say, Kunark Ascending, where you had a big overland zone that you progressed through bit by bit, to go along with heroic content progression. Even in PoP you had to complete one of the three faction lines in order to progress the signature quest line, and there was an incentive to complete all three faction lines (not to mention a self-contained story that was enjoyable).

    Even the physical zones, everything feels like the building blocks were set to max size and then pattern-copied over and over to create the zone. There's nothing remarkable about them.
     
    • Informative Informative x 2
  17. Clementine

    Clementine Active Member

    Honestly I'd expect the generic background NPCs to be one of the last art things completed. I might regret defending Daybreak here but I wouldn't be shocked if NPCs don't just randomly show up in a future beta update.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  18. Errrorr

    Errrorr Active Member

    AoD unlock was the following;
    1. RoS Pre-Order was meant to unlock all previous expacs, but wasnt working
    2. Tuesdays patch 'fixed' that, but also appeared to break the flag for people who'd been granted AoD as part of when they made it included (As in they didn't physically buy it).
    3. Bunch of people couldn't use Prestige AA tab, said they needed AoD.
    4. DBG made a server side change that appears to remove the AoD requirement for Prestige tags & Beastlords etc.
    5. I'd expect the next patch to restore that flag correct, and all the Free features to go back to normal, and paid ones require payment.
     
    • Informative Informative x 3
  19. Just Curious

    Just Curious Member

    Nope. The merc feature is only available to someone that has bought an expansion after KA or paid for the feature separately. The current bug enable it for everyone, regardless of expansion owned. According the Discord, the bug will be reversed in a coming patch.
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2020
  20. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    Interesting. I haven't seen that info posted on the forums. just DW's note about 'if it was intended we would have announced it'. I predict 2 things coming soon: huge outrage when all the people who took advantage of the unlocks get them taken away again and another big argument about stuff hitting discord not being reflected on the forums :D
     

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