The 5 problems with EverQuest TLP servers

hey guys I'm a longtime EQ player and I've been playing these TP servers for a long time as well every time new ones get brought up or I play through one I get really fired up about some of these problems that I find on them so today I've got five of my biggest problems with EQ tlps let's get started number one the game is just way too easy now players are significantly better at the game than they used to be they have way more skill and knowledge that knowledge then transfers into increased efficiency and the ability to get better gear faster something that increases our player power but it's something that developers don't have the ability to have much control over they can increase the difficulty of the game in other ways to continue challenging us but the fact of the matter is we know a lot about the game now and that's just not going away probably the biggest offender of degrading the game's difficulty is just the raw power creep and passive DPS Buffs that have occurred over the years there's tons of spell changes you can go through on P99 I'll show you just a couple examples take a look at K Flag that Wizards get at level 44 on P99 you'll notice pretty quickly that the differences between P99 and live are drastic the spell now does way more damage has a lower cast time and a lower recast time for Mages we've got spells like lava bolt and shock of Swords which still do about the same damage but their Mana cost and their cast time was reduced drastically making these spells much higher DPS and more efficient and then of course there's been a lot of AA changes as well one of the biggest offenders that I found was the destructive Fury AA which used to only be available starting in Omens of War for casters today on TPS it's available in luckan not only that this used to increase damage by only 25% to Caster critical strikes with three of three points now it increases damage by 100% this is a massive increase in Caster damage in addition to these there was also the dot consolidation for Druids and Shaman while these were big quality of life changes there's no question that it increased the power of these classes now instead of having to cast two three or four dots they could just cast one and get the same imp but enough about casters let's talk about the real problem melee all melee characters get a passive melee damage AA that increases their damage by 15% in classic and then just continues increasing from there they're doing just absurd levels of damage for free basically and is one of the biggest sources of just passive power creep in the game right now another big culprit is just all the combat code changes that have happened over the years I think anyone that has played on these TLP servers will tell you the characters just simply deal more damage now and take less damage in return it's hard to pinpoint exactly when and where and how all these changes occurred but over time they have and let's not forget about monks they got their fist ratios changed back in like 2015 around the rage fire era to have really insane ratios for classic EverQuest especially without having to go through the trouble of even finding an item making them kind of the kings of early classic EverQuest all these changes have really compounded to make the game a lot easier and since the game is now easier we're losing different aspects of the game like CC and slow utility it's just far less needed in groups now because players just kill mobs so fast and their tanks are so strong that there's really no danger of dying when pulling large amounts of mobs and just mowing down multiple camps that were never possible before I think having that Reliance on a lot of those CC and utility classes was really what made EQ special and different having these different pieces of the puzzle all come together to make a easier or safer or even just possible I think we've got to get back to this spot where we need ccs and slows and these kind of things in our groups to help them succeed because in a game where these things are designed into it if we're not needing to use it then the game is just at a point where it's too easy and damage is really solving all these problems right now we've got to either solve the damage problem or make monsters harder another contributor are pick zones and instances and before you start going crazy I'm not totally against these ideas I think that they're probably probably just a necessary evil in 2024 but there's no denying that they do increase player power because we have more zones available and more raid instances available we naturally have more gear on our characters both from just getting gear out in the open world and also from being able to actually do a raid every week and not only that but sometimes splitting the raid every week and in addition to that we also have XP inflation because more players are able to get to Optimal camps than four where it used to just be one group was at an optimal camp at a time I don't really think there's a solve for this in terms of the devs needing to somehow reduce the amount of gear in the world or the access to these camps I do think they need to take them into account and be able to increase the difficulty of the game in other ways because they know that we are stronger and that leads me to my next Point number two experience is too fast and we have way too much loot I think we've really got to get back to the route of EQ where the journey really mattered more than the destination we're so focused on the ingame now and Min maxing that we don't focus on the journey at all and it goes away in a matter of days or weeks I remember back in the day playing on a level 45 Ranger and just being basically hard stuck level 45 and not really caring like I just logged in and played the game and I had a ton of fun and I know we're never going to get all the way back there but I think we can make some adjustments to get a little bit closer I think this continues to show itself throughout all the expansions including once AA are released people grind through AAS so fast that in a matter of days or weeks You' already maxed out for the expansion and you really don't have any reason to log in other than go and raid really starts to make the game feel less Lively when people aren't wanting to log in and XP anymore I think the XP rates just need to be reduced significantly to really extend the timeline for grinding AAS and give you a reason to log back in again and then in addition to XP being less relevant we we also have way more loot than we've ever had before we have access to picks instance raids splits and even Mischief style Loot on some of these servers so now we've removed both the chase for XP and the chase for gear which is kind of the core goal of EverQuest and how we acquire player power really just kind of leaves this hollow shell of a game where you're not really sure what you're doing anymore because you have all the XP you need and you have all the gear you need in a matter of weeks within an exp expion cycle it just kind of breaks the game down and I think that in order to get back to that route of EQ we really need to go backwards in these categories and yet Daybreak is seemingly doing the exact opposite on Mischief they're giving us more loot than we've ever had before and on oakwind they're giving us more XP than we've ever had before I don't quite understand what they're trying to accomplish I think they're really tearing EverQuest down instead of kind of building on what made it so great number three classes are wildly imbalanced and don't get me wrong they always have been but I think anyone that plays on EQ TLP servers now will tell you that monks are completely out of control I think melee as a whole are a big problem you can see this even later on with Berserkers but I think monks in particular really need to be looked at they do absurd amounts of damage I mean you're talking two to 3x damage when they're dising later in expansions they have men they have Fain death and they can tank fairly well on the flip side of the coin you have casters who I think are largely underpowered for most content in fact you've got an entire expansion where they're completely irrelevant being Omens of War due to the resists in Citadel of Anguish you simply can't land spells as a Caster you just can't contribute to the raid it's really demoralizing I've lived through it as a mage and frankly it made me quit during that expansion and then you've got individual classes like Druid that I think could use really large Buffs there just a class that doesn't excel at anything NE the group or the raid game there's always just another class that does what they do but better I think they could really just use some help and there's more examples we can go through and talk about but I think the or idea here is that we really just need an entire balance pass over the classes in the game the outliers are just a little bit too crazy and while a lot of this in to some extent did exist in classic EverQuest I think in 2024 we're just in a different state where we're Min maxing everything so hard that it's really unacceptable to have this level of gap between classes number four raid content is outdated and way too easy death touch and mass fear mechanics have got to be retired at this point man they're super annoying to deal with they've entirely been solved by players I just don't know what the design intent was at this point if they just wanted us to swap tanks then there's other ways to do that I really think that they need to do a pass on all raid mobs and remove really outdated mechanics instead replace them with more modern mechanics that you might see in other games maybe my biggest problem with the raid game right now is simply The Raid size 72 man raids are simply way too big and it's just an outdated concept as a raid leader it's super unwieldy to try to manage 72 people to do anything and before you tell me about the 54 man raid size that comes later I think that's way too big as well you just can't really interact with 54 people on a Discord call it's just not really possible it's just a lesson social experience I think that we should really explore looking at smaller raid sizes like 24 or 30 players which of course will have to come with balancing but I think that's fine the raids need to be balanced anyway they're way too easy as it stands right now 72 average EverQuest players can kill any mob in the game and it's not going to be a challenge another big offender for me is when fights in the game use the length of the fight as some sort of difficulty lever vulak is not a hard fight it's an agonizing damage sponge fights do not need to be 15 20 30 minutes long to have us have some feeling of difficulty we need to find difficulty in other places and this goes for zones like beex sty as well we don't want to spend the entire time clearing through the zone and then on top of that the bosses just have an insane level of HP while presenting no challenge whatsoever to the Raiders and then you've got fights like hanar and anguish that are just 20 minutes no matter what you do because that's how the fight is programmed all of these types of things in my opinion need to be looked at and adjusted in a way that respects players time we want to play the game and we want to be challenged by these fights but this is just not the way to go about it I think another outdated concept are resists especially on raids I think that there's far too many boss fights and entire expansions where resists are so oppressive for casters that they struggle to contribute meaningful damage on a lot of fights I think it's okay for certain mobs to be strong to fire strong to ice and different classes can shine on different fights that that's cool but overall I think res this just need to be looked at and toned down so that casters can play the game and finally if we're talking about difficulty I think we have to talk about veniki because venii was the first time that they actually attempted to make the game harder and that's awesome I'm so glad that they were thinking in that direction but I don't think the way they approached implementing difficulty was the correct way for EverQuest I don't think that you can really use level Advantage as a lever in EQ because there's so much that impacts it and you saw this with the different changes that and adjustments they had to make to levels and spells to even make it functional and then of course there was the bind rushing tactics which honestly should have been seen from a mile away it was just silly I hope that their experience on veniki didn't make them think that we don't want challenge we just need to look at it in a different way number five the expansion release cycle is a bit broken let's talk about two main things here let's talk about where we start on these tlps and let's talk about the pacing I'm not saying that we need to consider different starting periods for every TLP but I think we should explore it more often I know we tried cell and it didn't go quite as planned but I think there's more iteration that could be done here I think something like starting in Trilogy could be a great option but going a little more aggressive I also think the serpent spine could also be a great option you're talking about a whole new level one experience that's opened up a lot of modern aspects of the game start then like out of combat regen and just more modern designs on spells and whatnot I think it'd be really cool to see what play do with that and the second half of this I think is the pacing this has gotten a lot better over the years but I think there's still some opportunities to tighten it up a little bit I think in general 12 weeks is probably at this point too long for any expansion no matter what given how quickly we gain experience and collect gear now this could certainly change if those aspects of the game change but as it is now I think 12 weeks is just too long we should probably be looking at something more like 8 to 10 weeks and I think that pop really needs to be a little bit further condensed they've made some strides here but ldin really just needs to either come out with pop or be a monthin and even with those expansions being condensed I still think 8 to 10 weeks is plenty now I will give them some credit because they recently on the oakin server combined do with Omens of War which I think is incredible because I think back on Omens of war from my live days really fondly but after playing it on TP several times now we actually chew through that content super fast and there's only anguish to raid so now we have all those do dragons and the do progression and hey this might even be mildly challenging at the beginning of that expansion cycle so I think that's a great change so those are my five big problems with tlps right now and trust me there are more but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say about your experience on tlps what you think the big problems are are there any problems what changes should they make what are you hoping they do with the next TLP this may even though I've sat here and listed off five problems that I have with these tlps every year I think that EverQuest is still the best MMO on the market today 25 years later I'm optimistic about the server this may and I'm definitely planning on playing it so I hope to see you guys there

Channel: Classic MMO Guy

Views: 5,021

Keywords: everquest, eq, tlp, tlp servers

Id: Hqwtr_1_UOo

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024