The Next TLP: Progressive XP

This is where the idea breaks in my opinion.

Getting a huge XP nerf from week 16 to week 1 in the cycle is a huge demoralizing incentive. You listed a mega cliff size XP degradation of a 700% XP rate going back to a 100% XP rate. People are supposed to be excited about a new expansion. You'll simply crush the morale of anyone not pushing the top end with such an XP chart.

If you had said instead...

"the XP rate resets back to 1.0X for the levels or AAs added with each new expansion, which then increases via the Week 1 to Week 16 cycle"

I think you'd have a more workable idea. That allows people to catch up to the latest expansion fairly readily and maintain your desired difficulty for advancing in the latest expansion. Your hard core could delve wholly into the latest expansion while your more casuals would likely be an expansion behind at most.

All that said, I do not wish for a new TLP for a long, long while yet.

Yet that is *exactly* what they did with Phinny. Did you not see the 80+ pages of whining over XP rate? Y

Second, it only discourages casuals and extreme casuals from playing *for xp*. It discourages nobody from playing, in total. And it certainly doesn't discourage the hardcores or the RMTers.

You are missing a fundamental key point. This server design encourages *different* players to play at *different rates* at *different times* during the 16 week era.

It simply does.

And that is a good thing. A great thing.

It encourages more overall players over time. It's a load-levelling mechanism. It not only spreads ut the load, but it also spreads out the demand of the economy. It encourages creation of alts, which further drives the economy.

This would be a Krono-printing machine!

It encourages the hardcore to elite to push for longer, and harder, to attain a more difficult server-first and making being the first power-guild that much more difficult, and thus more rewarding. These people do not need the encouragement. The new server is itself enough. The newer, tougher "challenge" is enough. Get rid of loot lockouts, and they'll flock to this in droves, especially given that the XP rate for the first 2 weeks will separate the pros from the posers.

It encourages the semi-casuals to wait a bit, maybe farm pelts / silks / ores / tradeskill. It also gives them a calming fact knowing that if they can't keep up, that's ok, because XP rate is ever increasing. If they have an off week or two with little play time, instead of throwing up their arms in frustration, they can simply say "Hey...that's ok, I'll get more time the next two weeks, and XP is always 33% faster after the next patch than it is now...so there ya go...not a big deal."

It's really not that complex. I showed the numbers for the benefit of analysis so you folks could visualize the impact. As a player, all you have to remember is that XP will be 1/3 faster after the next bi-weekly patch that it is now. Period.

Not for the open-world raid competing guilds. Not at all. But of course it is for casuals. Again, by design. The load-levelling aspect has desirable elements.

Excellent point though. Sorry, I was not clear. Only the *new* era zones are 1.0x. Once the old zones get hot, they remain hot.

Naturally, you need this to encourage new toon creation. Think of it this way: if I want to create a new Halfling during Kunark, I should have the old world XP bonuses to accelerate to 50, naturally. If I decide to do so during SoV, I should have the hot zones in both Classic + Kunark to accelerate to 60. And why not? THE GOAL IS TO ENCOURAGE NEW PLAYER / NEW ALT CREATION!!!

I know what you're thinking...what about the expansions that did not increase the level cap. Why won't people simply farm in the old zones and avoid the new?

Factions. Keys. Raids.

They may farm their *levels* or "AA's" in the old zones (for these eras which do not increase level cap only), but they aren't going to avoid the *new* content. The first expansion to not increase level cap was also the first to have a great factioning / replyabaility aspect to it.

So I'm not worried about it. At all. ;-)

Edit: I agree, I *hope* to not see a new TLP for a while as well. I *hope* that Raid Instancing is brought to RF/LJ and they are merged (or at least allowed free txfer). But that will not make as much revenue, so while we may hopefully see those things, I feel a new server is inevitable. I feel we will see one every 6 months, and basically the server(s) that is 2 generations old will essentially die.

You might want to introduce yourself to this guy and the lesson about "old content" that he can teach you:

Your idea takes everything that is horribly imbalanced and frustrating regarding player social dynamics and multiplies this problem by 736%. Repeatedly walling us in with cries of how wonderful this is will not make it wonderful. It is, possibly, a good idea in general. It is, definitely, a terrible idea as depicted.

Here's my quick alternative:

Weeks 1-2: 1.0X (Classic / P99 rate, roughly, or 1/2 Phinigel rate)
Weeks 3-4: 1.33X on levels 1-20, 1.0x 21+
Weeks 5-6: 1.77X on levels 1-20, 1.33x 21-30, 1.0x 31+
Weeks 7-8: 2.35X on levels 1-20, 1.77x 21-30, 1.33x 31-40, 1.0x 41-50
Weeks 9-10 : 3.12X on levels 1-20, 2.35x 21-30, 1.77x 31-40, 1.33x 41-50
Weeks 11-12: 4.16X on levels 1-20, 3.12x 21-30, 2.35x 31-40, 1.77x 41-50
Weeks 13-14: 5.53X on levels 1-20, 4.16x 21-30, 3.12x 31-40, 2.35x 41-50
Weeks 15-16: 7.36X on levels 1-20, 5.53x 21-30, 4.16x 31-40, 3.12x 41-50
Weeks 17-18: 7.36X on levels 1-30, 5.53x 31-40, 4.16 x 41-50, 1.0x 51-60
Weeks 19-20: 7.36X on levels 1-40, 5.53x 41-50, 1.33x 51-60

The problem with your idea isn't so much the catchup xp mechanic, it's the artificial reversion on expansion release. Having someone level 34 go from 736% xp back to 100% xp overnight because velious unlocked is just a miserable design decision. It creates an atmosphere of triviality to casual leveling early, reinforces the divide between hardcore and casual at the beginning, and takes all the be there or be screwed elements of a double xp weekend and more than triples it! The only real benefit to yours is it might entice hardcores to stick around for the end, assuming they level alts or AAs are out. You basically replace the whole burnout early and come back for new expansion release thing for this inverse bell curve of awkwardly quitting and come back BEFORE expansion release with a wildly arbitrary design. It may work to keep retention up, but I'd guarantee it works to drive permanent membership away.

PROGRESSIVE EXPERIENCE - sorry, not interested

*immune* to XP events - sorry, not interested

LIMITED BOXING / NO ARMY SERVER - agreed, and I fixed your spelling for you

Remove loot lockouts from raid instances - agreed

Raid instances and open world should have *identical* difficulty across he board - agreed

All this would do is piss off the "hardcore" that "really worked for it" and lose months of potential casual/sane people subscriptions. This idea is a complete anathema to revenue, satisfaction, or fun.

Can I derail this? How about a progression server that actually makes it to Luclin/PoP? I'm getting tired of playing on TLPs (Ragefire and Phinny) with this groundhog's day crap. No more *New* servers. move along the ones that you have. I'd much rather be grinding away in PoE, HoH, or The Deep while playing a Beastlord. You wanna see hardcores fighting? Make them play nice on a Time Rotation. Wanna give casuals engaging play, let them grind away on AA's to make up for the gear their not getting by being "hardcore".

The theory is that Phin should do it, assuming the XP rate doesn't scare too many people off. There's little reason for attrition now besides XP rate.

I'm also of the opinion Phinny should have started in Kunark, preferably Velious.

PHINIGEL would be perfect all the way around if it was 4.5 month unlock for each expansion.

Fixed that for you.

Normal RF/LJ exp Phinny exp does not encourage new people to play, alts, and promotes burnout. Missing out on one rez should not cost you an hour or more of experience.
Expansion unlocks 3 months after the expansion is beat
Instance everything with short lockouts (4 days) I don't like timers that force things to slow down on al already fast moving server.
Lower the dynamic zone threshold to about 1/2 of what it is now. Plenty of room for everyone and their boxes
Allow alt-tab boxing, but try to prevent keystroke broadcasting and ISB. Attempt to keep the bot armies in check.

DBG makes a server that maximizes 'opportunity' and you'll see a packed server that I am confident will maintain a healthy pop for its full duration. DBG and the old farts who still EQ should be a mind-numbing grind are delusional. I'm not talking about handing out free gear, mostly QoL changes that would allow for a reasonable amount of progress in short chunks of time. That guy playing 15 hours a week is paying the same as someone playing 70 hours a week <-- (In the context that as far as DBG is concerned, it's the same amount of money)

Anyway, my wish list.... Has as good a chance as any...so about zero.

ur an idiot

I have a better idea.

Phinegel level exp. For 1-50 until Kunark is open. Then raise the 1-50 exp rate to RF/LJ level.

Do the same thing when PoP is open. RF/LJ level exp 1-60, current Phin rate 61-65.

Again for OoW. Faster rate for 1-65, slower for 66-70.

Here's the best part. Don't need to open a new server for it. Do this on Phinigel.

No thanks.

Sure, I don't always like how slow it can be to get between certain levels.

But I also don't want to zoom though everything.

If EverQuest had ways to turn off Quest exp or combat exp, or that I could put exp into AAs or something early, sure.

But not everyone wants to get to 50.

Besides, I think that would take more coding than needed. Because it would be rearranging the exp from mobs over and over and over. I'd rather take a 50% exp boost every 4 weeks or something.

Fun idea and interesting, but really makes me wonder if DBG ever actually reads a thread like this or just peruses it to see if anything violates the TOS. Has DBG ever actually taken a thread like this and said they loved the idea and actually implemented it?

Not reading the entire thread before posting is miserable forum etiquette. ;-)

Your entire post is based on a mistaken assumption, and is therefore gobbledygook.

In short, you would not go back to 100% XP in the old content. Only the new zones would have the slow rate, just like the new zones in the *previous* era had a slow rate, when first introduced.

Again,I fully admit it's not perfect for everybody, but I think it fixes what is *clearly* broken in Phinny now. When the new TLP shows up, an my money is that it will in May/June '16, this is exactly the kind of hook that will excite people after the latest XP snafu with Phinny, just like Raid Instancing and True-Boxx excited those displeased with RF/LJ. Takewhat people bitched about last time, and center-piece it in the next go-around. Marketing 101.

If Phinny had Progressive XP, today, there would be *new* people coming to the server from RF / LJ over the next 2 weeks. And even more the 2 weeks after that. You would also have FAR more alts. Both of which would improve the server. Absolutely. It would improve Krono sales (initial and 3rd party). It would improve server economy. It would spread the population around. It would revitalize the lower level areas. It would make grouping easier. All good things.

People seem to think that if they then leave in 4 short weeks to go back to RF/LJ once they are 50 and won't return until Kunark XP is higher, well, some people seem to think that this is a *bad* *thing* lol!!!

Ugh.

It is better to have the LATE and for HALF ERA than NEVER!!!!

Does nobody else see that the only way TLP can survive in a healthy state of population is:

1) the finite few that play, actually play most if not all of the servers, or
2) there are only 1 or 2 servers (too late)

The second isn't happening. That boat has sailed.

Progressive XP encourages the first. It gives people reason to come to the server mid-era, which *NEVER* *HAPPENS* *NOW*. The *exact* *opposite* happens now, and it is the reason why RMTers are begging for early lockouts (and daybreak sees a revenue drop) because Krono sales suck in the last third of era when the majority has their best-in-slot tradeable gear already. But if you had NEW ALTS being created, or better yet, NEW PLAYERS coming in, it is good for *everybody*, right?

Does nobody else see that we WANT the TLP players to have toons on both RF/LJ *and* Phinny? To play both?

The progressive XP model encourages that vastly more than the current Phinny model.

Conversely, the Phinny model *discourages* it. The XP rate is so slow, that essentially you have to walk-away from RF/LJ as most players only have time for one.

It is the *exact* opposite of what dbg should have done, and if the numbers haven't proven it to them already, I'm sure they will within the next 30 days...

I read this thread and very much disagree with the OP's ideas for all the reasons people have stated.

I also find it hard to have much respect for/or take TarewMarrForever seriously when he tells other players their ideas are gobbled and that they are not allowed to bring certain topics up (i.e. whether or not RF and LJ should be merged). It's funny how he encourages people to embrace his ideas when he discourages discussion and shuts down folks who don't agree with him.

If you think hardcores would not play this server out of "fairness", then you don't understand why most hardcores are playing these servers to begin with. It's either about being first, being best, or farming Kronos. This progressive XP model makes being first and being best that much harder due to increasing the *initial* time commitment required to get those server firsts and to establish the first power guild. In the case of the krono farmers, WHICH ARE INTEGRAL TO THE VIABILITY OF THE GAME, it also increases both initial and third party Krono sales and spreads it out further into era.

If you think it is counter-revenue, then you don't understand it how revenue is currently generated by the TLP servers. Hint: it is everything to do with the Krono (sub and gear) and the server-speific sales (bags, bundles, etc). DBC / Pot sales are waaaaaay secondary after the server firsts. Progressive XP strengthens what is already the bigger factor (Krono), and only diminishes Pot sales when they are already diminished (later in era). The hardcores will still gobble up the XP Pots in first 2 weeks regardless. What you don't sell in the last 2 weeks will be MORE than made up for by people who play on other TLP's coming to this server, and buying other server-specific items such as 40-slot bag bundles, which are server-specific by account.

If you think Phinny was fun xp-wise, then you weren't one of the many that abandoned it and returned to RF/LJ, or worse, quit for the second time in 6 months. Or even worse that that, were playing on RF/LJ, *liquidated* their gear, and THEN quit the game probably NEVER to return...

Until we get Progressive XP. ;-)