Time for a Clean Break and a Fresh Start

[Bearoco]

Happy to see new forums, and I'm happy to see class balance forums being a part of them. I'd love if TLE had their own class balance section as well.

Moving into the new and upcoming TLE, it'd be good to see a complete break off the original codebase and databases so that tuning can be done to classes, raid mobs, and items independent of Live.

Let's face it.

1. These servers never make it to the live expansions, so having solid tuning to classes, items, dungeons, and raids for these servers would be amazing from Classic -> TSO in the least.
2. The amount of changes that affect Live because something is over or under tuned on TLE or vice versa causes headaches every TLE.
3. The amount of itemization and raid changes that happen every TLE is a bit crazy when you think of the amount of TLEs that we've had.

It's time to make a clean break and start fresh. Make this TLE something stable that you can replicate in future rotations.

 

[Ryni]

It is sad to see the work on one TLE that finally gets stats on gear and fights close to where they should be and then next TLE that same gear the stats are all messed up again. Kaladim did alot of things right and yet as we hit the expansions on Varsoon things have changed yet again due to live changes or some tweak in the code somewhere. Would love to see a stable database for TLE that didn't change every time. I TOTALLY agree with Bearoco on this.

 

[paulsycamor]

Agree 100% with this as well. Id take it one step further and say the way TLE's are handled is costing Daybreak Games money!
Some (not all) of the raid encounters are so unbalanced (hard, with SO MANY HPs) that I see many people getting frustrated and are actually leaving the game because of this. I'd name the Twins fight-Temple of Kor Sha and Monzok the Corrupter as examples but there are many more. Currently only ONE GUILD on the TLE server has defeated Monzok and we are 3 weeks from the next expansion so people are obviously geared up. I love a good challenge as much as the next guy but when some of these boss fights are all but impossible for 90% of the server with current gear drops many people get frustrated and leave the game! Take a look at server population , we are hemorrhaging players and all raiding guilds are struggling to replace players that have recently left the game. Please fix this before EQ2 dies off.

 

[Kurei Hitaka]

Bear, I think you're a prophet lol.

Looks like that's the direction we're going with Origins.

I just hope some of the players who started post-AoD enjoy it as much as us oldies are going to. The old stat system and some of the mechanics as a result could get pretty interesting. Like my old Swashbuckler wore some Leather Armor, not just Chain, and STR based jewelry to keep my damage up - AGI Was more for Avoidance and a couple other things that are escaping my brain right now. Some SKs would have INT jewelry for DPS situations due to limited INT availability on plate armor pieces, and cloth-wearing bards weren't unheard of.

I've also forgotten nearly every change ever done to the NPCs and boss fights in particular since 2006 too so...that's going to be refreshing. XD

 

[Xhieron]

I'm another of the old guard who is popping a head up after a long hiatus over this news, and I'm similarly optimistic. At the risk of being lynched, I feel like WOW's SOD "experiment" is (at least in one respect) a good example of this: It's essentially a fork of an early version of the codebase, and it's not beholden at all to conventions that were cemented by later content.

Take whatever has been dug up, walk it forward with baby steps, and build on it as though the path from there to live doesn't exist. There have been so many changes over such a long time that either pushed people away or, worse, chipped away at their faith. This is a chance to actually avoid repeating the same mistakes and in the process explore what the game might have been. It's a blank canvas where we can see what the game could be if x mechanic/stat/chore had never been introduced, if y class-defining mechanic/ability had never been tuned/nerfed/gutted/ejected, if z problem content/balance issue hadn't been left to torment everyone for far too long. It doesn't have to make the game unrecognizable to people who know and love the live game, but it also doesn't have to camp 2006 EQ2's corpse like an [insert pejorative class] on a PVP server. It's a chance for new, careful, incremental tuning with modern sensibilities, free from the knock-on effects of live changes and without the overwhelming burden of hand-tuning two decades of content.

It could well be the best thing that's happened to the game in almost 20 years. or it could be a disaster. Either way it ought to be a hell of a ride.