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Time sinks in KA

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Shmogre, Dec 28, 2016.

  1. Shmogre

    Shmogre Active Member

    Wall of text below...the tl;dr - Are the many time sinks introduced with KA going to change how or if you play?

    -----

    Pulling this into its own thread, since it's a big one. Gaming has always had its share of time sinks...every "bring me the heads of 10 rats" and "go talk to this guy all the way across the zone" is just another way to stretch out the time it takes to complete a quest and advance in a game.

    But there is no question that this expansion (KA) is replete with time sinks. And with each new one that is discovered, grumbling gets louder, dissatisfaction grows, alts fall behind, and people get tired of the content sooner and sooner knowing how much is needed to advance.

    There is some good. Seeing the lore tie together is interesting. Ending up with more well-rounded toons is (arguably) a good thing. Having something to keep working towards can be good.

    But there is a lot of bad. The piling on of pre-reqs - fine for a toon that's been adventuring for years, sucks for alts or new toons. Forcing a completely different playstyle on someone (sneaking instead of hitting, requiring max crafting for pure adventurers). Gating advancement by strictly elapsed-time means and not by ability, skill, or gear. The growing divide between crafting/decorating and adventuring (forcing max-level crafting on adventurers is only making the resentment grow, and taking away the uniqueness of those who *chose* to level crafters). And on and on.

    So what do you guys think? Is this the last straw for you? Are you going to continue getting your epic or chill for a while to see if it's worth the time invested? Can you see some of the upsides, or are they overshadowed by the downsides?
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  2. Mecah

    Mecah New Member

    For right now, I will keep playing.

    I have 13 toons, of which, I focus on 4 for my main adventuring toons, one of each archtype. I try to get all 13 through the TS lines and adventure lines. But not this time around. I took it down to two, my conj and my bruiser. The rest will get played, maybe.

    The long growing list of pre-req's for the epic 2.0 is driving me nuts. Every time you turn around, there is another one. And it is all old stuff. The city timeline, AoM for the Gymy language, I heard priests need othmir faction, and so many more just keep popping up. I wrote a feedback the other day, I was so close to quitting. I love this game, but damn, enough with the bs time sinks and old quests. I want to focus on the new zones.

    As for the new zones, they are harsh on some people. We have a steady group that runs these zones, but we still haven't broken out of tier 1. And heaven forbid you have a guildie come along that is having troubles. I love bringing everyone along, but this expac is not allowing us to do that. It's horrible that I don't even ask in guild chat anymore to fill a group because I am too afraid of failing, yet again. Slowly, but surely, my core group is moving through these zones, learning strats and getting small upgrades, and we will once again start bringing in other guildies, but it sucks to have to do it this way.

    My thoughts on this expac range from "Yes! We did it" to "Really?? You have got to be f'ing kidding me!!"
     
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  3. Uyaem

    Uyaem Member

    I often resorted to playing alts because there was nothing left to do on the main character that wasn't the 100th repetition.

    I also don't mind going back to old content because it is all part of the game, and if the lore demands it and it makes sense, why not. The prerequisites will mean you've got to spend a few extra hours for an item that (by all promises) should be game changing.

    I'd rather have too much to do, than things getting too repetitive. Like key quests, which are my personal pet peeve. And yes, I've done many of them too, numbing the pain of them by watching films/series on the side.

    The time gating grinds my gears too, because in my opinion, this is one of the few expacs where there is enough/too much to do, with a high likeliness of summer ethereals and an event server at the horizon.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  4. Inire

    Inire Not really an evil duck, just misunderstood.

    Ascension requires daily logins of every toon you want to ascend.

    Epic 2.0 requires significant time investment in terms of quests.

    Epic 2.0 requires significant time investment in terms of crafting (albeit not as much time as it used to take to level to 100).

    Getting the Signature line done for this expansion requires significant time investment.

    Key quests are a huge time grind for getting a possible ethereal.

    Deity Tithe points are a huge time grind.

    The question that I have is what value does DBG get out of having people spend so much time in game? The real driver for DBG should getting money, not getting time investment. So what is the actual advantage? I am guessing that it was about showing good subscriber numbers internally, i.e. we have x players online at y time, but I do not know.

    Converting people's time online to money can be a difficult task for MMO's. We don't pay by the hour.

    There is another issue with having people log in daily. It increases the mental load on players, and increases the chance of burn out.

    I hope that the Epic 2.0 items are unquestionably the best items ever seen in any game ever. People should be looking at EQ2 and going WOW I want to move over to that game for that item.
     
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  5. Uyaem

    Uyaem Member

    I agree, with the exception of the signature time line, after the first time, it's a breeze, with handed down gear an what not.

    The so-called mental load is indeed an issue, but the solution is: dump some alts. I have too many myself, and if I am honest I've never managed to kit and play more than three per expac anyway, if that.
    I don't mind waiting till March for them to receive some actual love.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. Inire

    Inire Not really an evil duck, just misunderstood.

    To go back to the initial question then, are you saying that the expansion has changed the way you play the game, as you are dumping some alts?

    Did you find that playing Alts was fun prior to this expansion?
     
    • Winner Winner x 1
  7. Uyaem

    Uyaem Member

    I suppose I am dumping them more consciously than before. It's been a long time since I had an alt that could do more than the bare minimum. Except my defiler, but keeping a group up while doing near negative dps was always easy in group instances.

    So, I suppose the answer to your question is both yes and no. I did enjoy the alts until I realised that they were nowhere near par.
    I do find that my main char does require more attention than last expac, which is a good thing in my eyes. :)
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  8. Conifur

    Conifur Member

    I am done. It has become a job and not a game anymore. I find no fun in the daily game tasks they designed into this game to cover the fact they are putting less and less content into it. I love the Heroic zones and the fights, makes you think and work as a team (for the average player - I am sure some just roll through it) but the rest is just not fun.

    They have pretty much taken away your opportunities to play different toons with Ascension cap (both gain and spend).

    If you want rares you have to do the timed plant shuffle on toons along with the Ascension shuffle.

    Gating content behind time and not effort for the Epic 2.0 is lazy and boring.

    Putting content behind low level quest that do nothing but waste time is lazy and not fun.

    Admitting you screwed up on the placement of the Mage Epic in KP then saying you won't fix it now and we have to wait - lazy and not good business.

    They pretty much have taken away a casual players ability to progress multiple toons as well as a casual guilds ability to plug and play different toons during special fights. When a bard was needed for the fight in Mauldara for the bubbles I could log on my Dirge and he was capable of providing decent DPS as well as bubble duty - not going to happen anymore. When we needed 3 tanks I could log on my Pally and provide that 3rd tank - not going to happen anymore. When DPS was needed I could log on Conj and blow stuff up. In that one raid I would use 3 toons - not anymore. They seem to be forcing us to pick a character and stay with that one because of time - not effort.

    "
    This is exactly another problem with this expansion and I hear and see it everyday with our grp. It is tearing up Guilds.

    This expansion and their vision of where they want EQ2 to go is not what I consider fun. Like I said I love the heroic fights, they are fun to figure out and run but to me the rest is not fun at all. The sad thing is I fell for their year membership ploy and now have my account paid until Oct 29, 2017 and I don't like to leave paid game time on the table. I did however let my other 2 accounts go FTP and did not upgrade them.
     
    • Agree Agree x 5
  9. Shmogre

    Shmogre Active Member

    I am in the same boat. There has been some natural attrition of my alts over the years, but KA has definitely made me focus on specific toons more.

    I started out really enjoying KA. The lore, the links to the past, the reminders of where the game used to be and how rich the stories and history of Norrath are. Even the wonky itemization became interesting after I got used to new numbers, and it was fun to be able to go back into prior stuff and solo it. I've played more these past six weeks with KA than I have in a long time, and that is awesome.

    Now, though, the requirements for many of the zones (and even some of the names) mean we need a more optimized group, either in classes or gear (or both). Like other folks have said, I used to swap toons in and out: this one is needed, here you go, now pop my other toon in to get it some gear, cool, now you can bring in your less-geared toon and we'll help you out. That's happening less often, so I'm grouping less often, and I'm less likely to get even minor upgrades. It's always been a challenge to learn and equip for new zones, but it is definitely different this expansion, less forgiving.

    I don't like complaining without offering solutions, but I'm honestly not sure what would help here. The requirements for the epic aside (big gear requires big effort, though some of the pure time-gating is questionable), regaining the ability for more fluid groups would be really nice...but I'm not sure how to bring that about. :(

    So to answer my own question: I still enjoy the game, and I'll keep playing, but I'm playing my alts less and I'm grouping less.
     
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  10. katz

    katz New Member

    A lot of people on the game forums chime in with "you should have to work for it" but don't differentiate between fun and tedium. I don't mind going back and doing old quests at all. I do mind repeating the same thing over and over day after day. That is tedious and boring. What that means is that things that have to be repeated over and over are done by me at a slow pace. I mix in one of them once in a while in between doing quests. Otherwise I will just not do them.

    I really don't think I will get Epic 2.0. I will probably do the old quests and faction on my main character but I don't play long hours and have too much outside of game things to do. What I fear is that the parts that require groups to do, especially large groups of people, will be deserted by the time I get to that point. If it was set up so that I could get it at some point, perhaps more slowly, but definitely achievable, then I would plug away at it at my own pace. However, in looking at the list of things that have been posted, I see parts that will require large groups. The only people who will progress are people who are very fast and get there with the main crowd of people at the beginning. People who are not running with the crowd will be left out of the running all together. Correct me if I am wrong.

    I find it discouraging. I suppose the days of massive amounts of quests are over but I really loved going through the sundered frontier questlines. I don't care for the one adventure, one crafting questline, then do the same instances over and over type expansion.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  11. Shmogre

    Shmogre Active Member

    I agree with the "tedium versus fun" distinction. I don't mind working for a reward; I like having something to work towards rather than just mindlessly grinding. For instance, grinding for Nye'Caelona faction, though it made some folks grumble, was manageable because it was part of the current content and was able to be done while still working on other things in KA.

    I feel like a large part of the unhappiness with the epic2 chase is that other than grinding dungeons, it's all folks have to do right now. I'm not faulting the dev team on that, mind you...they have done a lot with a little, and up until recently this expansion has been a blast for me. But unfortunately the sheer number of time sinks, with more being discovered every day, are pushing people's buttons and making small grumbles turn into large ones.

    Epic is epic, and we know that. And I would hypothesize that it might have been more acceptable if folks weren't already unhappy about not being able to jump into new content and play (without getting crafted gear and so on), the bugs with ascension xp, the hard-coded delay in hitting ascension level 5, and so on. Unfortunately, it's human nature: once you notice something bugging you, anything that does similar is amplified.

    Not sure how to smooth things over from here, though... :(
     
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  12. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    I think devs are in a catch 22 here.
    First, there are ALWAYS bugs. By and large, I think there were fewer bugs (excluding epic 2.0, perhaps) on release then in recent expacs.

    The one I find most ironic this time around is the complaint of 'too much' to do.
    Usually a sizable chunk finishes the bulk of the content in weeks, or at most a month and then complains that there is nothing to do, except grind zones and work on alts. This seems to have gotten people used to the idea that they 'should' be able to polish of the contents of an entire expac that quickly.
    This time around a sizable chunk (different or same as the one above) has decided that there is too MUCH to do (and yes, there is alot to do) and they're getting burnt out trying to do all of it quickly.

    I have stopped doing, or even trying to do, everything for all the toons I want to play all at once this expac. There was a time when the majority of my alts were not nearly as well geared as my main 2-3 toons; where I didn't even consider running more then those few toons through sig lines, etc. Now that I've let go of the idea that most of my toons should have it all done yesterday, my burnout is ebbing and fun is increasing.
     
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  13. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    Already said above, but just to boil down to a bullet point list everything we have to do to keep our characters "caught up":
    • Greenmist HQ
    • KA Sig Quest
    • ToT Sig Quest
    • Frillik Tide quest
    • Ascension Level 10 -- 89 days
    • Epic 2.0 Prerequisites
      • 50k faction in at least two "old world" areas. Othmir, etc.
      • City Timeline
      • Level 100 Tradeskill
      • Epic 1.0
      • Draconic
    • Grandmasters -- months of harvesting or DBC.
    • Ethereal Adornments
    • Deity/Tithe for STA/Pot/CB
    • Primordial Adornments -- only white adorns worth getting
    • Public Quest white adorns
    • Gold and Black Adornments (slots appeared in EQ2 graphics files on Dec 6th)
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2017
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  14. Pale Rider

    Pale Rider New Member

    Primordial adornments are no longer of use, but Wantia adornments require grinding an old Epicx4 PQ or a rare drop or filled experience vials, with maybe 10 people on each server who can make the ability mod and crit bonus adorns.

    You forgot:

    • Super rare drops for ascension scrolls for some tiers plus time or DBC for certain ascension ability tiers.
    • Additional KA quests beyond the signature quest to get to 30 total KA quests (may be obsolete with epics weapons?)
    Although it seems to me the developers are seeing how much they can push the grind and still have people do it. How many of us complaining are still going to complete Epic 2.0 on at least one character, regardless?

    The best way to advance my character is key quests for T1 raid armor, since I don't group. I haven't done a key quest in weeks, event though they now reward 5 keys. Just too annoying. I have 34k faction from doing SF during its time. That is only 8 more repeatables, far less than others that did not do SF. I got the quest and remembered it. Huge travel timesink. Decided not to do it. For me, Epic 2.0 has been downgraded from "Yes" to "Maybe". I want to see the end result before that much grind.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2016
  15. Demoneque

    Demoneque Guest

    I am a TLE player, but I decided to purchase KA and start playing on Live since RoK on TLE has gotten boring.

    So far, I think the expansion is pretty fun. I used a 100 boost on a defiler to get myself rolling. Firstly, I'm glad that I keep up with the forums. I don't think the game would have been playable had I not gotten a set of Twark gear to get going. Even with a Twark set, killing was exceptionally slow but doable.

    I'm almost done with the KA timeline and certainly feel like my character has grown in power and I still have incentive to grind the solo and advanced solo zones to get upgrades. I certainly feel the pain of starting from scratch as far as pre-reqs go. Just doing the KA pre-reqs alone ate up several hours of time, but were completely trivial to do. It was an exercise in my ability to run across large zones and nothing more.

    I'm not sure how I'm going to get to the point where I can be useful in heroic zones. I have 139 resolve right now, which I think is the bare minimum for T1 heroics. I have just over 7k potency, but now I seem to be stuck between upgrading gear from 5 to 7 resolve and sacrificing potency in the process. Maybe I just need to find the right gear that has tons of potency.

    What's my path forward? I'm putting tithe points in potency and am slowly grinding gear. I haven't been able to successfully do any timed quests in dungeons/overland due to my low DPS.

    Help me suck less! I think there's a lot of potential for a good time here.
     
  16. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    When you get gear from the solo and advanced solo gear, try to equip gear with at least 400 potency. 500+ is better. Unless you're a tank, 99% of the 100 potency gear is garbage, don't even save it for alts.
     
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  17. Sigismund

    Sigismund Guest

    Among the already said negatives of this expac, I have not read any posts about guild progression. I enjoy raiding, it encompasses a large amount of my time online. Gearing a toon to survive raids is tedious but if it allows for progression, it's alright in my book.
    However,
    With the population as it is, a lot of raiders are pigeon hole onto toons that aren't their favorite. For example, I am currently stuck on a newly created Coercer, and my fiancee is playing a newly created Templar. The guild we raid with lost two members because of the time sinks being over much for their personal lives and we are filling their spots on raids...

    Not with our preferred mains, but with alts created to help the raid.

    Now we have all of these requirements for the epic 2.0. We did the KA timeline, and greenmist etc. for the expansion.
    But now we are expected to grind 100 tradeskill, city quest, 50k factions etc. on brand new toons we created to help a raid guild stay afloat in a sinking ship of a game.

    If everyone in raid were to play their preferred toons (mains) then the raid would have about 10 healers, 6 MIT gear equipped 'dps' mages, 6 Beastlord that get out parsed by half the healers, and 2 dirges and 1 illy.

    Not an optimal set up, people make sacrifices to make things work in both group and raid.
    Now we have to choose:
    •benefit a group and / or raid by playing toons that are needed / wanted, or
    •get benched and unable to raid because we would prefer to focus on our mains factions, tradeskills, and epic 2.0 over our raid toons epic.

    Previous expacs, even epic 1.0 allowed enough leeway to gear multiple toons while working a full time job.

    Long story short, It is not fun. It is not exciting, KA most definitely is a second job. I'm OK with people plowing through the content. If that's how they want to play.
    I am not OK with people complaining on forums after they:
    • insta -95,
    • powerlevel to 100,
    • buy everything from channels,
    ...then let everyone know how bored they are from lack of content causing this Kunark Ascending time gated grind fest nonsense.

    This expac (and epic 2.0) has changed how often I play and my enjoyment of the game because it made me resent my choice to benefit the raid by playing a needed class.
     
  18. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    Clearly nobody thought of filling raid slots with this design.
     
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  19. Gaealiege

    Gaealiege Member

    I don't mind having to do pre-reqs and whatnot. Largely because I've done nearly everything that is possible to be done in the game.

    It's the design decisions which create false longevity that I take umbrage with.

    Leather dropping at a 60% rate.
    Best loot in a heroic coming from a gambling crate.
    Best adorns coming from a gambling crate.
    Best non-raider armor slots coming from gambling crate.
    Each collection having an ultra rare shiny. Rares existed before and weren't even close to the rarity of these shinies.
    Reversion to longer (6 hours) lockout timers on heroic zones.
    Ascension spell upgrades being ancient rarity at nearly every single tier.
    Ascension spells having forced research tiers. (This one is directly designing for pay-to-win.)

    There are likely more examples, but my temper is already rising just listing these few out.

    My group has played in this game since 2004. I'm the only member that has ever quit during that time. Once because CoE was a complete waste and the second time because I'm an asshole. Never before has my entire group thought to leave the game because of poor, frustrating design decisions.

    We are all now discussing which classes we will play in Final Fantasy 14. None of us will be continuing past this expansion. It makes me sad to see how far this game has fallen.
     
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  20. Demoneque

    Demoneque Guest

    Thank goodness for double xp. I went from being a level 4 crafter to being 100 in about a day.

    That being said, I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome now.
     
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