Simply raising XP doesn't really help casual players.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Strawberry, Feb 28, 2019.

  1. Strawberry Augur

    Raids were supposed to become 40 man and 24 man (instead of 54 or 60+ in classic), so more casual players could partake in them.

    This change to smaller raids was actually discussed some years ago. Back when Piestro was still an EQ community manager, somewhere in 2012.

    But it didn't happen because large (and influential) guilds claimed they would have to adjust their roster and it would be too chaotic. Of course it had more to do with the fact that some of those guilds didn't want smaller guilds to prosper.

    It's not that casuals don't want to raid (in many other MMO casuals players do raid, far mor than in EQ), it's that it's made rather impossible for them. Largely due to the timesinks involved with raiding, the set-in-stone raid hours, and the fact raids are tuned to 54+ instead of a far more manageable 40 man or 24 man

    (An abnormal amount of time in EQ raiding is spent on 54 ppl logging in, doing AFK checks, buffing, etc, this makes EQ raids impossible for casual players with limited and sporadic playtime. Having raided in several other MMO, I can say that this is an EQ specific problem, and it is tied to raid size and the inflexible nature of EQ raids.)

    If casual players do join 54+ man raids, they generally get little to no loot for it due to their limited playtime which means they have little to no DKP to spend. Even in "casual raid guilds", most of the loot is still distributed through DKP, and generally the loot still goes to more hardcore players with a lot of playtime instead of casuals. Casual players would be far more interested in raiding if the raids were more flexible to accomodate their playstyle, this is actually the case in most MMO, EQ's raiding is highly exclusionary.
  2. Sethiroth Augur

    This right here explains everything we need to know about what happened with the original announcement of the new TLP servers.

    The very fundamental nature of MMORPGs is creating a character that you improve upon over time. Everyone who plays has at least some will to make their character as strong as possible. Casual and hardcore players alike. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t play this type of game.

    In general this is true, the main exception, likely being some of those who like to role play.

    While a casual player might be aware that they are unlikely to beat the more hardcore players to maximum level or get BiS for all slots, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about improving their character. They still want to get as powerful as they can in the time they have to play. That drive is still there, or they wouldn’t be playing.
  3. Ceffener Augur

    Highly proven by much more popular games having lower raid sizes (8-25 man), Flexible raid sizes (automatic scaling), “cinematic” raid modes (looking for raid), cross server raiding, multiple difficulty levels of the same raid, etc. Most people like to experience the content they pay for, even if it has to be on an easier difficulty level.
    Jadefox likes this.
  4. Umul Augur




    both servers are a great compromise for players with low play time. I'll be on Mangler because I haven't made a new toon a fresh server in like 4 years Lol. I miss it. This will be my first main on a truebox server too.

    If its World of Warquest I'll bail though. On Phinny I made an alt for a few weeks. I zoned into Nexus and it felt like I was in barrens chat. Kinda gross. Maybe this server will be better?

    I guess my point is, asking for a boxing restriction to be lifted is one thing, just complaining without offering a solution is kinda lame.
  5. Sturn Augur

    Defining casual and hardcore is easy. Hardcore is anyone that doesn't box and mains a rogue. Casuals are everyone else.
    Fallfyres likes this.
  6. Thalliius Augur


    This server with "unlimited" picks would require a much higher subscription cost. Picks take up server resources which cost money. Unless they raised sub costs, I don't see how they could be profitable
  7. Candystore Augur

    I don't see how large amounts of picks would be a problem in EQ.

    Recreating a large zone multiple times over has been possible in EQ for a long time.

    Each time a group does a Depth of Darkhollow mission in Stoneroot Falls or The Hive, they create a giant instanced zone of Stonerooft falls where you can XP in. People created countless instances of Stoneroot Falls on launch day, a large and very complex zones. People created also countless instances of The Hive to solo XP in, I joined countless solo players just so they could open up a zone to solo in.

    Each time a group does a KT run they create another instance of Kod'Taz. Not as big of a zone as Stoneroot for example, but countless instanced of that zone were opened up at the same time from guilds doing KT flagging.

    There are many exampoles of this, where giant zones are recreated many many times, and EQ never had issues with that, and that was on much older hardware I assume.
  8. Machentoo Augur


    Doesn't matter whether you can see it or not, the fact is, it IS a problem. The first year on Phinny was terrible, with server crashing almosts daily. They changed the code to reduce the amount of pickzones, and suddenly 90% of the problem went away overnight. The fact is, too many pickzones causes big problems.

    Could they code things a different way that might not cause problems? Maybe. They certainly have been able to create unlimited instances of newer zones. Maybe they can redesign the older zones sfor instancing. But at least as things stand, just throwing up unlimited pickzones would be a disaster.
  9. Candystore Augur

    I don't believe what you say, it makes no sense.

    There have been far more complex zones recreated a few hundreds time over at the same time. This idea that pick has some artifical limit to 4 due to hardware constraints is a joke.

    In Depth of Darkhollow every ranger on the server was running their own personal instance of Living Larder to Headshot in. Every group was creating their own Stoneroot Falls and The Hive instance. There must have been 1000+ instances of the same zones open on our server alone. Yet EQ can't create more than a handful picks of some old classic zone with 10 times less complexity over a decade later? That makes 0 sense.
  10. Ceffener Augur

    Picks do not work like instances. They were designed differently and not designed to scale.

    You don’t have to believe it, the developers have stated multiple times too many picks causes server instability, it’s a fact.

    “An unintended byproduct of our previous system unfortunately allowed multiple zone versions -- some of which were under-populated. Keeping these additional instanced zones up until a server is restarted can cause performance and memory issues for all servers. These zones behave differently than normal instances (LDoN, Raid, etc.) because they aren’t designed for it. Normal instances have spikes of activity that can easily reclaim memory reserved for that zone.

    When these full instanced zones are not shutdown, servers require a lot of CPU to constantly update these nearly empty zones of data changes. In addition, these types of zones generally have more internal data than a standard instance and the requirements to keep them running are greater. As a result, it’s important we limit them to ensure performance and additional stability for the game as a whole.”

    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...-to-load-balancing-zones-aka-pickzone.238876/
    Thalliius likes this.
  11. Candystore Augur

    The explanation makes 0 sense. An MMO that has a hard cap of 4 instances of the same zone? Is this a joke.

    Just create group instances then. People literally created countless DoD instances to XP and farm in, exactly like you would create your own /pick.

    If your software can handle 100+ highly complex Stoneroot Falls instances, but can't handle more than 4 instances of classic zones that are as flat as a bowling alley with simplistic pathing, then maybe it's time to fix the code. Shame Steven Klug left.
    Barton likes this.
  12. Ceffener Augur

    Maybe, but they haven’t in 4 years.
  13. xakanrn Augur

    Not trying to open ancient wounds but a certain game spelt demise for the EQ franchise by realizing what you just said
    Progression servers are purely nostalgia trips so really should be made easy as pie
  14. Sturn Augur


    You have a strange definition of "demise".
  15. Candystore Augur

    I don't think demise is the right word, but he has a point.

    EQ never really managed to tap into a large population, it had around 600k concurrent players at its peak, that's a lot, but nothing even remotely close to what WoW did. WoW took what EQ had and leveraged it, it made a million $ industry into a billion $ industry.

    They're two different games, but EQ missed a golden opportunity to leverage their game to a wider audience. EQ chose not to embrace a wider population of casual players. Casual players were always second class citizens in EQ, and there has always been a sort of hostility in EQ towards casual players, from the playerbase, but also developers, something I have never understood.

    Stuff like casual players don't care if they have the gear. I'm sorry, but EQ has now been going on for 20 years and this is what DBG thinks casual players are. Has Everquest as a franchise ever listened to what casual players had to say. This is the reason WoW happened, it was like kicking in an open door for Blizzard.
  16. Sturn Augur

    A lot of the players who choose to play on a TLP do so because it isn't WOW. Sure, back in the day they could have expanded their audience by catering to casuals. I don't believe the same is true today for the TLP crowd.
  17. Candystore Augur

    To me it always seemed like EQ wanted to change but was never allowed to change.

    It's almost like EQ was taken hostage by its creators (Brad McQuaid desining a carbon copy of classic EQ), it's hardcore playerbase, and some of its developers.

    While very little in EQ changed, most of the players changed, they have different lives now with different responsibilities, they can no longer sit in front of a screen raiding for 4 hours every night. The industry changed, people gravitated to more accessible MMO. But EQ never changed, it was never allowed to change, and that's a shame.
    Green_Mage likes this.
  18. Machentoo Augur


    Well, the other option is that the devs are lying to us and it's all a big conspiracy to keep instances off the TLP's.

    That makes more sense?
    Thalliius likes this.
  19. Sturn Augur


    And yet these is a lot of malaise in the MMO industry as consumers have complained of no good titles for years. One title coming up that is getting a lot of hype bills itself as a return to the classic MMO experience as EQ was. Also you are incomplete in your assessment of "players changing". Some of us now don't have to work the hours we did back then because we are retired or otherwise. Seems silly to me to be on the TLP forums complaining that EQ hasn't changed. Isn't the point of the TLPs to play on servers where many of the changes have been rolled back?
  20. ShivanAngel Augur

    Will be interesting to see how pantheon does. Will it only attract the old EQ crowd? or will the current MMO players want to give it a go.

    The world has changed as far as MMO goes, especially for casuals, who blizzard stated at one point was aprox 85-90% of people who play WoW. I mean only the top 5% of players touch mythicals.

    You can log on to one of the new age MMO's for an hour or two and feel like you accomplished something. pretty much every time you log on. You cant say that for EQ, you might not get a group, you might not see the spawn you were camping, etc. People like feeling like they accomplished something with their time, logging on for 2 hours and only having a meager amount of exp to show for that camp you did for item XXXX doesnt give you the feels.(at least not the new age mmo player). Where as in wow for instance you can complete your daily quest for the day, maybe get a PVP bg in or two, or maybe run a dungeon in that same amount of time.