I will quit in 18 days if SOE doesn't add another old-fashioned-style doctor mirror headband to the game with stats higher than 10 hitpoints.

The Equipment Gap

by Loral on June 25, 2005

"Remember how Kunark came out and suddenly players and items were just so much more powerful than in the original game? Remember when Velious came out and it seemed at first that items were only increasing in effectiveness by a small margin? Well, throw the curve out the window, students, because there is not just a gap between good items and awesome items, there's a freaking canyon."

- Moorgard, 29 June 2001, Mobhunter

Over the past few weeks we have talked about the fan faire, the new expansion, and some of the new directions SOE has taken Everquest. This week I thought we would take a step back and talk about a topic in Everquest that has been around since the days of Kunark: Equipment balance.

No doubt this article will ruffle a few feathers. My intent, however, is not to focus on one particular style of play but instead to look at the details of this topic that often get lost. If all you see is "Loral wants better gear for the casual gamer again" then you're probably not reading hard enough.

There comes a point at the highest levels of the game when equipment can double the power between two equally leveled players. This generally only happens at the highest levels, right now between levels 65 and 70.

Consider these two pieces of equipment:

Faithbringer's Breastplate of Conviction: AC: +125 Str: +30 Dex: +25 Sta: +30 Cha: +25 Agi: +25 Fire Resist: +30 Cold Resist: +30 Magic Resist: +30 Poison Resist: +35 HP: +315 Mana: +355, Mana Regeneration: +5, Regeneration: +10, Avoidance: +10, Shielding: +5%, Spell Shield: +6%, Effect: Blessed Healing Aura: Increase Healing by 50%, Focus Effect: Keldovan's Light: Decrease Spell Mana Cost by 25%, Required Level: 70

Plate Vest of the First Order: AC: +72 Dex: +12 Sta: +12 Wis: +12 Int: +12 Agi: +12 Fire Resist: +13 Disease Resist: +13 Cold Resist: +13 Poison Resist: +13 HP: +125 Mana: +120 End: +120, Required Level: 70

I want you to pay particular attention to the last part of these two lines: "Required Level: 70". These items are designed for the same level character. Yet the power of the first item is well over twice the power of the second especially when one considers the focus effects, regen, mana regen, avoidance, and shielding.

No doubt the difficulty in acquiring these items is vastly different. One can be purchased from the Dragons of Norrath vendor after completing somewhere between 7 and 12 missions. The other requires drops from the Arch Magus or Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish.

Obviously, these items don't compare in either power or in the difficulty to receive it. However, there are some areas where these items must be compared.

Encounters are based on levels, not equipment. At level 70, the same creatures are dark blue to you regardless of your equipment. The same mobs give the same experience regardless of your gear. Yet, based on the power of your equipment, an encounter could be either impossible or trivial depending on what type of equipment you use.

At level 70, level no longer accurately describes how powerful you are. Yet systems in the game continue to use level as a way to determine encounter difficulty. Lost Dungeon adventures and Dragons of Norrath missions scale their content based on level, not equipment. The Omens of War Task system and the quests given to you in Dragons of Norrath are based on level, not gear. Some of these are trivial to well-equipped players and impossible for the rest.

Even those with the best equipment expect growth yet they cannot get it from single-group hunts. Not everyone raids all the time. There comes a time when even high-end raiders want to get together in a group of six and fight an appropriate challenge. At the highest end, even the most powerful single-group areas offer little reward for high-end raiders. High-end raiders cannot increase their equipment power in single-group events. This leads them towards a "raid or nothing" attitude. Why bother hunting anywhere if there is no reward for doing so?

One single-group hunting zone or mission cannot challenge both single-group equipped players and high-end raid equipped players. No challenge will be acceptable to both groups. I hear it often. Riftseekers is too easy for raid-equipped players and too hard for single-group equipped players. The only players who seem to find the perfect challenge in this high-end zone are those who happen to be equipped with Time or Elemental gear of roughly 150 hps and mana each.

The power gap will come back as a hot topic when Depths of Darkhollow brings us monster templates based on level. If these templates are built around single-group equipment, raiders will find them extremely low powered for the level. If they are built around raid-level equipment, they will be more powerful than many players' main characters. The only answer is to base them on single-group equipment and accept that raiders will find them extremely low powered.

How can SOE begin to close the equipment gap? There are few, if any, easy answers. It isn't just a matter of offering better equipment for single-group encounters. Doing so devalues the reward of higher-end raid encounters.

It is not unreasonable to expect that the absolute best single-group equipment available should meet 75% of the absolute best raid-level equipment. If a cleric breastplate from Overlord Mata Muram includes a 50% healing focus and 355 mana, a breastplate from the hardest single-group encounter might offer 250 mana and a 35% healing focus.

Even with gear 75% of high-end raid gear there isn't anything to say that difficult single-group zones will still be impossible for non-raiders. In places like Riftseekers that extra 25% power makes the difference between success and failure.

A more difficult solution would be to add some sort of "legendary" status to items. Items with this status could have different statistics when used during a raid than they do when used during single-group events. This lets equipment balance out during single-group events but meet the proper requirements during raid events.

Another solution, also radical, would be to add in a Dungeons and Dragons style "power level". Equipment and levels could combine into a single power rating that determines the difficulty of an encounter. However, after playing 3rd edition D&D for a year now, the power level in D&D isn't very accurate and doesn't help much when matched to challenges. There is nothing to say that a power level in EQ would be any more accurate, but perhaps it would help.

Every new expansion increases the power for both raiders and non-raiders. With the recent addition of slot 9 augments to Dragons of Norrath gear, single-group players now have customizable armor comparable to Elemental and Time level armor. More of Norrath becomes accessible to more players with every increase in power.

However, it is clear that Everquest becomes very gear dependent at the highest levels of the game. It has been this way for the last four or five years and I see few ways to fix this problem without radically changing the game. As it has been since the days of the Ring War, the topic of equipment power will always continue to be a hot one.

Loral Ciriclight
26 June 2005
Loral@loralciriclight.com

Comment Posted by: Jyve on June 26, 2005 09:53 PM

The thing that STARTS to bring things closer together are the augs. Being able to work hard to get the effect/hp/ft/ac you want by sheer hard work is a step in the right direction. It's not enough though. I get so confused with the slots these days;

slot 7 Normal gear

slot 8 Time gear upwards

slot 9 don gear only

slot 10 ?is there a 10?

slot 11 errr

slot 12 hmmm, tradeskill stuff?

it ALMOST looks like there's a difficulty curve to the slots, but it just doesn't fit. High end augs should really be able to fit in any slot downwards of the content that awards the gear to be able to be placed in. Means theres a way to upgrade old gear, augs are 'earned' in the right place.

Ldon's augs are 1,2,3 or 7 or 8 only. DoN is 7 and 8, or 9. Why can't I put an aug I spent 1.5k ldon points on Time armour?

I'm starting to get lost with it all.

What I'm very interested in seeing is the chance for intelligent items. If this means corny jokes a la jester, no thanks, but if it means equipment that 'grows' and learns from your experience too, then it could help narrow the curve between 'casual' (hate that term), and hard-core. You see, the way I see it is there's still alot of people out there called casual that probably have alot more play time than the hard-core. The only thing is, they don't raid. We've all seen a new character PL'd up, given the gear from a raid that would rot be dumped on the newbie, and bang, a char with little playtime has 3 times the hp's of a char played for 3-4 years. This isn't to knock the quality of gear at the level, but to say that the person with the playtime, the EXPERIENCE of the game in many places should be rewarded to.

LDoN was the near perfect solution, and at the time offered a close gap between someone who played alot (and I mean ALOT, I was living in LDoN for months, many others were too), and the near high end, with gear that was close to elemental and could be aug'd up as desired.

That closeness has gone though, the difference these days is HUGE and there's no way a player with 12 hours of playtime a day could match someone who logged in 2-3 times a week and did a 3 hour raid. That isn't right. There should be something to give the long term player, and I hope growing items may be it.

Comment Posted by: on June 26, 2005 10:57 PM

From the forums if anyone missed it:

And I agree - next patch all of the type 9 augments on the DoN vendors that can be placed in visible slots will also be able to fit in type 12 slots as well. Next patch, btw, not this patch coming up.

-Zajeer

(Linky)

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=TNZ&message.id=185081#M185081

and BTW.. Type 11 = Cultural.

Type 1,2,3 = Lost dungeons

Type 10 is not in at the moment I beleive.

and Type 12 is for future expansions to cultural as we see coming in a future patch.

Comment Posted by: Naladini on June 27, 2005 12:24 AM

These itemization issues seem to get compounded when you talk about certain classes eg. under-geared tanks and clerics seem to cause a lot more trouble for groups than undergeared dps classes.

------------

"A more difficult solution would be to add some sort of "legendary" status to items. Items with this status could have different statistics when used during a raid than they do when used during single-group events. This lets equipment balance out during single-group events but meet the proper requirements during raid events."

------------

Allowing effects to scale into raids sounds like a pretty solid way of trying to return some semblance of balance to the group vs. raid environment. No, its not easy, and to implement it, it will seem like a massive nerf, but it might be worth it in the long run. An added benefit to this idea would be that it might restore a bit of balance to the pvp environment as well.

If group content can be designed solely around gear obtainable in a group setting, the game will be much better off. In fact, it would eventually allow some better soloing chances for people who aren't running around in high-end raid gear.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 27, 2005 02:25 AM

"The thing that STARTS to bring things closer together are the augs. Being able to work hard to get the effect/hp/ft/ac you want by sheer hard work is a step in the right direction. It's not enough though. I get so confused with the slots these days;

slot 7 Normal gear

slot 8 Time gear upwards

slot 9 don gear only

slot 10 ?is there a 10?

slot 11 errr

slot 12 hmmm, tradeskill stuff?

Ldon's augs are 1,2,3 or 7 or 8 only. DoN is 7 and 8, or 9. Why can't I put an aug I spent 1.5k ldon points on Time armour?

I'm starting to get lost with it all."

I am at a loss too! I am starting to think that I need a master degree in the Quatum Physics. Oh great got an aug, but I can't use it on any of my gear! WHOOT! Aug limits should only be by level and class.

"and I hope growing items may be it."

I thought we already had growing items?? They are called recomended level equipment. I have a bunch of that stuff on my main and just like when you were a kid and mommy buys you a new pair of pants, you grow into them. Every time I ding the gear get better.

I'm in total argreement with Loral and his arguement with the gear gap. I hate to burst the bubble here but I believe the single grp content players outnumber the raid grp players. It means that something has to be done or frustration will or already has set in.

Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 27, 2005 03:15 AM

Great article Loral,

Gear is the game, period. Leveling is very important as it unlocks content, but gear is what allows you to live through that content when you get there. Player skill ought to be the difference btw. Two players of the same lvl can be worlds apart according to their gear, add to that AAs and the comparison can be ridiculous. AAs don't cause a disparity though, because they can be earned by anyone, and any play style. It used to be that certain classes were more affected by their gear then others.. tanks especially were only as good as the gear they had on, but now it can truely be said for all classes.

Raiders get great gear, because they deserve to..

heheh never thought you'd hear me say that! That being said... the game is based on the sinlge group. And, as long as the game requires us to group and imposes artificial limits on single group size... Well then, a single group should be able to advance appropriately without falling so far behind in power so as to be a non factor.

I don't expect to attain the status of raid legend gear through single group content. But, just like Virtue and KEI, great gear has become a neccessary prerequisite of playing the normnal single group content. These buffs were originally designed with raids in mind.. hence the term "Raid Buffs" but they have become standard for normal play to be effective or even possible. The same thing is happening with equipment and any equipment gap... or canyon... HHhhHHEElllOOOooo....EEeeeEECCccccHHHhhhhOOOoo....... will be a real obstacle. If raiders can't advance through sinlge group play because it doesn't offer a big enough pay out, and casual players can't advance through single group play because they are too underpowered, What do you think will happen to the Sacred Cow of the single, six person group?

Any Dodo birds in the audience?

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 27, 2005 03:17 AM

Rather than implement some bugged power level calculation which could be exploited perhaps by switching in and out different gear. Another idea is to have some instanced zones scale to the efficency of the group. If a group is killing fast, the mobs increase in power every 10th kill, this then slows the group down by being more of a challenge. With each MOB increase the rewards could also increase slightly this would then prevent uber groups from playing dumb. Likewise being able to selecte the level beforehand would also offset this. By select I mean more than just normal or Hard like in LDON. I'd like to see the following options : Average level -5,+0,+5,+7,+9,+11,+13,+15. This allow a group to select their challenge and hence the reward applicable to their skill/equipment. As the difference of a casual equiped group to a raid equiped group can be worth up to 10 levels in ability.

Also my opinion is that group level equipment should be of the same level as the raid level equipment of 2 or 3 expansions ago. This then closes the gap and both "camps" follow similar curves just displaced by time.

Another way forward is to make tradeskill items that have similar capabilities. Make these items "no drop" so they can't be traded and at the highest trivial level. This allows the casual player to obtain similar items but doesn't make it easy. That way if to get uber item_01 I need to be a GM smith and a GM jeweller so be it, the option is there, if I choose not to take it I won't be able to whinge about not having the chance (as long as you don't have to raid impossible zone_02 just to get the components that is). Tradeskills are a timesink, make them really worthwhile.

Comment Posted by: Glamdrigg on June 27, 2005 03:30 AM

Sunshadow, I agree witht the tradeskill part, but the gear to group bit:" By select I mean more than just normal or Hard like in LDON. I'd like to see the following options : Average level -5,+0,+5,+7,+9,+11,+13,+15. This allow a group to select their challenge and hence the reward applicable to their skill/equipment. As the difference of a casual equiped group to a raid equiped group can be worth up to 10 levels in ability."

I see where you are going with this and I like the idea, but I wouldn't want the /LFG window to have to include what I'm wearing or else no one will invite me... that would really put an exclamation on the gear problem.

Comment Posted by: on June 27, 2005 04:15 AM

OoW gave the casual player the ability to gear themselves in Elem quality gear without completely one flag in PoP. I'm not sure what more a 10 hr per week player could ask for.

Just my opinion.

Comment Posted by: xsi on June 27, 2005 05:13 AM

I totally agree with this post, and I think that's a first. :D

I have no problem with raiders getting better gear because they need it for the raid content... but you're absolutely correct in the fact that the gear raiders then have impacts how SOE balances single group content.

I don't know what can be done about, honestly... the gap has been growing progressively more severe since PoP until, at this point, it has become the status quo.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on June 27, 2005 07:58 AM

I personally can say that I have known alot of people who have never touched the elemental planes and still do Dragons of Norrath Missions every day with no problems. if thats not a sign that they are developing content for non raiding people then I dont know what is.

Just because Non Raiders Gear doesnt = 300 HP/Mana with alot of bells and whistles (Shielding/Avoidance/Spell,DoT shielding) doesnt make them less able to do content and be challenged. afterall before people broke into plane of time Shielding was non existant.

I beleive while in the end gear makes playing EQ easier. and makes getting groups easier. its really skill as a player that sets the good players apart from the bad.

Comment Posted by: Pants on June 27, 2005 08:49 AM

Really it's too late to do anything about it now, except maybe stop making expansions for 2 years and let the casual players catch up gearwise, as much as they are capable of. The source of the problem is 9 expansions in 6 years. This is overkill and when you combine the large number of expansions with the haphazard way they are designed (as in there is no long term plan and stuff is just thrown in almost on a whim with no regard to the previous or next expansion) you have problems that may be beyond repair. It's like SOE doesn't really know what kind of game they want EQ to be, a raider game or casual. In the past the emphasis seemed to be more on raiding and lately more on casual but in either case the exponential growth in stats on gear over the years has gotten out of control and so has the gap. They could design new content without giving mobs more HPs and players right along with it. In other words new stuff not bigger stuff.

I guess these problems are inevitable in any gear based game. I see WoW having the same problems too and in fact it already has started. It's part of the reason I play CoH, because there is no gear, greed, arguments over loot, or rediculously long raiding cycles. I just log in, play for a few hours and have fun with no stress over if I'm geared properly. This lends itself to skill being more important, something that is lacking in EQ no matter what anyone claims. I've seen horrible players (the kind that cause trains and every other stupid thing imaginable) in EQ who could still be invincible in many zones just because they were practically untouchable with their gear. I've also seen good players (who are try to take on mobs within their ability and actually think things out) get slaughtered in zones that weren't even that hard because they didn't have very good gear and maybe because there was one mob too many (something the bad player with great gear wouldn't have to worry about). Skill has little to do with success in EQ, it's mostly stats and that's a shame. I know people will argue this point for EQ pride or whatever but honestly look at the game and think about it.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 27, 2005 09:37 AM

Hi Loral,

"Encounters are based on levels, not equipment."

Partially only.

"Yet systems in the game continue to use level as a way to determine encounter difficulty."

LDON hard wasn't level based only.

"How can SOE begin to close the equipment gap?"

I start to think that it's not the write question to ask.

More like: "when does it matter that there is a gap"

Answer: in single group content.

Question: how to solve it?

Options: make 2 types of instanced group content. non raider and raider.

Like LDON. For all its flaws, they had done that right.

The rest imho is a no go. Dumping raid gear on non raiders in order to close artificially a gap that matters only in one playstyle is hardly the way to go. It just dumps down all the non raid content for the non raiders for no good reason.

Single groupers have 200hp per slot more or less with DoN with little effort (in comparison to killing quarm, getting to qvic or farming mpg). Relatively speaking, they might have gone already too far.

Comment Posted by: Hedbonker on June 27, 2005 10:27 AM

There is a fix. It would just take a fair amount of work to implement. It relates to the lame AI that mobs have in EQ and every other MMO that I have played (Lame AI is a topic too long an involved to get into here):

For each item in the game, assign a value to it. For each player, keep a total of all of the values for that player (say a total power value).

When a player that is grouped aggroes a mob, the mob AI gets the power values of all of the players in that group, sums the value and scales the mob's power based on that value.

A simple solution - Would take a fair amount of work to implement this, but it would be an MMO first. And well worth the effor IMO.

The AI can also implement a raid flag. If the aggro is initiated by a player that is not in a raid and the encounter is intended for a raid level force, the encounter scales to a raid level force of say a minimum of 4-5 groups of that level of power.

This would eliminate farming mobs like Tmax by single groups. The same AI can be used to scale raid encounters such that if someone IS in a raid then the summed player power value is used to scale the encounter for that raid.

You would implement a threshold in terms of a minimum power rating for raid encounters. So a raid encounter for average PoP geared lvl 65 toons is a beatable encounter without scaling, but the same number of say time geared level 70s invokes the scaling factor.

This threshold is then also valid for a 5 group raid of say level 50ish toons in bazaar gear as unbeatable - no scaling is done because the encounter is not intended for that audience.

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 27, 2005 10:49 AM

You have to keep in mind that content still needs to be tested, tuned, shipped with some semblance of high/low values. Having 100 different versions of the same content because people can have 0 to 1200 AAs and 2000 to 15'000 hps, isn't exactly practical.

Let alone grouping a naked toon of a given level to cheat the system out or god knows what else people will figure out.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 27, 2005 10:59 AM

"Single groupers have 200hp per slot more or less with DoN with little effort (in comparison to killing quarm, getting to qvic or farming mpg). Relatively speaking, they might have gone already too far."

The best a non-raider could hope for might be the First Order Breastplate with the 35 hp and mana augments for about 160 hp and mana. So my calculations are a little bit off but I'd stand by the 100% power increase in top-end raid gear especially when you consider the effects.

I specifically didn't include augmented items because the top-end raid gear isn't augmented either. With top end augments on raid gear, the gap becomes even wider.

"It's like SOE doesn't really know what kind of game they want EQ to be, a raider game or casual."

I think its pretty clear that SOE want's both. Omens was a very single-group friendly (I hate the term casual) expansion and also had a lot of top-end raid content. Dragons had a fair amount of raid content as well but it was too easy for the hard-core raiding crew. I think all expansions should include features for most EQ players.

"When a player that is grouped aggroes a mob, the mob AI gets the power values of all of the players in that group, sums the value and scales the mob's power based on that value."

I saw this a couple of times in the comments so far. SOE thought about doing this with the Ikkinz groups but for classes instead of equipment. It is a possible solution but I don't think it would end up working that well. People with good gear want to feel powerful. They want to go back to old content and destroy it. They want to kill Emperor Crush and Dorn. If encounters scaled perfectly, you'd always be shoving the same wall at the same speed. People would begin to figure it out and realize that at that point gear really is meaningless. It can be used in a small variety of situations but I don't think its likely at this state of the game that we will see encounters scale based on power level.

"OoW gave the casual player the ability to gear themselves in Elem quality gear without completely one flag in PoP. I'm not sure what more a 10 hr per week player could ask for."

There is some excellent gear in Omens but I don't think there's anything like elemental armor available if you don't already have elemental armor. Places like the MPG trials and Riftseekers aren't doable if you aren't of at least elemental or higher quality already.

"Also my opinion is that group level equipment should be of the same level as the raid level equipment of 2 or 3 expansions ago."

I'd agree with this but right now we're not yet seeing equipment of five expansions back yet. It is like SOE hangs onto Planes of Power as the core of Everquest. While every other expansion has wide open content available to just about everyone willing to put the time into hunting, they all get routed into this tiny sliver of progressive raid content just so they can get good gear. I still can't get our raiding alliance to realize that there's better gear available if they're willing to forget about Time, but few seem to be.

Obviously this is true everywhere or SOE wouldn't be spending the time to instance a five-expansion old zone. I still would rather have seen alternative zones to Time instead of instancing Time itself but such is life.

Comment Posted by: D Lacey on June 27, 2005 11:14 AM

How about this for a radical, so crazy it just might work idea?

Levels above 70 achievable only by raiding.

Yes... "bonus levels" so that if you level up, you keep a percentage of them (say half)... if they increase the max to 75, if you had been 73 before you are now 71 1/2 with 1.5 bonus levels remaining, meaning if you just exp you will be able to reach 76 1/2.

This way, raiders with their extra gear will actually be higher level than any single group players can get to, and the game will know to be able to scale single group encounters to them.

There would have to be "gain a bonus level" quests only doable on raids, and the bonus level spells and melee powers would also only be dropped on raids.

What do you think?

Comment Posted by: on June 27, 2005 11:17 AM

Truthfully speaking, at this point, non-raiders can get far further progressionwise than they ever could before.

Path:

Start with Bazaar / DoN / LDoN gear/augs.

Continue with WoS / RCoD / OoW tier 1 drops.

At this point, head to MPG / RS and snag spells / augs / drops.

Do Tipt for KT augs and Ikkinz 1-3 drops.

Head to MPG trials, for excellent 200hp per item pieces with effects.

Purely single grouping you can get to the point where you can fight / tank / heal anywhere.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 27, 2005 12:46 PM

"Path:

Start with Bazaar / DoN / LDoN gear/augs.

Continue with WoS / RCoD / OoW tier 1 drops.

At this point, head to MPG / RS and snag spells / augs / drops.

Do Tipt for KT augs and Ikkinz 1-3 drops.

Head to MPG trials, for excellent 200hp per item pieces with effects."

LOL thats funny!

And when do I progress to these stages, 2010? I have been playing for 5 years and I am not 65 yet. You make it sound as if "POOF" stage one "POOF" stage two. PLEASE! It's not like that for the NORMAL person.

"Casual" (sorry Loral I like the term)players don't have the time that raiders have, we have other responsibilities. But ya know what? I pay the same rate, and my voice is just as important as yours.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 27, 2005 12:52 PM

Frankly I think it's too late to try to "fix" the gap between raider and non-raider gear. Redcloud is on the right track--why does the gap matter? The answer is content.

Raiders and non-raiders want the same thing: fun content that allows them to continue to progress--and that mostly means upgrading your gear. Whether it's going from gear with 150 hit points to 170 or 300 to 320 or 20 to 40 doesn't really matter. What matters is that there's a way for you to get gear that's better than what you have.

Remember the non-raider uproar at GoD's release? The reason was simple: rightly or wrongly non-raiders felt like raiding was going to be a prerequisite to play in new content at all. SOE got the message and has been making sure to provide non-raider content ever since. I'm not sure that isn't a sufficient solution right there and the rest isn't mostly changing mindsets.

1) Non-raiders need to quit comparing their gear with raiders. They play a different game. SOE should not feel obligated to support gear envy.

2) Raiders need to quit comparing their gear with non-raiders. In particular it's time to get over PoP. Yes, it was hard work. Yes, you can take pride in what you accomplished there. But that was a long time ago, and non-raider gear can't always be capped in power just so no one feels like their accomplishment of reaching the elemental planes or Time is somehow "devalued" by people getting similar loot in other ways.

Going forward, it's easy to say encounters should scale automatically depending on the actual power of the group, but I'm not convinced such a system can be made to work at all, let alone be resistant to deliberate manipulation. But I don't think there's any need for such a system. Players can figure out the real power of their group far better than any algorithm, so all SOE really needs to do is make sure players have a good incentive to take on the toughest content they can handle and make sure there's plenty of content for everyone.

That's the rub, of course, and the reason it would be better if there weren't such a yawning chasm of a gear gap: the bigger the gap, the smaller the proportion of the content any given player can meaningfully experience (raiders trashing zones designed to challenge non-raiders doesn't count as meaningfully experiencing it). But at this point I think SOE's just going to have to suck it up and put out enough content for everyone.

Comment Posted by: Ardunn on June 27, 2005 12:53 PM

What about more 'hard-work' quests as a solution to getting higher level equipment for non-raiding players?

In the original expansion days you could get some very nice equipment by doing quests that would take days / weeks (Paw of Opalla, Temple of Sol Ro quests, Burning Rapier etc). Later on quests like Signet of the Arcane in pop (though that did need EP access).

All were one groupable, none needed high end guilds or equipment, just patience and hard work.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 27, 2005 01:08 PM

I don't understand your complaint Hemdell. I can vouch for the beginning of that path (I was poking my nose into MPG when I quit and my only piece of "raid gear" was my epic--Kunark epic that is). Now if you're not enjoying that path I sympathize. I wasn't and switched to WoW as a result. But assuming you're having fun, isn't it a GOOD thing that you can continue having fun until 2010 without running out of things to do?

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 27, 2005 01:26 PM

"How about this for a radical, so crazy it just might work idea?

Levels above 70 achievable only by raiding."

Personally, I'd hate it. To me that says that the whole purpose, the whole end goal of Everquest, is raiding. Raiding is definitely a huge part of EQ and a lot of people like doing it, but they might just as likely make level 71 to 75 require 355 skills in all trades before letting people level. It forces everyone to progress into a single method and style of play that many players don't want to follow.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 27, 2005 01:54 PM

I still want an "epic task" with 100+ steps for some super piece of equipment, or maybe an aug.

Comment Posted by: Dagon on June 27, 2005 02:01 PM

All the ideas about having the game figure out a "power level" are deeply flawed, due to the fact that the power of an individual (and more so a group) is not linear with equipment upgrades, and is not the same against all content, or with all mixes of group.

The only solutions are:

1) LDoN-like selection of encounter difficulty, and the rewards (exp, equipment, points) must be scaled somewhat rationally. Reward scaling is impossible too, but it's a smaller error than trying to automatically scale.

2) Start decreasing the gap between raid and single-group equipment. Whether this is equipment that has different stats during a raid (or in a raid zone), or just stopping the upgrade path for raiders for a few years, I don't know. This may alienate raiders. At some point, SoE needs to decide if that's better or worse than the ongoing alienation of non-raiders.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 27, 2005 02:04 PM

"This may alienate raiders. At some point, SoE needs to decide if that's better or worse than the ongoing alienation of non-raiders."

It's not about alienation, really. It's about SOE being able to spend significant development resources on a high-end dungeon thats good for both groups rather than just one or the other. Right now they have to split their resources to support both groups. We'd have better content and more of it if it supported both groups instead of one or the other. I think both raiders and non-raiders would complain about a lack of content when in reality both groups got a lot from the last two expansions. I don't see it as support for one group or the other, I see it as helping bring these two groups back together so we can both hunt together in fun new zones.

Comment Posted by: on June 27, 2005 02:13 PM

There's two different things: Casual & Non-raider.

You can be a non-raider and still play 30 hours a week. Someone who logs in for two hours a week SHOULD take forever to get anywhere. The point is that there should be somewhere to get TO. So, the path I posted above works well. If you say it takes too long, you are effectively proving my point. You are AGREEING that you have a tremendous amount of progression available to you.

If a casual was able to get 75% of Anguish gear in 3 hours a week, the game would have died 3 years ago because all the folks who play 25 hours a week would have finished.

Comment Posted by: on June 27, 2005 02:19 PM

I find the aug/slot system very confusing and frustrating too.

There should aug slots for types of augs instead of what part of the game it comes from.

They really f'd up when they split type 7,8 up into separate augs.

There should be 4 types of augs and slots.

weapon procs slot

HP/mana/endurance slot

Stats/resists slots

Focus/melee effects slots.

Of course augs would have to be alot more restrictive of multiple stats/effects/hp, but it means there would be more variety in augs and choices that players could make.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 27, 2005 02:58 PM

The scope of this problem, as I see it, is only once players have hit level 70, already have lots of AAs, and have nice gear but cannot progress further because they don't have raid gear.

It also considers the problem from the design side - it takes twice as much work to design content for both non-raiders and raiders at level 70 as it does to create content that is challenging for both. I would like to see SOE come up with a solution so they can build a challenge that challenges level 70 players overall. Right now I think that means closing up the gap.

Comment Posted by: mac173173 on June 27, 2005 03:01 PM

Having Raiders on hold for a while sounds like a good idea to me. I never liked the idea that raiding gave rewards in equipment anyway. This just stresses the equipment over the player, and dumbs down the game. For the next expansion, make raid content that drops marginal gear, but presents a challenge to the raiders on HOW to play the content. Make them PLAY better, not GEAR better.

And by the way, the new Cultural Armors are attunable, therefor are Bazaar gear. +145 HP and Mana is pretty good for Bazaar........

Comment Posted by: on June 27, 2005 03:10 PM

That's absurd. If it drops marginal gear, then there is nothing to strive for = nothing to play for = quit.

And Loral, there is plenty progression. See my path above. Going from decent gear to MPG Trial drops/augs & RS drops/augs & Tipt & Ikkinz & KT & DoN and 100% fully auged is a great deal.

Comment Posted by: Aazzn on June 27, 2005 03:41 PM

There's something I think that many people forget while examining this sort of topic. The people who have the raid gear need it for the very challenging raids that they do. By and large it makes the single group content much easier. For the folks that only do single group content (those that don't play to raid), giving them this equipment would only make the game very very easy unless they ramped up the single group content to compensate. A toon fully geared with DoN armor and augs is more than capable of performing their class role in any single group encounter currently in the game and a good portion of the raiding content as well. Provided of course they've taken the time to properly aa their characters to perform their group roles. I don't see the problem then. EQ is and has always been a game where the folks who put in the most time and make the most use of that time are the most powerful. If you don't like this you should have figured out by now that EQ isn't the game for you.

Comment Posted by: Horzek on June 27, 2005 04:20 PM

A couple of points really struck home with me.

"1) Non-raiders need to quit comparing their gear with raiders. They play a different game. SOE should not feel obligated to support gear envy.

I can remember many times from back in the LDON days through the present where I am querried as to my mana pool and regen before I am even invited to a group somewhere. I finally managed to get myself up to Elemental flagging and still I find that for RSS and MPG trials and even the Tipt and Vxed trials I am very needy.

I worked my butt off in LDONs to get to a fairly respectable amount of hps and mana and a couple hundred aa points and I still find myself sliding steadily backwards. I confess I am beginning to ask myself " Why bother?"

I have survived a few groups in RSS but only because the tank I was healing had a very respectable amount of hps and the group slower was always on top of things. When I think about it though, what did I win from RSS? Not a dang thing except the pleasure of quick deaths when things went bad and some very good aa exp when things went good.

One thing I have noticed over and over with expansions that sticks to my craw. When a new expansion is released there are some sweet equipment drops and all the raiding guilds can be seen running rampant through the new zone content. Within a few short weeks the raiders have completed their raping and pillaging and begin to move on and the developers see fit to tune down the drop rates and gear. Even when I do manage to get somewhere that the good stuff drops well you know the routine.

/random 100 Horzek rolls 2

/random 100 Tank rolls 98

/random 100 Shaman rolls 95

/ramdom 100 Bard rolls 65

/ramdom 100 Paladin rolls 6

/random 100 Necro's pet rolls 88

You know the routine.. we dont even want to get started on my experience with rune drops..

For everyone who ever rolled a 2 I would like to all join into a gauntlet formation and force the developers to run it.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on June 27, 2005 04:27 PM

mac173173:Having Raiders on hold for a while sounds like a good idea to me. I never liked the idea that raiding gave rewards in equipment anyway. This just stresses the equipment over the player, and dumbs down the game. For the next expansion, make raid content that drops marginal gear, but presents a challenge to the raiders on HOW to play the content. Make them PLAY better, not GEAR better.

Yes because a event that takes 54 people and only drops 2 items should only drop items equivilant to what drops in Wall of Slaughter.. uh huh.. and then they could make the mob as difficult as OMM. because everyone takes him out every 24 hours right?

How about they do the same for single groupers as well? make their gear drops marginal. and make them actually have skill when playing.

/Feedback Mac173173 had a great idea on Mobhunter, he wants Emporer Crush loot on his Wall of Slaughter mob instead of that 100HP/Mana item. please implement it right away!.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 27, 2005 05:45 PM

It sounds like you may be skipping a step Horzek. If I remember correctly (and I may not be) if you've got LDoN gear there are some pretty significant upgrades available in the OoW zones before RSS. You may want to spend some time there and then see how RSS goes.

RSS is tough enough that you will be seeing some raiders there, true. And it does take some serious gear, so I'm not surprised that people ask if you've got the gear it takes. But as long as it's possible (though time consuming) to get that gear in a single group, then I don't think it's a raider vs. non-raider issue at all.

The proposal to put raiders on hold for a while I think makes the same mistake raiders often make when talking about non-raider gear. EQ is about progression, whether you're a raider or not. If either group cannot progress, they have no reason to play. SOE needs to provide a clear progression path for both groups.

Loral's point that SOE has a hard time doing so because their gear is so different is well taken. But I still think at this point it's going to be easier to make two sets of content than to substantially reduce the gap, at least in the short to medium run.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 27, 2005 06:14 PM

"But I still think at this point it's going to be easier to make two sets of content than to substantially reduce the gap, at least in the short to medium run."

That's probably what will happen. There will be missions for group-equipped players and missions for raid-equipped players. Instead of having content for level 60 and level 70, it will be content for level 60, level 70, and level 70 raiders. Raiders will just be treated as a separate class. My only concern is that one group or the other will get the content that is the most "fun" while the other gets lamer stuff.

For example, consider the MPG single group events vs. the Dranik Hollows instances. MPG single group events were a lot more fun with a lot of excellent ingenuity and talent while the Dranik Hollows events lacked anything but mobs to kill. I would rather see equipment available so anyone could do these events if they are willing to work to get there. At this point, they probably can. There's enough good gear for single groups in Omens and Dragons to get single-group people to the MPG trials. However, there is nothing to say that future content won't be more difficult.

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 27, 2005 06:56 PM

Another option mentioned above which I really like is have the raid item in new expansions scale like some charms do. That way in a single group they are group level item but in a raid they scale up to Raid level items. Things like having 200hp +5 hp for every person in raid. So at full group they are +230hp and at full raid they are +470hp.In the short term raiders would still use their current stuff when grouping and the new stuff when raiding but in a couple of expansions it would even out as group level stuff should keep increasing. As this scaling stuff already exists for charms it should be easy for it to be ported across to other items.

Comment Posted by: menleniel on June 27, 2005 07:16 PM

I hope they don't separate the two groups. I was a heavy raider but not a powerleveler. I enjoyed raiding a lot but when I was xping I like to group with all kinds of players from newbs in wos to the other high end raid players in RSS. I'd have hated to group only with other similarly geared players.

And how would it work? What makes a player a raider?

In my guild we had our hardcore and casual raiders some of whom were very poorly equipped.

And how would that affect pickup raids with the wide range of players there?

Comment Posted by: Redcloud on June 27, 2005 07:33 PM

I know why you say this Loral but that still ain't gonna work. There is one thing that you skip: one groupers haven't DONE yet a large part of the content that is available to them and that would bring upgrades to them.

There is no rime nor reason to spend gobbles of ressources on one groupable casual content that won't be done anyhow.

Comment Posted by: Cognac on June 27, 2005 10:04 PM

Interesting topic, and one close to all of our hearts I'm sure.

We play MMORPG's for diffreent reasons. Some have a high tollerence for repetative kill,kill,kill,DING gameing. Some simply want to explore the world and have fun with people. Some enjoy the insidious obfusciousness of the quests. Some like to feel powerfull over their peers.

We are here playing this game 6 years after it's debut (and 3 years after it should have died), for a reason. Either the gameplay, the progression, or the challange suits our needs. We complain because it doesn't suit our individual wants as close as we'd like.

Loral has pointed out a group that I didn't know existed. This then breaks the player base not into two groups, raid and non-raid, nore even casual / hard core, but into many more sub categories.

Items, Guild strength, player skill, AA's, Character Level, In game plat available, flags and keys, long or empty friends lists, ect, all play a part in our character effectiveness and overall enjoyment.

Personaly; I get excited if I can afford to upgrade an item from the bazaar. Which by the way, tend to be far better items than anything I can get from a drop or even quest for. Perhaps they should have made the raids neccessary for quest items only, aka epics. The game would be very different today. I guess that was a design consideration they made back at Luclin.

Comment Posted by: Moorgard on June 28, 2005 01:47 AM

I started reading the article and I said to myself, "Wow, Loral has really gotten the hang of this writing thing. Those words are like poetry. It's going to be his best editorial yet!"

If only it all could have been as captivating as the first paragraph...

Comment Posted by: xsi on June 28, 2005 03:22 AM

lol @ Moorgard. :)

Loral: "My only concern is that one group or the other will get the content that is the most "fun" while the other gets lamer stuff.

I think DoN took a small step in this direction.. in that the instances are the closest thing I have seen to the creativity in most PoP+ raid design. In other words, some DoN instances are more than just kill or loot missions.

Raid encounters are still far and away more creative and expansive, imo, but I wonder if that's simply because the designers in charge (like Prathun) prefer raid encounters, and therefore focus more time and energy on them.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 28, 2005 03:42 AM

Maybe that's what I'm going to have to do then is buy an UBER char and then I'll be up there too. Not a bad Idea! So keep raiding guys and selling your chars, so I will have a good choice to pick from.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 28, 2005 04:28 AM

I really do tend to enjoy your articles, but this one was poorly thought out, and contains alot of misinformation and faulty logic. You start out comparing 2 pieces of gear. One is the top end cleric specific BP, one is a generic plate BP, and is not even the best available to non raiders. Lets compare the BP you list, "Plate Vest of the First Order: AC: +72 Dex: +12 Sta: +12 Wis: +12 Int: +12 Agi: +12 Fire Resist: +13 Disease Resist: +13 Cold Resist: +13 Poison Resist: +13 HP: +125 Mana: +120 End: +120" with the high elf cleric cultural BP available. Grandmaster's Moonglade Cuirass with Grandmasters Chest Cymbol of Growth = AC 99, str 17, sta 18, dex 11, agi 14, int 18, wis 18, cha 11, hp's 145, mana 145, endur 145, Mana regen 2, Damage shield 2(and resists and stuff I am too lazy to add up and list out). The second is obviously superior, so why did you neglect to mention it? It's even easier to attain than the BP you mentioned, being available in the bazaar.

Now the next problem with your comparison is that you just kinda gloss over the difficulty in attaining each. The BP you list is easy to get, just exping for a few days. One requires you to spend months and months with 50ish other people, working towards that reward, and, unlike DON, at the end, not everyone gets the reward. This is not a trivial difference. In point of fact, if anything, considering the difficulty and time and effort, the Anguish BP is probably underpowered in comparison to either the DoN vender BP, or the cultural BP.

Then you make a huge logical mistep. You state, correctly, that there is huge differences in power across the spectrum of level 70 players. You then, incorrectly, pin that difference in power on gear, which is only partly true, and leves out a huge factor. There are 1200ish AA's for each class in EQ now. A level 70 with no AA's is massivly less powerfull than a level 70 with even 500 or 600 AA's. This is at least as big a power gap as the gear gap between raiders and non raiders. You totally neglect to say anthing about this, pinning he power gap solely on gear.

To pick apart a couple quotes you made here: "The only answer is to base them on single-group equipment and accept that raiders will find them extremely low powered." Ummm...why is this the only answer? Why does content have to be designed strictly the lowest common denominator? Is it not possible to include content aimed at various power levels? Of course it is, and that is a far better solution than to base all content around your personal level.

"It is not unreasonable to expect that the absolute best single-group equipment available should meet 75% of the absolute best raid-level equipment. If a cleric breastplate from Overlord Mata Muram includes a 50% healing focus and 355 mana, a breastplate from the hardest single-group encounter might offer 250 mana and a 35% healing focus." I have a question: are you going to include in this 'hardest single group content' a progression path like what raiders deal with? If not, your 75 % number is probably high. Currently, many slots can be attained thru single group content this is ~66 % of the best raid gear...why is this not sufficient? Why should non raiders be able to jump into a single group encounter(trial or whatever), and in a few nights, gain something close in power to what a raider takes months and months to attain?

"Even with gear 75% of high-end raid gear there isn't anything to say that difficult single-group zones will still be impossible for non-raiders. In places like Riftseekers that extra 25% power makes the difference between success and failure." Gear that makes Riftseekers doable is available with little trouble from OoW quests, the bazaar, and DoN merchants. RSS is a non raider friendly zone, to any non raider who chooses to pick up the gear to go there. Same is true of The Nest.

All of this is not to say that there are not legitimate gear issues for non raiders. I personally think the weapon gap for mellees is too large, and should be adressed. I do think that some more PG or GoD like trials, with some better than cultural/DoN vender gear should be part of next expansion, or thru things like the new Unrest instance. I think tho most importantly, we need to avoid the rhetoric, the 'us vs them' mentality. E-genitalia comparisons will always result in nothing but trouble.

Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 28, 2005 06:27 AM

I think that over the years SOE has tried several times to close the gap, only to have it reopened when the next expansion hits. But during that time, they've also hit on some good ways to do it - they just need to stick to them:

1. Release single-group zones that have rare drops that are 75%-90% of the power level of the raid drops in the same "era"

2. Give players new tradeskill recipes that allow the creation of gear that is 75%-90% of the power level of raid drops, but require rare components.

The big problem with gear power levels really started when +hp and +mana started happening on every item. Other primary stats, like AC, str, and so on, don't really have as much as an impact when you get a few more points.

Maybe the best way to really correct this now would be to get a "snapshot" of the raider vs. the non-raider. If your average raider is walking around with 1500 extra hp and mana that the non-raider doesn't have, then the non-raider needs new options so that they can get up to about 1200 extra hp and mana.

There's always going to be an equipment gap, and there has to be, or you take away a big incentive for people to try new things and places. But there's no reason that it has to be as big as it is now, and SOE already has the tools to "fix" it.

They just need to do so.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 28, 2005 07:29 AM

Not all of us are such artists with a pen as to sing out prose like "there's a freaking canyon". I will do my best to step into such lofty shoes.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 28, 2005 10:01 AM

Rehenna,

Those cultural BPs are rare and VERY costly.

340 crystals (10 ish missions) vs. 300-400k+???

What's easier?

The DoN merchant armor is MUCH MUCH MUCH more common than the DoN cultural, I think 'easier' probably plays a part in that.

Now if you want to argue that folks should be smithing their own items and collecting the components for it, and thus gain powerful items, then I'd agree they can and should be doing it...

But it's not easier, and you are not going to collect the components in 10 missions...not even close, not even remotely close. That's why the cultural is so rare...

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 10:14 AM

Why should a BP obtainable by anyone in 3-5 hours be anything CLOSE to a BP which it takes YEARS of raiding to obtain? Pray tell.

Fact is, at the moment, there is significant single group progression available and impressive single group gear available. You just have to put in the time. Well guess what? Raiders also have to put in the time. Seems balanced to me.

What I'm seeing is a bunch of whiny babies who want the same gear which raiders spend 10,000 or more man hours obtaining to appear on their cursor at login. Shut up, whiny babies. Work for it or live without it.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 28, 2005 11:18 AM

"My only concern is that one group or the other will get the content that is the most "fun" while the other gets lamer stuff.

For example, consider the MPG single group events vs. the Dranik Hollows instances."

Amen! It was after doing many runs through the Dranik Hollows and WoS, then poking my nose into the non-event portion of MPG and seeing it was more of the same that I decided I'd had enough of EQ. Then when I did my first Deadmines run in WoW I realized it would take a miracle to get me back (let alone Archeadus or the Zul'Farrak pyramid or Hakkar...and I haven't even gotten to the level 60 instances yet).

There is absolutely no reason single-group content can't be just as fun, interesting, and challenging as raid content. All it takes is dev time (money) and creativity, just like designing raids. From what I hear about DoN SOE may have learned that. But if they haven't, they'll continue to lose players to games that do provide fun single-group content.

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 11:25 AM

Non-raiders can get to MPG trials as well. It just takes work (ie, the "progression" you keep asking for, which already exists).

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 28, 2005 11:33 AM

The expansion for that BP came out LAST YEAR. It did not take you years to earn it, stop lying.

The only requirement for that piece of gear is to be in a very high end raiding guild.

A high end raiding guild that someone could've joined like last year AFTER they bought their super high end toon...probably from someone like yourself.

So quit whining about playing for years blah blah, it's meaningless with eBay.

Take a look at how items (raid vs. group) have scaled over the years and then put your BS jealousy issues aside for a moment and you'll realize the gap is flat out asinine.

Hrm, and completely overlook the fact that you have to be level 70 to wear that casual BP....Oh no, it doesn't take folks years to achieve that, they just login and BAM they're 70.

Look hard at DoN, and take a hard look at the upcoming expansion, there's a dying breed of player out there...Here's a hint for you: It's not the casuals...

Comment Posted by: Hylacineria on June 28, 2005 12:17 PM

How about you compare apples to apples?

If you want to look at the equipment GAP, you need to compare the lowest piece of raid gear to the highest attainable casual gear. That means fully augged DoN gear versus lower-end raid drops, not the best piece of attainable raid gear versus an un-augged DoN merchant item that can be purchased with plat by buying crystals.

Yes, there has always been a gap between raid gear and casually obtainable gear, but that gap has been closing ever since PoP. LDoN pointed gear, Omens groupable drops, and DoN crystal gear are FAR superior to anything available to a non-raiding player in previous expansions. They are, in fact, BETTER than what is available to a lower-end raiding guild.

I see no reason why eternal grinding should produce gear equal to that gained by killing the hardest mobs in the game, following progression stories than require large numbers of people, etc. Raiding does cause these items to drop from the sky, you get maybe three drops for a few hours spent with 54 players. They are far more difficult to obtain than fully augged DoN gear and SHOULD be superior.

Balance is not about making everyone equal, it is about removing the gaps between what is available at one stage of the game and another. This is being done and is in pretty good shape.

Envying raiders their gear and expecting the same quality of loot with less effort is silly. If you want that sort of gear, join a guild and get it. If you don't want to because you like your own guild, that is the trade off, like it or not.

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 12:22 PM

I know a cleric with over 8k mana and 6hp unbuffed and has 0 raid loot. Zip. Everything was obtained via single groups pretty much by the path stated above. That's better than a lot of raiding clerics I know.

Comment Posted by: Hedbonker on June 28, 2005 02:08 PM

My my my, Moorgard...

At least Loral is here doing a great job for the loyal readership unlike SOME people =P

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 02:48 PM

"The expansion for that BP came out LAST YEAR. It did not take you years to earn it, stop lying."

Please, don't be an idiot. The people in Anguish today geared up through Vex Thal / PoP / Elems / Time / Ikkinz / Qvic / Txevu / Tacvi / MPG raids / Royals / Anguish and possibly all the way back to Kunark and Velious. Yes, years.

And saying you can buy an account on Ebay is similarly stupid. In that situation, you are buying someone else's years of work.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 28, 2005 02:58 PM

Please keep it civil. For the last 45 messages or so we have managed to all keep our heads and discuss this topic without calling people idiots.

This isn't about 2 hour a week players wanting a 350 hp breastplate. This isn't about making that 350 breastplate somethinc any single group hunter can get in 7 to 10 missions. I brought up those two examples mainly to talk about the required level - 70, and how it effects group content.

There are no easy solutions to this topic. However, I think there are some interesting bits brought up earlier.

Keep it civil and talk about the topic and the discussion - not eachother.

Comment Posted by: Loral on June 28, 2005 03:03 PM

"The people in Anguish today geared up through Vex Thal / PoP / Elems / Time / Ikkinz / Qvic / Txevu / Tacvi / MPG raids / Royals / Anguish and possibly all the way back to Kunark and Velious. Yes, years."

I know a lot of people who get their Time and Qvic gear today very quickly by joining a guild who already went through that progression. Part of the problem with gear progression through raids is that the work isn't always consistent. Gearing up new recruits usually gives them excellent gear for very little work. It really comes down to the same process as twinking only its gear instead of level progression they are walked through.

I have often wondered what would happen if gear progression for raiders didn't occur through raiding but instead through group content or quests or other events. For example, raids might drop neck, face, ear, finger, belt, and secondary slots while single-group content would drop arms, hands, wrists, head, torso, legs, and feet slots. This would let both single-group and raiders get their visible armor slots from single group content while raiders got raid gear in the other slots. This would also help raiders gear up without going back to content they have already defeated many times. Most of the time when I bring this idea up to raiders they hand wave it away. Aparently they don't mind gearing up because it's pretty fast - too fast if you ask me when a single-group equipped level 70 gets all new armor for eight slots in a single night of hunting (I've seen this happen).

Comment Posted by: Blakyce on June 28, 2005 03:45 PM

It is interesting to see how worked up and excited that some of the raiders are getting about the points being considered from Loral's article. In no way is the general thought being that there should be any nerf on the equipment that raider's have. You would still have the best equipment, and you would still have a lot more content available for you than what non-raiders have available.

My friend and I have played EQ for 4 years and have been members of more casual guilds that raid a bit, and have had similiar equipment throughout. 2 months ago he decided to join the top guild on our server. Within 2 weeks he was fully re-equipped in Qvic gear and subsequently has replaced half of the Qvic gear with Anguish gear. Additionally he now has all of the 69 and 70 spells that he had not attained yet including the ancients from OOW and the ancients from GOD which he had never been able to get.

This hasn't been bad for me either in that the content that we used to struggle with together we can now easily do, and if we get a couple of his friends then we can crush the content. Now it is possible for me to bypass some progression steps, just as it is for so many raiders. This is only right, as in the real world it can matter more who you know than what skill or effort you put into something (tongue firmly in cheek).

I truly cannot see why the raiders could ever object to making the content more equal than it currently is. They will still be more uber. We will just be able to see more of EQ.

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 04:39 PM

A peek into the past, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.mobhunter.com

Comment Posted by: Tripper on June 28, 2005 05:25 PM

I'm a casual player. Been in a non-raiding guild for years. I'm finally seeing whom sony cater's to. The high-end hard core raiding peeps. Thats been ok for awhile. But now I can't even see the other side of the canyon.

Time for some kind of change. Give us somekind of a way to narrow the gap.

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 07:35 PM

Hey Tripper, post up a Magelo and let's see if you've actually tried to improve your gear or you just want a handout.

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 28, 2005 07:55 PM

Reading this I am suprised at the Raiders point of view of the game. For them every thing is easy except raiding. Because of the gap they can blast through what single groups find hard and then wonder why we complain at it being hard. Sure DON mission might be easy for a some people but for most they are very hard. The same goes for getting the items for tradsskills. For casual players these are not easy, why because the gear we have makes these things hard.

Comment Posted by: Bunion on June 28, 2005 08:33 PM

"I have often wondered what would happen if gear progression for raiders didn't occur through raiding but instead through group content or quests or other events."

Way back in Kunark they did this to some extent with the Kunark armor. You could get all the various pieces from different dungeons except the legs came from VS and the BP's came from Trakanon. Perhaps they could add something similar today. You would obviously need to space it out a little better though so one contested mob isn't what is holding everyone back. Would be interesting to allow single groups to get nice items but raiders would still have the advantage.

Comment Posted by: on June 28, 2005 11:05 PM

This already exists. OoW Tier 1 armor, MPG trial drops, MPG namer drops, RS namer drops, WoS drops, RCoD drops, etc.

Comment Posted by: Armarant on June 28, 2005 11:23 PM

Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on June 28, 2005 07:55 PM

.....

I will say it again I know people on my server who are not raiders.. dont have the best gear. (Mostly Omens Tradeskill armor, IE Magnetic) and they are still going thru Dragons of Norrath at a decent pace. so what is the problem? that you cant go and single group every single zone out there? there is alot of content for every style of play. and if you have motivation you can experience it all like its meant to be experienced.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 05:44 AM

Well said Horzek! I not going to waste my time either. Just wait and buy Uber :)

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 07:49 AM

Loral: I know a lot of people who get their Time and Qvic gear today very quickly by joining a guild who already went through that progression.

BINGO!!!

Hence, take a look around, you have people in Anguish guilds that are not fully EP flagged or even VT flagged, yet they've been playing for years? Hardly. Get a new argument, the 'years' claim holds ZERO weight.

Answer this:

From Time to Present (how long is that? 3 ish years?), the Best Cleric BP in game for RAIDERS went from

Ultors 185HP/200Mana

Faithbringer's 315HP/355Mana

Now for casuals, it went from:

PoP:

Inferno Plate BP (Crafted) 50HP/120Mana

LDoN:

Royal Attendant 100HP/100Mana

and today?:

OoW:

Charged Magnetic 135HP/125Mana

Celestial Lorica 140HP/130Mana

DoN:

Plate Vest (Merchant) 125HP/120Mana

Grandmaster's (with Symbol) 145HP/145Mana

Ok so if you're paying attention, the RAIDERS BP here has gone up ******78%****** in the last 3 years.

Casuals? Well depending on which items you compare...

PoP Inferno BP compared to Grandmasters: 21% increase in the last 3 years.

LDoN to Grandmasters: 45% in the last 3 years.

That's what Loral is trying to tell you. The items for casuals ARE NOT receiving a fair increase from expansion to expansion.

We do not want the best. We would like to receive more than a 25HP/Mana increase for the BEST casual BP over a 3 YEAR period.

Stop saying we want equal gear, that's a flat out lie used to minimize the argument. No one is saying a casual deserves a 355Mana BP. NO ONE.

Oh and BTW, I'm a Qvic flagged Cleric with over 400AA, I play and raid every damn day. But I'm not so blind and egotistical to not see the problem with casual gear.

And frankly, I don't understand the complaint from raiders. If better gear is available, you'll have better gear for your ALTs that might not be getting DKP...

It's a win/win, you just gotta open your eyes and quit being so greedy.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 09:18 AM

Hiya: "And frankly, I don't understand the complaint from raiders. If better gear is available, you'll have better gear for your ALTs that might not be getting DKP...

It's a win/win, you just gotta open your eyes and quit being so greedy."

Obviously you haven't been reading this thread carefully. I keep seeing nerf the raider... NOT casuals need better gear. This "u have a 350hp item... I want it to be 150hp when u group with me" stuff is just pathetic. Why waste so much time nerfing raiders? You want a 350hp BP? I hope SOE gives you one so you'll shut up. All this sensitive sally stuff needs to end. If all the casuals were at the end of the single group game, I could see a real problem. However, they're sitting in RSS with LDoN armor crying. There are a lot of places between there (that I still enjoy going to) to have lots of fun. I see casuals wanting to skip expansions... WITH single group content and then saying that they didn't get an upgrade or it wasn't as big of an upgrade as the raiders got. The grass is always greener on the other side. I spent 4 hours raiding Uqua last night.... nothing dropped. I want SOE to make raids take no more than 45 minutes and drop 500hp BPs everytime. (note: sarcasm) Keep your eyes on your own plate.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 09:20 AM

^^^^^^ We wiped in Uqua hehe. Stuff usually drops there.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 09:40 AM

"What's the big deal if I buy someone else's years of work for a couple hundred bucks? It's a financial transaction between two consenting adults. I get the account I want and the seller gets reimbursed for his time. By the way, I plugged the account price and all the seller's hours of play time into a calculator and determined that I'd paid him less than 50 cents per hour. So go ahead and raid for me, I'm making roughly 100 times that on an hourly basis at work."

Sure, and you'll "win" at Monopoly too if you sneak all the money out of the bank. The point is that the JOURNEY is the game, not the destination. If you buy an "uber" character, ok, now what? Now you're done (since you don't raid), so you can quit. Congrats on buying the end of your Everquest gaming.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 09:51 AM

Anon: Obviously you haven't been reading this thread carefully. I keep seeing nerf the raider... NOT casuals need better gear.

No, I'm afraid you need to re-read Loral's original statement's and then the thread.

There's ZERO call for a nerf to raiders. Now I've pointed out the scaling problem, and that IS the point of this thread.

Please, respond to the scaling issue...Explain why those casual cleric BPs have received a 25-45 mana increase over the last 3 years (20-45%), whereas the raider cleric BPs have received a 170 mana increase over the same period (78%).

Or wisely avoid it because you have no argument.

Oh and save the Uqua whines, once you win it, you're in the candyland that is Qvic, a zone the majority of casuals will never see.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 10:17 AM

Oh and disregard the 78% number, that's actually too low...(busts out the calc).

Ultors has 185 mana

CoA BP has 355 mana

Thats a 92% increase in mana.

Does casual gear scale like that? Not even close.

So let's take a closer look then:

PoP:

Raid cleric best BP was 185 mana

Casual cleric best BP was 120 mana

Raid BP was 35% better...not too bad.

Today?

Raid cleric bp 355 mana

Casual cleric bp 145 mana

Raid bp is over 140% better...what happened?

Casual gear needs to scale better with each expansion. That's the argument, I'm sorry if you are too greedy to understand that.

Let me stop your innane responses right now...Do not bring the 'it's sooooo easy to get' argument.

My response is FINE...then there should be a harder to obtain casual BP that scales better...ie. 200+ mana.

There isn't.

And consider how many of those Grandmaster BPs you're seeing, they are few and far between. Hardly easy...

But for the sake of argument, even if they were plentiful, then there should still be a better BP out there for casuals that is harder to obtain.

If casual gear should be 50% of raid gear, then the casual BP should have 175 mana on it.

There's no call to NERF. Raid folks earn their gear, I've certainly earned mine.

However there's a gross injustice that SOE has ignored for years now. And it needs to be fixed.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 29, 2005 10:20 AM

I an really tired of seeing " I am Uber raider and you are nothing." That is what it boils down to, really. Hiya had a great post and hold on, raider at that! He one of the few raiders I've seen on this site without the fog of war swirling around his/her head. The last time I checked, this is a game. It just seems to me that raiders really enjoy looking down their long nose at the rest of players. Those are the same peeps that when they were in school spent more time fighting their way out of lockers than putting books in them. Now that they have the "UBER" char they think they have power in game that they don't have in RL.

Just my thoughts.

Comment Posted by: geldo on June 29, 2005 11:47 AM

Well how about this for an idea..

Announce TWO expansions at once..with the same release date, one purely for raiders and one purely geared towards single group encounters...

This way those who raid buy one, those who never raid just buy the other expansion, and a large number of people end up buying both :)

Expansion of Norrath doesn't HAVE to mean one type of player gets in the way of another..its entirely possible to go your entire life without experiencing a part of eq but still enjoying the parts you DO see enormously!

Comment Posted by: geldo on June 29, 2005 11:49 AM

Small edition..since they can check flags now to make mobs only drop items when a person who has completed a previous step is present, it would be a simple matter to prevent raids or "uber geared" characters from getting the same drop-rates as lower-geared characters or single-groups...

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 11:55 AM

The uber guilds have completely missed out on why it is harder for the more casual guilds to get better gear - competition for the same mobs.

For the high end guilds, think of how many times you could regularly farm areas such as the Elemental Planes (fire) when you first got to them for drops to gear up your members. Maybe you had to beat out another guild every so often, but competition was pretty light.

Now, mobs are rarely if ever up in many of these zones, making it that much harder and longer to gear up over the same time period. Not that guilds don't try, it is just that there are sometimes 10-15 other guilds to contend with, plus uber guilds bottom feeding for their twinks. A month or two originally is now 6 months if you are lucky, and disheartening to members when you have trouble even finding things up.

Refresh rates on loot mobs should be looked into. Mobs that appear every 3 days when 50 people are killing it should appear much more frequently when there are 500 people trying to kill the same mob 2 years later. Casuals will never catch up under this scenario, they will just fall further behind. An alternative is to instance the zones or add additional mobs that drop the same loot. Casuals are not looking for handouts, they want to do the same, difficult content - if they can find it without 500+ other people beating them to it every day because they don't have enough time to get their first.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 12:13 PM

I don't agree with that.

Casual gear is much easier to obtain than raid gear, even when you take out the 'guild' aspects of it.

Many times you will raid, and just like XP mobs, the raid mob won't drop the item.

Also consider that when a drop on raid occurs, you are not competing with only 5 other people to win the drop...You're probably competing with everyone on the raid that wants and can use the item...That can be alot of folks.

So again, the issue is scaling...Raid gear has greatly increased in power over the last 3 years worth of expansions...Casual gear? Much, much less so.

If you're a casual today, your gear is probably not that much better than a Vex Thal raider's gear was...Now ask yourself, when did Luclin come out? Yup, Dec. 4th 2001.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 12:15 PM

You folks seem to have missed something: 90+% of RAIDERS don't even have that Mata Murram BP. In fact, I would venture to say that the majority of raiders do not have a BP that is 75-90% of Mata Murram's BP. So you are asserting that casuals should have BETTER gear than most raiders? Uh huh, that makes sense.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 12:19 PM

From Hiya:

"If you're a casual today, your gear is probably not that much better than a Vex Thal raider's gear was...Now ask yourself, when did Luclin come out? Yup, Dec. 4th 2001."

It all depends on effort. A non-raider who puts forth effort can handily beat a Vex Thal raider, using OoW Tier 1, Tipt, Ikkinz, WoS, RCoD, MPG, MPG Trials, RS, DoN and all the related augs.

The gear you wear should be commensurate with the effort expended, time spent, and foes faced.

Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 29, 2005 12:51 PM

I never really had a problem with gear progression personally and I was never in a high-end raiding guild. There were only a very few times in EQ1 when I said "I need better gear".

But I am not an average player.

At one point I used allakhazam's equipment database to put together a spreadsheet that listed every possible upgrade for every piece of equipment I used. I then used that spreadsheet to pick out the top few possibilities to each slot, and researched the items to find out where they came from. Sometimes I found a raid was required, sometimes it was an obscure named mob in a dungeon somewhere. Generally speaking I tried to avoid the raid mobs unless I felt that I could pull together a pickup raid with my guildmates as the core to make it happen.

This was pre-LDON by the way, but the process would be the same now, except I would create a second spreadsheet for augments and cross-reference the items I wanted with the best possible augments I could get for them.

This is the type of player I am, I don't mind taking a little extra time out to build a spreadsheet if it will help me keep track of goals in the game or if it will save me time later on.

But quite honestly, how many players, raider or non-, are going to spend hours on a website going through thousands of items to figure out what they need? And THEN take the time to go camp that gear, or do the quests, or organize pickup raids if needed?

If you're wondering, I was constantly 5-10 levels behind all of my friends. I'd meet people who were a few levels under me, and in a month they'd have passed me even theough they were playing less. Why? Because I was questing and working on gear instead of grinding out xp. I used to joke that when I leveled, it was an accident.

Yeah, non-raiders today can get good gear. They can get gear that's nearly as good as a second-tier raider's gear. It's entirely possible to do. But what they would be required to do to get that gear very often conflicts with their lifestyle and the amount of time and thought they have to commit to the game.

Oh wait, they can use the bazaar! Right? Ever try shopping for upgrades in the bazaar as a casual player? You might see some things you could use - for 12k more than you have in your bank account. Sometimes you might find two or three minor upgrades and break your bank in the process.

Here's some things to remember in this discussion:

Most players will not be inclined to do a lot of out-of-game research.

Most players do not have tons of money to spend in the bazaar, and they're not going to buy platinum either.

Most players do not have hours or days or weeks to devote to camping a single piece of gear. If they're lucky they might be able to try it on a weekend - coincidentally when everyone else is camping the same piece of gear.

Most players do not have the time or the inclination to master tradeskills to make a profit or to speculate (buy low, sell high) in the bazaar to make money.

Most players make do by saving up what they can, trying to get lucky with a few drops here and there, and generally trying to ignore the fact that they could beat that encounter if they just had 200 more hit points.

Whether you raid or not, that's the honest truth. The "average" player doesn't post here, doesn't talk about these things like this, and sure as heck probably doesn't believe that equipment upgrades post-50 are easy to get, whether you raid or not.

Raiders have an advantage in most cases because raiding guilds are already established and there's extra loot floating around. Either someone had it rotting in a bank and said hey, our new tank can use this, or when it drops on that raid you have a good shot at it because half your competition already got that particular piece (or better).

Moving forward, I think this needs to be SOE's philosophy on equipment:

Single-Group rewards should be no less than 75% of the quality of raid drops and in most cases no less than 90% quality. If you think that makes raid gear less uber, you're jaded by the current "canyon".

Single-Group rewards should be common enough and easy enough to obtain that more casual players do not have to think hard or do a lot of research and camping/farming to obtain them. This can be in the form of either loot drops or cash drops or quests/missions or tradeskill recipes that don't require massive grinding and time expenditure (and ultra-rare components) to complete.

Raid drops should be plentiful enough that every raider can expect to get something out of every two or three raids, and should progress in power level by the difficulty of the encounter.

Some of what I said may strike some of you the wrong way, but I feel that the focus of gameplay should be more on adventuring and having fun slaying the monsters and less on worrying about how you need this spell or that piece of armor so that you can go out and adventure and slay the monsters.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 01:11 PM

And 90% of the casuals do not have the top-end casual BP either.

Next argument please.

And let's take the Pepsi challenge on my Vex Thal comment...

I said: 'Not much better'

So let's see what 'not much better' really means.

LDoN BP 100Mana

PoP BP 120Mana

OoW Tier 1 BP 135Mana

Vex Thal (Mail of Judgement) 125Mana

Ok sooooooooo the Tier 1 OoW Cleric BP from 2004 is a whopping 10Mana increase from the Vex Thal BP from 2001.

Again, casual players today are not much better equipped than Vex Thal Raiders from 3 years ago.

Bring some facts if you still want to argue.

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 29, 2005 01:51 PM

Let's try to keep the speculation about people's RL status out of a discussion about EQ gear, ok?

Talaen wrote: Because I was questing and working on gear instead of grinding out xp. I used to joke that when I leveled, it was an accident

Heh. Good to know I'm not the only one.

Some anonymous guy wrote:You folks seem to have missed something: 90+% of RAIDERS don't even have that Mata Murram BP. In fact, I would venture to say that the majority of raiders do not have a BP that is 75-90% of Mata Murram's BP. So you are asserting that casuals should have BETTER gear than most raiders? Uh huh, that makes sense.

Yep, because over 90% of non-raiders have that GM cultural BP with the GM aug.

I've seen a lot of "stop asking for free gear you whiners" in this thread. Please, show me where people were asking for free gear, because I missed it.

I see that sort of thing every time the topic of more gear options for non-raiders (I don't use 'casual' for a reason I'll get to in a bit) is brought up. How is asking for the chance to work for better gear without raiding asking for free gear? Noone asked for existing groupable gear to be upgraded, and noone asked for raid gear to be nerfed.

Now, here's why I don't like using the word "casual" to describe non-raiders: there are causual raiders, and non-raiders that aren't "casual" at all. A raider who logs on 3 times a week and does nothing but raid has access to better gear than a player who plays for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week, even if the non-raider constantly works on upgrading his or her gear, so the whole "raiders get better gear because of time put into it" argument doesn't always work.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 01:57 PM

Hiya, you are skipping all the available augs that did not exist in Luclin but exist today.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 02:00 PM

Talaen, brilliant plan. Have 75-90% x Anguish gear drop commonly off trash in all exp zones. So noone has to do stuff like exert effort or research or think or anything. Then, 3 weeks later, when every guild in the game packs up and quits due to being done, we can all whine about how the game died.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 02:03 PM

"How is asking for the chance to work for better gear without raiding asking for free gear? Noone asked for existing groupable gear to be upgraded, and noone asked for raid gear to be nerfed."

Because that chance ALREADY EXISTS!!! DoN, OoW Tier 1, Tipt, Ikkinz, MPG, MPG Trials, RS, WoS, RCoD gear and augs.

Sigh, you people are going to force me to start spending time making fabulous single groupable magelos to end this nonsense.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 29, 2005 02:34 PM

"Because that chance ALREADY EXISTS!!! DoN, OoW Tier 1, Tipt, Ikkinz, MPG, MPG Trials, RS, WoS, RCoD gear and augs."

And how long will it take the average player to complete all those steps?? We have already discused the grping problems in other threads. We don't live in the game, we know what girls look like. There is nothing wrong with making our gear 75% better like raid gear has become, not 15-20% better.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 02:38 PM

You want progression or do you want the game to be over because everything is handed to you? Effort = reward. Period. If you aren't interested enough to work for it, be content with lesser gear. If you are truly "casual", I am sure the Anguish raiders have spent 30x as much effort on the game as you. Therefore, logically, their gear should be 30x better. Be happy it is only 2-3x better.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 29, 2005 02:49 PM

I pay the same amount as the nameless poster and everyone else. The game is being pushed toward the raider and if they don't get( some do ) there won't be a game. The average player will leave. Leaving raiders no game to play. Seems to be alot of "mad at my parents" anger in here.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 03:20 PM

Yes, you pay the same amount to play the game. Therefore, you have the exact same opportunity to obtain items as every other player of the game. How good your gear becomes depends on how much you use that opportunity. More effort = better gear.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 29, 2005 03:22 PM

Nope

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 03:24 PM

"Nope"

Your logic is blinding.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 29, 2005 03:27 PM

Trying to lower my standards, I guess its working.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 03:32 PM

What you fail to realize is that there are people who play this game every, even more than raiders do, yet they will not ever see Qvic, Txevu, CoA, etc.

Why? They don't want to power-game. They do not want their time spent online dictated by a guild leader, and all the other joys that involve being a part of a raiding guild.

So where is this work they need to do that you people keep talking about? There isn't any.

Why?

So would it have been more acceptable if the DoN merchant armor scaled comparably to raid armor? And instead of 125 mana, it had 175, but cost 2000 crystals?

That's a couple months worth of work for 1 item.

And to the poster that commented about how I'm forgetting about all the augs...Are you that short-sighted? Augs are not part of the equation, because they're available to both.

Or do you want to extend the discussion to include raid only augs?

The gap is too big. There SHOULD be a gap, but not one this large.

Take off your blinders, drop the greed stance and think about it...

And while you're at it, you still have not replied to my comments on scaling...Wise-move.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 03:36 PM

Ok, so I made the magelo. Took about a half hour, a far cry from what the fellow above said about massive research and spreadsheets. All you really have to do is search by slot on Allakhazam.

Caveats:

1. I did not use any Grandmaster stuff. If I did in place of the OoW/DoN stuff, the Magelo would be better.

2. I did not fill in Slot 9 augs. I'm just not familiar with them. Again, it could be better.

3. I used a bunch of AC augs and HP augs. You could easily up AC or up HP at the expense of the other by switching out augs.

4. I did not use the cool tradeskill augs with effects. Again, it would make the magelo better.

5. I don't know everything. Some items could probably be improved.

In summary, attached is a fantastic SK Magelo wherein every single piece is groupable. But, the result is probably better than most raiding SKs have beyond the very hard core. Yes, it would take a very long time to put this together. But isn't that the point? To have something to strive for? The game is the journey, the journey is the game.

http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1226479

Comment Posted by: Obocohc on June 29, 2005 04:06 PM

I agree. Its not the gear that creates the huge gap, its that people aren't trying their hardest to get the best gear available to them. Instead of striving for the best RSS and MPG trial groupable gear they sit around with 30 hp/mana baazar gear and expect me to group with them.

Comment Posted by: Perc on June 29, 2005 04:19 PM

Dude, that groupable sk's stats are better than mine. But I'm still working on getting the first parts of Qvic gear. Wow hehe. That's enlightening to say the least.

Comment Posted by: on June 29, 2005 04:28 PM

MPG Trials is basically the single group endgame, excellent stuff there. Couple it with RS augs/gear and OoW/DON, and a few other drops here and there, and you can have fabulous gear.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 29, 2005 07:21 PM

"Single-Group rewards should be no less than 75% of the quality of raid drops and in most cases no less than 90% quality. If you think that makes raid gear less uber, you're jaded by the current "canyon"."

This would make single group gear greater than almost all raid gear. If you are not referring to the highest end raid drops, then, truth is, we are already pretty close. I, as a just slightly pre -Anguish warrior(couple more weeks and should be in Anguish) have about 12k hp's unbuffed. It is currently possible to attain 10 K + hp's for warriors with only single group gear. That does not sound too bad to me. It could probably be closed up a tad more, but not much really needed.

"I pay the same amount as the nameless poster and everyone else. The game is being pushed toward the raider and if they don't get( some do ) there won't be a game. The average player will leave. Leaving raiders no game to play. Seems to be alot of "mad at my parents" anger in here."

You pay the same amount for the service. What you choose to do with that service is up to you. If you have cable TV, you can occasionaly turn it on, or you can watch it 24/7, you still pay the same amount. Should the person who watches much less TV complain about having to pay the same?

I also very much disagree with your 'the game is being pushed toward the raider' comment. Post PoP, we have had 1 expansion with alot of raid content, 1 with some, and 3 with minimal raid content. Single group content is largely getting easier, not harder. In the last 2 expansions, all of maybe 3 zones can be considered to be significantly difficult for single group players, and all 3 are definatly doable by the gear available to single group players. If SoE is trying to cater to raiders, they are doing a piss poor job of it.

I want to reiterate this point: The gear needed to do all unflagged single group content(and most flagged) is available by single grouping for upgrades. Just using DoN for gear would get you gear enough to group in MPG, RSS, Nest, without much trouble.

Last point: the 'gear gap' is not nearly the biggest problem for balancing content. The AA gap is much more significant, the skill gap(which is totally unrelated to the gear gap and the AA gap..ie, you can have awesome gear, full AA's, and still lack skill, and vice versa), and the motivation gap. Closing the 'gear gap' will have a very small effect on difficulty in balancing content, as it is a very small problem.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 07:30 PM

How many casual players have you taken with you on an MPG trial?

The answer is probably zero.

Oh wait, you're thinking a pick-up group of casual types with no raid gear are gonna go do an MPG trial and win right?

So the best a casual SK can get to is 9500 HP...Not too bad.

So how is that SK going to tank an MPG trial before he's gets 15ish MPG trial pieces?

What's his gear look like when he's first starting off?

See those drops don't just magically appear...You actually have to win the trial.

Love the BP though...How's that scale compared to RAID BPs?

You realize that RSS BP has a whopping 15 more HP and 20 less attack than the RAID BP from over 3 years ago...

Lol. I just love it when high end folks who have no problems at all with the MPG trials think that people with subpar gear are just going to waltz through them...

Keep dreaming.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 29, 2005 07:36 PM

Redhenna,

Where you are wrong about the gap is the fact that if you were looking for a warrior that you did not know, and he/she wasn't tagged in a raid guild, you would ask him/her their AC/HP before inviting them to your RSS group.

So what happens when they respond that they are 9.5K and 1800AC buffed with 400AA? Still gonna take em?

Or are you going to hold out for the 12-14K and 2200AC Warrior with 250AA?

Who gets the group?

There is an AA gap, you're absolutely correct.

However that gap in no way shape or form minimizes the equipment gap.

Please, one of you...Explain why casual gear has not scaled as well as raid gear over the last 3+ years? Use the BP for your example as that is usually one of the hardest pieces of equipment to upgrade.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 29, 2005 08:03 PM

"Redhenna,

So what happens when they respond that they are 9.5K and 1800AC buffed with 400AA? Still gonna take em?

Or are you going to hold out for the 12-14K and 2200AC Warrior with 250AA?"

As I play a warrior, neither, since I already am going to be the one tanking. When I do play alts, I have never once asked some one for their vitals prior to inviting them to a group. So the truth is, prior to getting the person in group, I have no clue, no conception of how many hp's/AC/AA's they have.

"Please, one of you...Explain why casual gear has not scaled as well as raid gear over the last 3+ years?"

Because raid content difficulty has scaled higher faster than single group content dificulty. Casual/non raider gear is sufficient to allow casual/non raiders to do all casual/non raiding things. Raid gear is sufficient to do raid content. Raid gear is also a reward for(as my guild leader referrs to it) jumping thru all the hoops that raid conent requires. This is exponentially more difficult than single group/non raid content. There is no single group content that even compares in difficulty to such events as Uqua, Inktu`ta, some of the PG trials, etc.(note, I consider this a design flaw, and think that SoE should put some longer, extremely hard, but aimed at non raider, events into EQ. I think this would be a huge boon).

"So how is that SK going to tank an MPG trial before he's gets 15ish MPG trial pieces?"

Same way I did when OoW came out, and I was wearing gear equivelant to or lesser than(depending on slot) DoN vender gear. I tanked MPG, and once I hit 70, RSS. It wes slower, more risky, but definatly doable.

Comment Posted by: Talaen on June 30, 2005 06:28 AM

A couple of points.

"This would make single group gear greater than almost all raid gear. If you are not referring to the highest end raid drops, then, truth is, we are already pretty close. I, as a just slightly pre -Anguish warrior(couple more weeks and should be in Anguish) have about 12k hp's unbuffed. It is currently possible to attain 10 K + hp's for warriors with only single group gear. That does not sound too bad to me. It could probably be closed up a tad more, but not much really needed."

Nope, but at least you took the time to respond rationally, unlike a few posters above you who probably need medication. Single-group gear should scale just like raid gear does. Do raiders start out in Anguish, or do they work through previous content to get there? We're not talking about the best of the best here, we're talking about on average.

"Ok, so I made the magelo. Took about a half hour, a far cry from what the fellow above said about massive research and spreadsheets. All you really have to do is search by slot on Allakhazam."

You still had to go out of game to do it. The silent majority of EQ players (even some raiders I know) are not going to do that and that's my point. Although I think it's cool that it doesn't take nearly as long now.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 30, 2005 09:33 AM

Redhenna: Because raid content difficulty has scaled higher faster than single group content dificulty.

That's a load of BS and you know it. Why are so many high end guilds leaving the game if the raid difficulty has been increased? Explain that. Explain why most raiders are complaining that there has not been enough raid content over the last couple expansions and won't be much at all in Dark Hollow.

Your excuse doesn't hold water.

And here's another reason why your statement is a complete load of BS...GoD is 2 expansions old, people are beating the content at lvl 70 with lvl 70 spells.

Tipt-nerfed

Uqua-nerfed

Hell most of GoD-nerfed

The content was made easier so that knights could tank it...When they make things easier, and they did, you cannot claim that raids are harder. Add in lvl 70 and lvl 70 spells, and Uqua is trivial compared to doing it at lvl 65.

So what's happened is you have raiders, such as you and I, who find the group content to be easy...Why? Because our inflated gear that we get from RAIDS trivializes it...

Surely you see that.

Lol don't take this the wrong way, but you usually post better than that.

So no one has yet to explain why raid gear has increased significantly from expansion to expansion, yet group gear has only been tossed has seen very small increases.

Comment Posted by: Hemdell on June 30, 2005 09:47 AM

"So no one has yet to explain why raid gear has increased significantly from expansion to expansion, yet group gear has only been tossed has seen very small increases."

That's because nobody can explain it!

Keep on em Hiya!!

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 11:06 AM

I don't understand. I've posted up a whole groupable Magelo with numerous items in it that would be significant upgrades from prior expansions. Maybe certain slots have lagged, but many have gone up nicely. Overall, as a grouper, you can get much better gear today than you could a few years ago, if you expend the effort.

Also, to Talaen: So you are suggesting radically changing the game to benefit people who are too lazy to spend 5 minutes researching each slot?

Comment Posted by: Maitreya on June 30, 2005 01:34 PM

"If you are truly "casual", I am sure the Anguish raiders have spent 30x as much effort on the game as you. Therefore, logically, their gear should be 30x better. Be happy it is only 2-3x better."

How do they manage to spend 150 hours per week working on their gear? Just wondering.

"Also, to Talaen: So you are suggesting radically changing the game to benefit people who are too lazy to spend 5 minutes researching each slot?"

I think the point he's making is that you shouldn't NEED to use an outside source to track down and find out how to get upgrades, since many people won't do that. How does this make them lazy? I'd say it's the people who can't find upgrades in the game on their own, and need to have a third party site tell them where to look (like me) are the lazy ones, but I'm just bitter and irritable. And lazy.

Comment Posted by: Teremar on June 30, 2005 01:39 PM

I've never been a raider. If you go back in the Mobhunter archives to shortly after the GoD release you'll find me arguing strenuously that non-raiders needed better gear. But I'm just not seeing the need now.

Think back to the GoD release. Non-raiders were arguing that without raid gear it just wasn't possible to do the bulk of GoD. And with GoD announced as the first of a three-part series, it looked like we were going to be stuck doing LDoN's and BoT for a very long time to come.

Raiders disagreed of course, but SOE responded with OoW. Plenty of content single groups could do in Ornate/LDoN gear and get good upgrades. It was deadly dull content so I quit, but that's not today's topic (and DoN supposedly fixed that).

Now Loral's point that the huge gear gap makes it impossible for both groups to enjoy the same content, and thus hard for SOE to provide enough content for both groups, is valid. But if anyone has gotten the short end of that stick recently it seems to be the raiders.

Thought experiment: let's pretend for a moment that non-raiders have no way of knowing how good raider gear is. Could we then skip the bulk of this discussion? Could non-raiders just enjoy the single-group content, continue to progress, and generally have fun with no idea how far they're "falling behind"? Of course the raiders would have no way to display their physical, intellectual and moral superiority either. :)

If anything it should be the raiders hoping the gear gap narrows: at the moment they're the ones not getting enough content as a result. But we'll never get anywhere if the conversation can't get beyond "We want gear like theirs!" "You're not worthy of gear like ours!"

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 01:45 PM

30x effort is not the same as 30x more time.

Duh.

I would agree that it should not be necessary to have to turn to spoiler sites to figure out upgrades.

However, I don't think those who do are any more lazy than those who don't.

What is lazy is claiming that 'oh nos the raiders got uber gear for 30 minute encounter all I got was this tshirt that says I'm a casual player and all I got from from eq was this lousy tshirt'.

You get out what you put in.

No one can argue with a straight face that raiding does not take more effort overall than any single group camp or encounter.

And when single group encounter do take a lot of effort, all the 'casual' players are up in arms 'oh nos you cant complete this 'single group content' without having raid equipment omgzorz!11!!1!!'.

"casuals" have a progression path too.. it's just many of them dont want to follow it.

Comment Posted by: Sands on June 30, 2005 02:35 PM

"In particular it's time to get over PoP. Yes, it was hard work. Yes, you can take pride in what you accomplished there. But that was a long time ago, and non-raider gear can't always be capped in power just so no one feels like their accomplishment of reaching the elemental planes or Time is somehow "devalued" by people getting similar loot in other ways."

I believe this is the fundamental problem. There really shouldn't be any reason that non raiding loot couldn't be 75% as good as raiding loot. But if you make loot 75% as good as anguish and stick it on DoN vendors or in RSS, you completely devalue the Plane of Time - which is still farmed by many large raiding guilds (precisely for this reason, the loot cannot be found elsewhere).

And considering the fact that SoE just spent a significant amount of time instancing the Plane of Time, I find it unlikely they are going to make a change to the loot tables to devalue all this Time loot.

So until Time becomes "not important", non raiders will continue to be capped, and this gap will continue to grow.

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 03:23 PM

We really shouldn't even be talking about a gap vs. Anguish gear, given how few raiders are actually there. It would be like discussing income inequality and using ONLY Bill Gates as your rich example, which would be silly.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 30, 2005 04:09 PM

"Nope, but at least you took the time to respond rationally, unlike a few posters above you who probably need medication. Single-group gear should scale just like raid gear does. Do raiders start out in Anguish, or do they work through previous content to get there? We're not talking about the best of the best here, we're talking about on average."

Single group gear does scale, and it scales up to a point past what is needed to do any single group content. I fail to see why more is needed. I am not saying the scaling could not be better, a wider ariety of slots, more secondary melee effects(shielding, avoidance, accuracy, etc), better scaling weapons...but overall, things are not bad for the non raid player at the moment.

"That's a load of BS and you know it. Why are so many high end guilds leaving the game if the raid difficulty has been increased? Explain that. Explain why most raiders are complaining that there has not been enough raid content over the last couple expansions and won't be much at all in Dark Hollow."

Could it be the same reason so many non raider guilds have died...EQ has a declining population, we know this. Quantity of content has zero, nothing, nada to do with difficulty of content. To suggest that raiding content is not getting harder because A) there are fewer raid guilds(btw, I have not really noticed this drastic decline you speak of) and B) there is less raiding content with the most recent expansions shows a complete disregard to any sense of logic.

"And here's another reason why your statement is a complete load of BS...GoD is 2 expansions old, people are beating the content at lvl 70 with lvl 70 spells.

Tipt-nerfed

Uqua-nerfed

Hell most of GoD-nerfed

The content was made easier so that knights could tank it...When they make things easier, and they did, you cannot claim that raids are harder."

Logic issues again...let me offer you a little insight here. Tipt = single group encounter, in fact, you cannot have more than 6 people inside the instance. Saying raid content is easier because Tipt was nerfed is almost anti logic. Uqua, due to the nature of beta testing, was essentially not tested, not nearly well enough, and was not beatable at first. It got adjuted and tuned, to make it beatable, tho it is hardly, as you suggest, trivial, to any guild that is currently at that stage in progression.

The content that was made easier so that knights could tank it was, guess what, single group content. Saying that raid content is easier, becuase single group content is easier does not work.

"So no one has yet to explain why raid gear has increased significantly from expansion to expansion, yet group gear has only been tossed has seen very small increases."

You can have it explained all day long, and if you refuse to see the truth, you will still be just as ignorant as when you started. I will take one more stab at it, with a tad more detail tho.

There are two methods to keep guilds from burning thru raid content too fast. One is to up the skill required to beat encounters, and one is to up the gear required to beat encounters(yes, there are smaller ways, such as lockouts on flag encounters etc, but those are minor overall). The trouble with the first method is you essentially have a small handfull of Devs matching wits with literally hundreds, and even thousands of raiders, many of whom are very creative in terms of thinking of unintended fair(and sometimes unfair) ways of beating encounters. In other words, trying to make raid content last 6 months by requireing more skill just is not going to work well.

The other method is to require a certain level of gear. Tanks need X hp's to survive, everyone else needs Y hp's to live thru the AE,s. Healers need Z mana to get thru the encounter. DPS classes need to be able to hit a certain amount of DPS, tanks need to be able to generate enough agro so DPS classes can do their DPS, etc. This is a more sure method of slowing the rate at which raiders burn thru content. It forces raiders to spend a portion of their time, farming already beaten content, just for the loot, to get those things needed to beat an encounter.

Since raiders have traditionally burned thru content at a fast pace, some method is needed to slow them down. Using gear requirements to beat an encounter is the most effective way to do so. Since raid content tends to have a very definate path of progression(moreso than non raid content, and this is a design flaw in non raid content), upping the gear needed for each step in progression leads to significant increases in raid gear, especially at the very top end.

A key concept to understand is that this gear is in no way threatening to non raiders. EQ is not a competitive game. The only war between raiders and non raiders is outside game, and generally is over some silly thing one "side" or the other decides to take offense at.

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 05:01 PM

------

I would agree to this in total, except that raidres and non-raiders do compete within the game on at least once facet.

Getting or building groups.

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 05:06 PM

There is currently no single groupable content that requires raid gear to be successful. And raiders and non-raiders don't have to compete with regard to building groups for a few reasons:

1. Oftentimes your raiders don't group much at all, and when they do it is with their guildmates.

2. Non-raiders have the ability to gear up. People will sometimes ask hp/ac or mana or whatnot, but non-raiders can obtain sufficient hp/ac or mana to be invited to any group.

3. Make friends.

4. Many many people fill groups by class without even asking any questions.

5. Group with other non-raiders.

6. Only group in places you have the ability to be effective. If you haven't bother to gear up, and you are a tank, gear up before going where you will be slaughtered.

Comment Posted by: Hiya on June 30, 2005 05:56 PM

Red, if there's no competition, then why are you so vehemently against non-raid gear equipment receiving more than a 15HP increase over gear that is 3 years old?

Explain why...And don't say that it's because the single group gear is easier to obtain. I will take ANY RSS group and kill AHR before another group can get a Lorica from RSS.

So which is harder?

By your own words, the gap does no harm, yet you argue against non-raiders receiving worthwhile upgrades. Are you actually reading what you are typing?

My point about Tipt, that completely went over your head...is that BOTH raid content AND group content have had it necessary to be nerfed to make it doable...AND that makes your statement that group content is and HAS been easy a load of crap...Are these words simple enough for you??? I can bring some crayons next post for you~

Red:In other words, trying to make raid content last 6 months by requireing more skill just is not going to work well.

And yet earlier, you state that only raid encounters have gotten more difficult...

So casuals can do group encouters naked?

Your thinking is flawed and flat out greedy. Your argument falls flat.

You still have not explained why group items have not scaled nearly as well as raid items have...

Anon: If you want us to take your MPG trial Magelo seriously, make a Magelo of NON-MPG trial groupable gear, and then convince us that that SK is going to be able to tank the trials...

Do that, and your argument will have some weight. As it stands right now, anyone that comes here and says they've done all the trials and gotten ALL of that gear without a single raid drop is a liar.

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 06:07 PM

-------

Explain why...And don't say that it's because the single group gear is easier to obtain. I will take ANY RSS group and kill AHR before another group can get a Lorica from RSS.

-------

You certainly won't take a group that hasn't killed the emporer and finished the VT key quest.

Comment Posted by: on June 30, 2005 06:10 PM

My twink picked up a lorica on a rot because no one in the zone could use it or they already had one or better.

Not that I am saying its a common item, because its not.

But it's certainly possible, and BP is one of the most simple and easy camps in RS.

Comment Posted by: Redhenna on June 30, 2005 07:06 PM

"Red, if there's no competition, then why are you so vehemently against non-raid gear equipment receiving more than a 15HP increase over gear that is 3 years old?"

Hmm, apparently when I stated such things as "I am not saying the scaling could not be better, a wider ariety of slots, more secondary melee effects(shielding, avoidance, accuracy, etc), better scaling weapons". A good idea when debating some one is to actually read what they say before spouting off.

"Explain why...And don't say that it's because the single group gear is easier to obtain. I will take ANY RSS group and kill AHR before another group can get a Lorica from RSS."

So you can take any 6 people, get them completely VT keyed, go in and kill AHR, all before you can farm a drop that normally get's /ooc'd when it does drop cuz most who are in RSS either have better, or already have one? And what did RSS single group named drops and 7 expansion old raid gear have to do with the difficulty of getting the best BP in game today?

"By your own words, the gap does no harm, yet you argue against non-raiders receiving worthwhile upgrades. Are you actually reading what you are typing?"

There is a basic concept in EQ, it's called risk vs reward. If you take the risks, put in the time and effort, you get rewards. The higher the risks, the more effort it takes, the greater the reward. Putting in items 75 % as good as the best raid drops available for single group content, which requires massivly less risk, massivly less time would be obviously unbalancing in terms of risk vs reward.

"My point about Tipt, that completely went over your head...is that BOTH raid content AND group content have had it necessary to be nerfed to make it doable...AND that makes your statement that group content is and HAS been easy a load of crap...Are these words simple enough for you??? I can bring some crayons next post for you~"

The old 'I am losing this argument bad, and was made to look foolish, so I will claim a point I did not make ws in my post, and then insult you' method of arguing. The best part tho is where you said I stated single group content was easy...which I never did say, in fact what I did say was "Because raid content difficulty has scaled higher fas