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What made Chaos Descending and 2019 great for EQ2?

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Benito, Feb 1, 2020.

  1. Benito

    Benito Banned

    I felt like Chaos Descending was a very successful expansion and 2019 a strong year for EQ2. On the other hand, The Burning Lands (2019) was a controversial expansion for EQ1. What lessons (SWOT analysis) can we learn from CD and EQ2 in 2019?


    Chaos Descending Expansion:

    • Four Elemental Planes (& Myrist Hub):
    • 4 Overland Zones
    • 12 Solo Instances
    • 11 Heroic Instances
    • 4 Event Heroics.
    • 15 Raids/Mythic Raids
    • 2 Instanced PQs (Awuidor, the Dark Fathoms & Eryslai, Winds of Twilight)
    • Signature Timelines (Rewards: Epic 2.0 Spells, Planar Adventures)
    • Elemental & Chaos Mounts


    2019 Content:

    • Erollisi Day Public Quest - Love Will Lead You Back
    • GU109: Mischief and Mayhem (Plane of Mischief)
    • GU 111: Kael Drakkel Fabled Zone
    • Anniversary Event: Dragon Attack
     
  2. Clementine

    Clementine Active Member

    Ok. What did that anniversary monument end up being anyway? I quit before they were done being built. I'm assuming it was just a statue of Lucan and Antonia. Or maybe they lazily used the same monument in both zones and it's just Darathar or something.
     
  3. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    The latter.
     
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  4. Clementine

    Clementine Active Member

    Yeah I installed the game to check and they just dipped Darathar in gold and sat him on the pedestal. It's actually a pretty neat statue, but I can't figure out why they put the Antonica one in the middle of literally no where.
     
  5. Daaaaave

    Daaaaave Member

    15 Raids/Mythic Raids --> boring scripts on T4 /T4M, endless Resolve grind, pattern disaster
    Erollisi Day Public Quest - Love Will Lead You Back --> no one participated, because of copy/paste prev. year
    GU109: Mischief and Mayhem (Plane of Mischief) --> copy /paste (solo/heroic), raid a disaster because lack of decent loot!
    GU 111: Kael Drakkel Fabled Zone --> copy /paste --> grind
    Anniversary Event: Dragon Attack --> grind / lag fest/ copy/paste (KOS prelude event) and rewards obsolete after 1-2 weeks
    fan fest --> NULL

    Did i miss something from "2019 a strong year for EQ2" ??
     
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  6. Clementine

    Clementine Active Member

    I mean, they didn't introduce a new and exciting way to scam people out of their money so that's a plus. Although apparently the Blood of Luclin store page claims it includes classes and races which is completely untrue. So maybe they didn't even manage that.
     
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  7. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    The hidden healing mechanics?? That was pretty awesome (i.e. spamming heals cause you don't know how the debuff works = super fun.)
     
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  8. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    I continue to believe that Chaos Descending saw quieter forums merely because there were less earth-shattering bugs. The current trajectory of heroic content design, itemization, and mechanics have been unappealing to many of us for several years now. One expansion isn't going to reverse that, and given everything we've seen in Blood of Luclin, it's clear that they are going to continue to barrel down the current path. Some players clearly like it. Many of us don't. To me Echoes of Faydwer, Kunark, and The Shadow Odyssey were the high water mark for EQ2.
     
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  9. Pixistik

    Pixistik Member

    EoF was a very well done expansion imo, and was the last expansion I really cared for...cant believe I am still here.
     
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  10. Anaogi

    Anaogi Active Member

    Late EoF (as the gods returned) was my re-entry after a few years away. Kunark was my rise and TSO my golden age. All downhill from there, though Sentinel's Fate wasn't awful. Velious was...odd...and for some reason I draw a blank on what came immediately after, gee such memorable content it must have been...

    And once Kerafyrm was defeated, why bother?
     
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  11. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    I thought ROK was pretty good. TSO was ok, but I wasn't thrilled with Guk.

    Here's what I think they should do:

    Abandon any illusions that the later game is anything but a raiding game. Go back and re-engineer everything through TSO to the original mechanics. Get rid of potency, get rid of resolve, get rid of ferver, get rid of adornments all that crap. Keep old game old school.

    Stream line everything after that, including any new content going forward as a brief sig line, some heroics, etc as a means to introduce story and lore into the raiding environment/story.

    As a part of that, squash the ridiculous stat inflation and maintain the old mechanics. Instead of producing overland and casual content, which it appears they have neither the staffing nor the interest in doing, just focus on building a series of raids after level 80 or 90 or whatever it was. i.e. each expansion going forward = sig line + heroics =>=>raid crawl.

    In terms of tradeskilling, just own-up and make crafted spell upgrades and crafted gear gone going forward. Give every crafter a bauble that gives them secondary skills as carpenters for the deco game. They can come out with some new recipes each expansion and let peeps harvest away, but really, they don't need to. They just need new recipes - the zone doesn't matter.

    I realize lots of you folks will believe ideas like this are dumb. But oh well, it's a better idea than lying to your customers.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2020
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  12. Meneltel

    Meneltel Active Member

    Fuli, used to play tabletop D&D and often we were up against a tough spot or adventure and someone would come up with a dumb idea but after telling us it, they would be told it was a dumb idea... until he countered with (one night) "Fine, what idea did you come up with that's better?" Silence followed by "You know, I love this idea! Lets do it! Think of the experience points!" So after that, a dumb idea was better than no idea. Besides, the dumb idea might be altered and mutated into a great idea since its the seed that start the tree of knowledge growing!
     
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  13. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Well, something I forgot to make clear with my idea was to keep all the content pre-90 or whatever the same. Let the old schoolers piddle around with the old game to heart's content. Basically, all I'm suggesting is they combine these tle concepts with expansions going forward into one package.

    I mean, to keep things interesting for the older content folks, they could dream-up some new and long HQ like quest chains for some cool goodies. Maybe drop one into the game every 6 months or so into a random tier.

    In terms of crafting, they could also add new recipes into those teirs, maybe even make quest-like experiences out of crafting deco stuff. Make it a long and complicated process to get certain very cool items to finished.

    What I'd like to see them do is keep what was good and splash a little newness into it to keep things interesting, and going forward, focus their limited resources on raid crawls and make said raid crawls very, very good.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2020
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  14. Tekka

    Tekka That Village Idiot

    It's been years and years since PvE was anything but a means to satisfy my decorating urges, or armor drops for wardrobe - faction items and recipes, ease of harvesting, etc. I think the last time I did PvE seriously was in the several months before the Freeport server launched, while it was in 'beta'.

    Because in most of the expansions, I enjoyed the new housing items, it took a lot longer than it otherwise would have for that 'last straw' to drop. The threshold for each person is different.

    It's an unfortunate situation, folks that get bored with a game will often play something else for a while and come back, while those that get fed up and leave with a bad taste and negative feelings are significantly less likely to make a return as well as being MORE likely to advise others against playing the game or at the very least not recommend it.
     
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  15. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    pros
    CD kept crafting relevant for the first (and seemingly only) time ever for an expac.
    The way armor crates worked was very alt friendly (though the status cost was steep)
    There was always something you could to do to work toward improving your toon and/or get gear for alts.

    cons
    That status costs were over the top
    The entry pt to heroics was nearly impossible to reach when the expac released
    The resolve climb to get into raids and progress in raids was excessively steep.

    Overall, it was a pretty good expac.
     
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  16. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    Which is pretty much what I've been doing for the last several expansions. I gave up adventuring and raiding after Velious and crafting after they first broke it in the abomination that followed KA.
     
  17. Ruckus

    Ruckus Member

    Critical Role spoiler, if you're not up-to-date from last Thursday's show:

     
  18. Cindrax

    Cindrax Active Member

    There was a plat exploit that lasted almost the whole expansion... the op forgot to add that to his list of features.

     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2020
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  19. Alarra

    Alarra Active Member

    I agree it was a great expac.
    I may be one of the few on these forums that say so, but it was the best expac since AoM from my perspective.

    It had a nice balance of overland zones and instance zones.
    The dragon quests were fun as you have lots of people coming in to enjoy the fun.

    I have to say though, I didn't like Kael, mind you I didn't like Kael when it was current.

    The goblin zone I didn't get really into, I liked Runneyeye when I could blow it up, but too many control effects for me.
    (I'm a coercer, like to use control effects not become the victim of them)

    It was good for alts in that Ascensions and Epic 2.0 spells became more accessible.

    I like that weeklies had a chance to give you celestial spells, it made it so it was still a relevant thing to do, even if you only did it once a week.
    (Edit: Sorry I mean to say that the monthly quest which was done with weeklies)

    I know a lot of people like to say they like challenge, like tons of quests and things to be like the old days.
    I have to say though, the old days stuff was not hard, up until RoK I think it was(I missed TSO, so you will have to forgive me on that one). Most of the raid fights were turn and burn with a couple of fights that had some interesting mechanics.

    They increased the curve a lot in KA, people hated that they had to do so many quests, they left in droves. Alts were hard to deal with due to quests. Epic 2.0 drove people mad due to the difference in player numbers between RoK and KA and from my perspective the disconnect between lore and implementation.
    People said previously, I wish that old content was relevant, then they made it sorta relevant by requiring you to run through old questlines to be able to do the Epic 2.0, then they all whinged and made angry faces(including me, although I didn't ask for old content to be implemented) due to the requirements.

    Blue stats vs green stats, well I have to say the game before blue stats is perhaps a different game altogether.
    I liked both systems, maybe I am crazy, I dunno.
    When we had green stats, we needed to increase the main stat for damage for the class, then wis for resists and strength for auto attack/incumbrance, agility for runspeed.
    Then with the blue stats we have a more streamlined path for knowing what will increase the characters damage, want more melee damage, change the melee stats. Want more ability damage, increase potency and it's friends. Want more resists aim for gear with resists (not so important nowadays, but was important during AoM)
    Blue stats gave way for more customization.

    Resolve/pot is just their current go to stat for balance and gear score, during green stats you would look at wis and your main stat, now you can gauge it by a single number to show you the gear score for that piece of gear then go with whatever your current way of gearing you think your class requires to do well in groups.
    However, their implementation of potency mitigation and chaotic leech makes it harder to gauge when you will actually be effective.
    Bleedthrough made non-warding healers a little more relevent, but I still don't like they way they implemented it.

    hmmm well this post has become a meandering mess. I think I will stop while I'm ahead.
     
    Last edited: Feb 6, 2020
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