Please don't throw your failed argument attempts in my direction, I already feel like I have a lower IQ from giving in and reading/replying to your posts. If you and Dielle were in charge, we would have no raids or end game content, solo and groups would all be able to get everything in game and no subscriptions...just crack open your wallet and buy some keys then sit idle in a chunk somewhere opening lock boxes...sounds awesome doesn't it! I hope the Dev team come to their senses before we start losing a lot more players, again.
Considering im throwing YOUR failed agruments back in your face im not surprised your IQ is dropping. Ive never once suggested there shouldnt be raids or that raiding isnt a legitimate playstyle. I have said all along that i dont think the best gear should come strictly from raids or that raid gear should be vastly superior to anything you can get any other way and so beyond the pale as to invalidate all non raid content. Ive never suggested gear should be handed out like candy or there shouldnt be effort and skill involved in getting the best gear. I think the lockboxes are a joke and shouldnt be dropping any gear. I think there are other ways to entice players to use station cash that dont involve pay to win.
Its not my argument... I agree with what you have said, read my posts... except the part about "Best gear shouldn't be from raids". I have stated many times a raid requires more skill, coordination, concentration and challenge than a group or solo could ever require and therefore the drops should be better, not by a huge margin but still better. It doesn't invalidate anything, it's end game progression and as I previously said, anyone can get it, no one is stopping the average Joe blow from joining a raid, if they choose not to then that is their prerogative but they shouldn't then whinge about not being able to get the best gear. Reverence hosts a PUG raid every Sunday and we give the average player a chance to get loot that they wouldn't normally ever see...nothing is stopping a player from joining a guild or hosting their own PUG to help get like minded players that kind of quality gear. MMOs these days hand out that stuff like candy, VG was never meant to be an easy mode game but over the years it is turning into exactly that, why? because the "I want everything now! players are starting to overwhelm the old school players. Everyone now wants something for next to nothing these days, this is bad for games like VG because once they get it they will leave and move onto the next easy mode game and the cycle will continue, game after game. This still doesn't make it right. I am all for great solo and group loot, it will bring a lot to the game and keep players interested but the top level stuff should be left for the hardest and most challenging content, raiding. Period.
I pay to have fun and enjoy what the Dev team gives me. I provide feedback when something is broken or could be improved. I test on the test server when I can. I had a toon that was amoung the first to fly on a griffon, toon was wiped on test server. Make your changes team and I will test and feedback my thoughts. Devs have final say to follow the game as they see fit. The rest of the discussion on this thread is boring.
it still fascinates me that POTA (group content) in general requires raid based gear to do well. In turn, COB (group content) requires POTA gear and some raid gear to be successful. The comingling of gear requirements implies that the designers think people need to raid as part of their logical progression for gear (unless they get stuff from people that paid money for lockbox keys). The whole system is pretty convoluted and makes no sense for anyone that prefers a solo or small casual group play style. At this juncture, none of the above dialogue will change where we are today. Only the pankor zhi work will really show us where the devs expect the game to go in the future. At that point we can decide whether VG is still meeting our needs. COB and Tharridon were not the answer, they were holdovers from past work that was finally pushed into play to give veterans something new to do. For better or for worse , we thank the team for trying, but frankly , we were expecting more polish and forethought given how long those projects have been in work. Please let PZ be a refreshing flow of new content that satisfies both groups and raiders.
I agree with you entirely on all of this. And while I understand the why PotA and onwards has been designed as it has been, I still have to shake my head at the short-sightedness of it all. I mean, the whole point was to give an already extremely top-heavy community something to do. When PotA came out most guilds were nearing the end of the raid progression, and the vast majority of the community was 50. You didn't see nearly as much lower level population, and when you did they were twinked alts of high level players who were bored. So the dev's decided to align the newest content with the expected power-level of the average end-game group at the time: people who'd completed APW. Short-term this was a good strategy. It gave the majority of the game's population something new to do, and it lasted a good while while people struggled with the challenges of figuring out the trials, getting their faction and kills and then figuring out the Sisters' event. But on the long-term this is nothing but a cripple for VG's established flow (as you've point out, and a number of other players have as well). Now that we have people at all stages of gameplay it's becoming obvious there's a lot broken about the way VG has been handled over the 'Dark Ages' of the game where we dwindled down to the Vets. I really do hope that Pankor Zhi fixes this. If you can do the following flow I think it will really fix the broken group progress: Swamp->Magi Hold->Pankor Zhi->PotA->COB (I have no idea where BoD or Vi'Rak should fit in this progression... Possible side-grades, or as others have mentioned, about Vi'Rak in particular, there should be some re-balancing) Of course, also put in the odd challenging mob for raiders to gnaw on. But at this point the balance of "for raiders" vs "for groupers" is pretty skewed as far as post 50 content.
I don't think the main population of Vanguard and mmorpgs are raiders even if I am one of them. Wolfshead, a previous EQ GM, wrote a very good open letter to SOE at 2004 EverQuest Guild Summit and I agree with him. I don't want Vanguard to be pushed into a raiding game like Everquest. Some group content are very challenging such as PotA trials and Shadow Hillsbury encounters. They are not just tank and spank. You need some strategy. I would like to thank the Vanguard team for their efforts and that Pankor Zhi will feature content for soloers, groups, and raids. Could you hire some quest masters like at the beginning of Everquest? They could participate and run live and dynamic script events in low populated or unused zones instead of creating a lot of new content. Vanguard is already huge. What about a cartheon or a sky pirate invasion leaded by Admiral Chrykalis? When we will be able to take back Mekalia? Finally, there is an interesting interview on massively about MMO Loyalty, especially MMO that increases loyalty by just 5% can increase profits by 25-95% and the study.
Vanguard end game bottle necks you into raiding, there is nothing else to do, same with a lot of MMOs but VG is pretty bad like that, I didn't mind so much as I love raiding but these days when all your hard work and effort plus countless hours of grinding are wasted on someone opening lock boxes and getting better gear than you, it kind of kills the excitement for me and leaves us with less and less to strive for at end game. Broken mechanics, broken raid mobs, bugs, poor itemization and lag all factor into this equation to make for a bitter taste in your mouth after putting so much into the game and our characters over the last 6 or so years..
To correct my apparent misquote, I would suggest a progression more like: RAID 2 > GROUP 2 > SOLO 2 > RAID 1 > GROUP 1 > SOLO 1 This keeps the gear heirarchy present but allows players to use other routes as stepping stones, to ensure they can get the prerequities to bring themselves up to date with the rest of the server, and at least have the capacity to try the content everyone else is on.
I lost track of this topic a loooooong time ago. Is all this talk pertaining to just Vanguard or to MMO's in general. Because as far as I can tell it's a pretty good mix of how BiS gear is attained. For my sorc (numbers could be wrong) but I count 8(earring, helm, mask, shoulders, neck*, hands, legs, boots) BiS pieces from Group content and 11(earring, chest, arms, wrists, belt, claok, ring, ring, focus, focus, ranged) BiS pieces from Raid and 1(ammo empty slot, and like however many BiS Augs from Soloing/Grouping and like a handful from raiding. Again my numbers could be wrong as I am not 100% certian on CoB loot or the "new" itemization with EE's So as far as i'm concerned I don't currently see much wrong.
Polish, new content, progression....its all good but im afraid all this wont improve the retaining rate of new players. Im a casual player that stuck with Vanguard for years, have many alts, yada yada. Point is that over the years i have mostly "lingered" in low-mid level areas and i noticed the same complaints and resons for quitting over and over. Main reason is basically the absence of real maps. I lost count how many rage quits i witnessed in New Targonor. Quest givers are not on the map and/or mini-map, crafting taskmasters are not on the minimap and they wander around, merchants that sell craft utilities are more often than not hard to find. Diplomacy evidence turn in npcs are not obvious to find, believe it or not its little things like these that make people stop playing. Last but not least, please dont turn crafting into a group affair and dont break it. The crafting is well explained on the Isle of Dawn, and to be honest i had no problems figuring out crafting before the Island of Dawn was implemented. Raiding is not for everyone and neither is crafting. If you want to make crafting "accessible" for everyone, hey why not do the same thing with raiding? Make raiding so that everybody can do it...Bas idea isnt it? Same thing with crafting "accessibility". Please dont WoW-ify crafting, for people who are willing to invest a minimum of effort to understand it, its not hard and overwhelming at all.
These issues you bring up could be fixed with available resources. First few? Improve the interface to resemble something like coreui+ and infomap? http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info223-RufinsCoreUI.html http://www.vginterface.com/downloads/info96-InfoMapAdvanced.html The last parts sound like the vanguard devs are trying to fix squeaky wheels with blowtorches.
Take soloing out of the ecuation and soon you might not have a game to group and raid in. Like it or not, soloers are a portion of the population pie, leave them out and the game will have even less players than it already has.
