Zone Experience Modifiers - Please consider adjusting

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Taemek, Jan 10, 2017.

  1. Taemek Lorekeeper

    Can we please get a look in to these and possibly just put the same ZEM across all indoor dungeons to give people a greater variety on where to go to spend their time in game.

    This will give people the option to spend their time in other parts of the game rather then all congregating in one area and trying to claw their way over the top of everyone else to maximize on their time spent playing.

    Sure, we could always just go to another zone that enjoy going too, but when no one else is there makes it hard to be social and enjoy your time spent playing when you can't because the overall populace of the game only frequents certain parts of the game due to this ZEM issue.

    On Phinigel server its no secret that the highest zone trafficked areas are UR, PC, Lguk, Velks and GE. There is some other lower populated zones like Seb, CoM, The Deep and HS that if you can get some mobs in there to kill are good, but very rarely now are their picks to jump in to to get access to these areas. What about all the other dungeons in those level ranges? There is so many options that no one endeavors to look in to simply because they are not worth going to due to the ZEM being non-existent.

    I would go as far to say that even open world zones need looking in to as there is so much wasted space in game that no one simply goes to anymore because its not worth their time..
    Xanadas and Helena like this.
  2. Astley Augur

    So... by the way... someone posted to Reddit regarding the incident in LGuk that you were complaining about earlier related to this new post also.

    They were apparently the person you were complaining about who was hogging too much of LGuk earlier, and stated that you were so upset because they were taking a large portion of mobs in LGuk that you trained them, and they had screenshots to verify the discussion that was going on about that.
  3. TLP Addict Augur

    You should probably consider adjusting your expectations and attitude.
  4. Bewts Augur

    It is a bit, but only a bit unfortunate that we don't see rolling hot zones on TLP.

    I rather enjoyed experiencing the new hotzones that rolled on live.
  5. Taemek Lorekeeper


    Funny the op of that reddit post has deleted the content of that thread after being set straight.

    Anyways, this is not about that at all, its about how there is limited options for the playerbase when other zones are ghost towns that could easily have more traffic to them.

    Whats the point of having 30+ instances of GE, Velks etc. on double xp weekends when there is an entire game out there to spread the fun over? This is the whole point here. You can go to places like Sirens Grotto or Necropolis lair etc and see no one, ever. There is multiple other zones that are very nice and well done old school zones that just get no traffic which would give people a lot more options if they are unlucky enough to not be invited in to one of the groups in the top zones where the majority of the populace frequent if the ZEM was a blanket standard across all zones.

    Easiest way to do this is take the top 5 top ZEM's, average them out and apply that ZEM across all indoor dungeon zones. Ideas on how to increase traffic to outdoor zones welcome.

    Everyone happy.
  6. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro

    EQ ZEM's have haven't made sense to me for many years, except I guess the hot zones. At least with hot zones the idea was to funnel players of the same level into the same zones since the world had gotten so large. But besides that, there seems to be little to no thought in balancing ZEM's against cash/loot drops, mob hitpoints, dungeon difficulty, etc. I'm not really sure why it exists. Maybe it made sense 10 or 15 years ago when spells had zone restrictions (no SoW in dungeons, for example) or prior to other quality of life changes (before you could invis with a pet up, for example), but today I can't determine any logic to them.
  7. Rainlover Augur

    What I would like to see is Zems get worse as zones fill up. More players = less xp and thus people will be looking for quiet places to group. In this pics ( but not raid instances) should all be treated as one.
  8. Machen New Member


    If history is any indicator, it's more likely that they will just reduce those top 5 zones to be in line with all the others, and then no one is happy. Burning Woods, anyone?
    Xanadas likes this.
  9. Baldur Augur

    Sirens Grotto is decent exp, but it's not just the zem why people aren't there. It's the layout of the zone mainly.

    While I agree that the zems aren't the greatest, it's not the only reason why people don't go to other zones. What irks me about it is you can kill the exact same mob in field of bone, zone into kurns and get double the exp. For the exact same mob...
  10. Accipiter Old Timer

    I agree on Siren's Grotto. I spent a ton of time there before Luclin launched. The front is largely underutilized because it's underwater and apparently people don't like that (?). The first castle (not sure what you'd call it) is underutilized because you have to swim/clear through the see invis seahorses and swordfish to get there. The mermaid area is underutilized because it is underwater and, again, you have to clear to it. Finally, the deepest castle... well, it's just hard to get to and hard to hold once you are there (I only tried once to be fair). The WW side bulthors and ulthorks is easy enough but you get trained regularly by raid groups running to the AoC or WW itself.

    I did the entrance, the WW side, and the first castle pretty regularly.
  11. Bewts Augur

    The reality is that they did ANY work to revisit ZEM on TLP, it's going to include logical balancing. Well as logical as they have proved to be in these types of changes.

    You'll see ZEM become a function mob HP, quantity of mobs, remoteness of zones, average mob levels, platinum value per mob, mob respawn time and ithe such factors.

    In the end, it'll change it so that it really will not matter where you XP because the XP per hour will become noticeably similar for a given group.

    Rolling ZEM zones, however could help concentrate people to different zones throughout the lifecycle of a given expansion so that places like DN see much more traffic than the odd group there for a few hours.

    What would be real interesting is seeing a zone utilization table based on players per zone per hour.

    That's give them a good metric to start hitting zones will improved ZEM every monthly update.

    Assuming it's a simple factor, I don't think it'd strain resources too much to change the data tables periodically.
  12. Machen New Member


    What makes you think they'd do it this way? They've never aimed for uniform xp rates everywhere, in any expansion, ever, that I recall.
    Bewts likes this.
  13. Auedar Elder


    Just because they don't do something a certain way to begin with doesn't mean that trying something new doesn't make sense.

    It DOES suck that players will go into certain zones because the ROI for time spent versus exp gained is so much better. This ISN'T a bad thing when you have a lower population server. But with new server technology and the miracles of science, we can now have more people on a given server.

    Everquest is one of the few games that isn't a themepark MMO in terms of a leveling path, BUT anyone who has played the games knows that they will almost always go to the zones where the "best" exp is, which basically turns this game into a theme park, at least for leveling purposes. It sucks that while leveling up, even with friends, outside of exploring a zone for fun, there is little or no point in being there.

    Once Paladul Caverns came out, you can easily level there from 4-20. There is no reason to go to any of the following zones once you get to level 3, even though they are awesome zones with some awesome content in them. Befallen, Blackburrow, Deserts of Ro, Qeynos Hills, CL, Runnyeye, all of the Karanas, The Warrens, Tox Forest, Nek Forest, Crushbone, Butcherblock, Steamfont, Greater Faydark, Kurns, Field of Bone, Swamp of No Hope, Lake of Ill Omen, Shadeweaver's Thicket, Hollowshade Moor, Dagnor's Cauldron, Highpass Hold, Innothule Swamp, and Lavastorm (28 zones). Almost all of these zones become obsolete for grouping once you realize how much more experience you could be getting at x zone. Why not create conditions where people can get similar exp in these awesome zones so they have a reason to explore and try out new things versus sitting at the same damn camps over and over. You are turning a massive game with 50+ zones to level in into a 4-5 zone game.

    We know the game basically screwed over leveling up in zones without a dungeon bonus, and to be honest I don't think that's a good thing now, since dungeons already drop better loot. Sadly, when it comes to playing a game, people will more than likely choose efficiency over trying out new camps and zones and exploring.
    Taemek and Taladir like this.
  14. Bewts Augur


    Uhhhh.... Because it's Daybreak?
  15. Gnog Elder

    I agree pretty strongly with the OP. Other than the server crashes (which can be frustrating) my only major gripe with this server is the poorly calibrated ZEM table. A zone like Grieg's End, where mobs have hilariously low agro range and low HP, don't see invis, and generally pose little threat to a well balanced group, should not award so much XP. It forces the player base to choose between interesting, challenging content and a reasonable rate of XP. There does not seem to be any good reason to configure the ZEM table in this way. A small fix on this front would substantially improve overall game enjoyment for me and others I'm sure.
  16. Kaneras Augur

    Boogles my mind that people like DSP so much. The zem is lousy they but they still flock..
  17. MabbuPhinny Augur

    Normal Exp could use a bump...but I think AA is fine. I'm maxed on two characters, others I know are maxed AA on like 6.
  18. Cpw_ New Member

    ZEM has never made any sense and has been poorly thought out and inconsistent for the entire time.
    It is supposed to reward more challenging areas such as dungeons ,harder mobs and remote areas. Yet from the very beginning zones that take melee 45min to run to would have far worse ZEM than dungeons in easy to access locations . (Splitpaw vs Guk)

    I would love for the developers to go and make the ZEMs logical but I will not hold my breath. They seem to have a much different ideal of what is a bug or bad design point and what is a feature that players want.
  19. Baldur Augur

    They already just recently went through the ZEMs as well and reduced zones like burning woods.

    So there's zero chance of them going through them again.
  20. Auedar Elder


    They are launching a new server in the coming months. Having balanced experience rates across multiple zones/all zones in an expansion versus having 8-12 instances of "x" zone might force players into new experiences, which some might enjoy. Having a few picks per zone max would distribute the player base more evenly across the entire game, much like that "classic" experience.

    Some of us get tired sitting in the same camps, in the same zones, in the same expansions. Some very interesting, awesome zones that took lots of time and love to make are being completely ignored. A mechanic that would introduce people going into lesser used zones might be an interesting idea.

    To say it's never going to happen is stupid. That's like saying GoD and OoW are guaranteed to launch together, regardless of how players feel, so they should just shut up and stop posting about it, is also stupid. If a large enough of the player base on this server actually cared about the issue, amazingly, the moderators read this forum, and will take into consideration these requests, as well as understanding the cost versus rewards of implementing those requests.

    If they keep launching new servers every year, they will HAVE to come up with different ideas to bring more players back, or bring new players in, otherwise they will just divide the small player base we have more and more, which would ultimately lose more subscriptions than what they gain. The fact that they want to launch a new TLP server means they are looking to try new things.