Been waiting since Fippy for Free Trade TLP

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Utah, Jun 10, 2021.

  1. Utah New Member

    I'll attempt to keep this as objective as possible.

    I'm a returning player who hasn't played in a really long time, prior to the game being acquired by venture capitalists. The "Free Trade" ruleset TLP is solely the reason I returned to EQ.

    "Free Trade" servers in EverQuest have been challenged by what's known as "mudflation". For example, an item from the current era (100 stats for instance) is worth 10x as much as an item from the previous era (90 stats for instance). Even though the previous era's gear has 90% of the stats, it is only valued at 10% of the current era item. This alone doesn't necessarily ruin an economy, as item scarcity (supply vs demand) has a huge impact on the availability of items. Firiona Vie had a pretty significant problem with "mudflation" as I recall, however it was sorta cool too because it lowered the barrier to entry for returning players. You could easily go into the Bazaar and gear a toon out with old gear for next to nothing, then go rock it to catch up.

    What I've witnessed on these new TLP servers makes absolutely zero sense to me, unless if the goal was the most inflated server economy ever created. The company took an amalgamation of new ideas and in my opinion butchered the execution. I'll explain:

    Free Trade = 10/10
    Randomized/Shared Rare Mob Drops = 10/10
    Increased Rare Mob Drops = 0/10
    Increased Rare Mob Spawns = 0/10

    Killing the Kobold King and getting 14 items dropping (yes, sometimes I've had him drop only 2 as well) is freaking ridiculous. Increasing the spawn rate of rare mobs as well with this being true, is also freaking ridiculous. All this has done is turn the server into a freaking loot pinyata where in-era group loot is utterly worthless within a week of the server launching.

    Free Trade servers can be awesome because they allow for increased economic opportunity for players. The current loot implementation of Mischief and Thornblade has primarily debased the game's economy. These new Free Trade servers are sailing with many of our hopes and dreams. Hopefully I'm not the only one who sees that we're headed into the rocks. Let's get this ship turned around and sailing towards a healthy economy, with the wind at our backs.

    That is all, thank you!
    Raptorjesus5 likes this.
  2. Tweakfour17 Augur


    So its only cool if you can buy old gear for cheap and not current era? The economy exists to buy and sell items that you require or want for your characters progression or to fund that goal, if you can just farm those items easily instead (14 drops off 1 rare) then there doesn't need to be some super expensive economy. The draw I see for this server is anyone can be very well geared very easily. Clearly the Krono farmers and RMTers don't like that approach and the casuals love it. It remains to be seen if this can keep the casuals engaged longer than normal.
  3. HoodenShuklak Augur

    Tons of gear is new and different. If anyone wants more of the old stuff there are literally a million options. Plus there is p99.

    We need more new things and experimental designs like this. Ideally they remove lev from pof and there's no reason Mischief wont go to the moon.
  4. wade_watts Augur

    Mischief has been the best server I've played on across any TLP since Phinny. Launch was excellent, free trade makes things very open. Extra loot means the economy is flowing. I've been able to equip my chars as I've levelled without having to go farm rare items and I've seen items long since forgotten. I've tried new zones and still got good loot along the way. The unlock cycles seem awesome - 1 month in classic and 2 in kunark is perfect.

    RMT folks that would lock-down camps have no benefit here since the loot is random. Everyone in my party now has jboots without paying some farmer 1-2kr because they have a monopoly. Similarly with efreeti boots and other items.

    The only complaint was how they nerfed the Hate / Fear mini's - but even that isn't a big deal. They did a great job. There were some glitches but the dev's did a great job here and this is a really fun server. Tons of folks have mentioned all of this as well. It's actually fun killing random nameds again and discovering new zones.
  5. brickz Augur

    free trade is awesome because you can trade gear to alts/friends. not because you can sit in the tunnel and kronolord over crappy group loot. please don't listen to this guy darkpaw
  6. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    The top tier prices on a free-trade server will reflect the wealth of the players who seek that gear. People on the cutting edge are likely to have a lot more money than the average player. That is supply and demand, but so is the disparity between those prices and the ones in the next tier down. It's just going to work like that, the rulesets on Mischief and Thornblade won't change anything. Could there potentially be rulesets that do? Maybe, but I can't think of anything that would make a dent in that.

    To people who need the cutting edge gear, gear with 90% of that might as well not even exist, or they have it already and are trying to upgrade it. Either way, it's just adding to the pool of sellers, and it doesn't matter if there are a ton of buyers if they are all equally broke by comparison to those they are buying from.

    I don't really see a solution to any of that. I'm happier with everything else being much cheaper, but would be interested in seeing what people think would actually work to change it.
  7. Green_Mage Augur

    BiS will continue to be very expensive per slot in any given era -- especially starting Luclin or so. I'm wondering how much things may go for if they are sold near the launch of an expansion. Such as Soul Essence of Aten Ha Ra. 80 krono? 100?

    So the big difference will be that the old best dropable gear is dwarfed by much of the new dropable gear for purposes of non-BiS. It sounds like they didn't want the same old RMT campers boxing the same old camps extracting all the pp out of every casual raider. Which is something a lot of people complain about.

    But its all kind of beside the point as far as the top end free market dynamics are concerned. This just allows the casuals to horde some pp or krono for later.

    There will be item devaluation sometime in late PoP I think -- but then we'll bounce back.
  8. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

  9. Mrjon3s Augur

    So the biggest thing that kept them from making a free trade TLP is the CS nightmare that it would be. Best way to counter that was just increase the drops to the point where almost everything is cheap so less customer service problems.
    Fallfyres, Yinla, Skuz and 2 others like this.
  10. jeskola pheerie

    Tl;dr: halp, I can't pay rent on Mom's basement with this year's TLPs!
  11. Twizle Journeyman

    If there was ever a reason for a downvote option, this post would be it.

    The free trade and loot opportunities are currently ideal. No need for changes just yet, we are 2 weeks and people are moaning about not being able to make a small piggy bank, The majority of players hope these small minded people just quit.
    Sraad and BreakmanDX like this.
  12. Gheed Is not reading your response

    Been saying since the beginning that mobs dropping 10 pieces of loot is one of the most stupid things I have seen on a TLP yet.

    However many new members have taken to the forums to disagree with me and sing praises because now they can "finally have gear".

    Free trade is great. Monsters dropping 10x their loot is just a quick dopamine fix for people that won't last more than a few months anyways.
  13. Kahna Augur



    Except that every few months, just as the high wears off, a new expansion will drop. Maybe this time I will not go into PoP still wearing gear from Plane of Fear because the items I needed never dropped. These servers are awesome, and may actually allow folks to fully gear before the next expansion, where they will replace it all. Which is basically all that EQ has ever been gear wise.
  14. Mrjon3s Augur

    After playing around for a while. I think the problem is people always want BiS gear. You should never be going into PoP with fear gear. 2nd and 3rd slot gear is always gonna be better then 3 expansion old gear.
  15. Gheed Is not reading your response

    Wish you the best in your quest to become fully geared. Apparently people wear plane of fear gear in PoP, news to me.
  16. Kahna Augur


    You assume I wasn't bidding on 2nd or 3rd slot gear. Not enough of it dropped for everyone to get upgrades. This time might be different.

    It can take a hot minute to get an upgrade when not enough loot is dropping, especially when the item has a critical focus.
  17. NorrathISflat New Member

    You're probably playing the wrong class if you can't get gear
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    How do you keep the kronolords from monopolizing spawns and artificially inflating prices?

    Mischief / Thornblade.

    Seems to be a tiny number of people who don't like the copious amounts of loot - well there are a bunch of other servers for that.
    Also seems to be a lot of folks very happy with the copious amount of loot.

    The real test will be retention - how many players will this server lose over time versus prior TLP's.
  19. Kahna Augur


    I play the class I enjoy, Necro or just casters in general, not the one that gets loot easy. Why would anyone play a class they don't like just because it's loot rots often? Sounds like a good way to be miserable.
  20. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Loving Mischief server. Loving the higher level chars who are spreading the loot around by giving it away for FREE.

    So what if there is a lot of loot around, there are a lot of people having fun and enjoying killing in other areas outside of the optimun path. We only have a month of classic and a lot of people need gear.Long may this continue.