As someone that was excited for the new changes to EQ, and particularly to the new, much lower time commitment, I find myself incredibly disappointed this month. It hasn't been perfect at any point yet, but this month is particularly pathetic. So many obvious misses in overall quality, and still nodes (that are several years old) that unnecessarily limit the pool of usable champions, particularly limiting us from using most of the new champions we've spent time and/or money going after.
The new EQ setup just isn't working. You have taken away the champs that most of us are investing in, you've made synergies a nearly irrelevant aspect of the game, and you're forcing resource cost onto content that is supposed to be the most carefree and enjoyable in the game because of the level of investment it has previously required. While there are things you are working on (classic-gate and difficulty choice), there is more work that needs to be done, and like all of your play-testers that aren't getting paid, I'm here to make your life easy.
Assuming we maintain the current one-path, crucible style format (which we should), here are changes that can and should be made that keeps a health balance between challenge and rewards and actually allows us to use our rosters without being punished because they don't fit the mold.
- Each quest maintains it's one-class limit outside of the boss fight.
- Team limit changes from 1 champion to 3 champions.
- Swap nodes are after every 5 fights and require you to swap all 3 champions.
- Before each swap node, you cross over a node that gives you the option to either revive one champion to 40% health or heal one champion to 100% health. This will help mitigate some resource usage without eliminating it.
- Each set of 5 fights is tailored to challenge a different aspect of the given class. For example, skill would have 5 fights that require countering unstoppable/evade, 5 fights that require debuffs, and 5 fights that require purify. Mystic could focus on power drain, nullify, and punishing buffs, etc. Other nodes could of course be added to increase the level of challenge appropriately.
- All quests will have a universal node on path fights as follows. Class Dependency - [Insert Class]: For every 10 hits in the fight, [class] champions gain a passive fury effect, increasing damage by 35%. Max stacks: 10. This would work in the same way as Civil Warrior's armor gain. Any 10 hits, contact or not, would apply toward these furies. Since most fights can be done if you've got the right champ now in 40-70 successful hits, this would be more likely to slow down some fights, but it would make all champs viable to benefit from the node.
This can be a win all around. It allows us to use whoever we want, new or old, and gives us freedom to test out some things in our roster that may not be as rewarding but will be far less punishing. It makes synergies a thing again. Right now they're really only useful once every 6 months. That's not good. You can maintain the challenge by actually getting creative with nodes while not eliminating half of a given class in the process. Your players need a win, and they need your effort put into such a win. EQ can become enjoyable content again.
