Career, Family, Everquest, Sleep, choose up to three.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Montag, Jun 4, 2021.

  1. Zarkdon Augur

    That easy. You need a career to pay for Everquest, and you will die too much without sleep. Family is obviously the least conducive for leveling.
  2. sadre Augur

    Hmm. I'm not sure where the juiceboxes are kept though. Is that doable solo? Otherwise /agree
  3. Montag Augur

    I stand by what I said, levelling is not HARD, it's just a time-consuming grind and the game would have more paying customers if there was a way to VERY dramatically reduce that grind time and let players focus on raiding and gearing. 90% exp pots maybe?
  4. Triconix Augur

    Early EQ game design wasn't centered around raiding. Wanting to skip the focal point of EQ in early expansions is just an admission that you really don't like early EQ. Even the raids found in modern "classic" are rudimentary and simple grindy clears. Original EQ devs, for better or worse, used time devotion to differentiate the casuals from hardcore.
  5. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    People always think they know what they want, then they get it and it's not what they thought. That's because they are focused on a thing, and not what that thing means to them. They thought not having that thing was the problem, and getting it would solve that. But really, trying to get the thing, to achieve it, that is what they wanted. And when it's acquired some other way, getting that thing isn't as satisfying as they expected.

    If you think grinding levels is boring, let me tell you, grinding when you aren't gaining levels is even worse. First off, not everybody raids, so removing the grind for something I'm not going to do, well that just adds up to having less to do period. So that leaves focusing on gearing, and anybody who went out and camped a specific named mob for a long time, waiting on a drop, they will tell you it's more boring than watching a yellow bar move slowly. Because at least that bar is moving, whereas a couple times of counting down the last few minutes of a spawn timer only to see the PH spawn again, it can be maddening. We need stuff to do, multiple stuffs, so we don't get bored. Get levels, get gear, get money, that is what happens when you do the normal grind.

    Even if one does raid, there are lockouts, there are limited targets. Playing a few hours a week just to raid, without time invested in your character's journey, sounds like an easy way for somebody to lose interest. This isn't League of Legends, this is an RPG that happens to be an MMO.

    There have been servers with faster exp rates, and I'm sure there will be again. There are also huge disparities in leveling speeds by play style. I've committed as much time as I can on Thornblade for my Mage/Wizard duo, they hit 18 last night. You'd think I'd be your target audience for this, but I've enjoyed the journey so far, it's what I wanted. Those who raced to 50, that's what they wanted. The opening weekend exp bonus helped everyone greatly, but people still would have hit 50 in the first week, a lot of them, without it.

    Buy some exp pots, get in a full group, go as long as you can in any given play session. You will be 50 in no time, this advice is for anybody who wants to level fast and avoid it feeling like a grind. For the rest of us, doing it the hard way, it would actually be more boring if it was too easy. Being 50 right now would be the most boring thing for somebody like me. I don't want to fight people for named mobs, or farm plat. I don't want to sit on my butt for 3 hours to kill one mob where a few people will get loot, just to repeat it again a few times a week. Some people like inane guild chatter, you don't have to raid to get that, but if you raid that is mostly how you will spend your time until the raids get more complex.
    Fallfyres likes this.
  6. Elite_raider Augur

    XP is way to fast for the no lifers, anyone with a family, job or a life, it is actually a tad on the slow side. I hope they take a look at it in the coming weeks.
  7. Pikallo Augur


    As someone with a family, job, and a life, I actually found the xp rate to be just fine. But thank you for speaking for me!
  8. MichaelPants Journeyman

    Hmm.. I don't understand. 1-50 is very fast with even a casual playstyle. Am I missing something here? Casually it may take 1.5-2 weeks. Hardcore players do it in less than 1 week with the most ill of us dinging 50 in 3 days.

    Two weeks is not slow. There is a bigger picture here that is conveniently being left out. The EXP pace is not a problem. It's the most balanced and fun I've ever experienced in EQ.
  9. HoodenShuklak Augur

    The problem with this, as we see literally every expansion on every TLP, is that raiding is "grindy" also. In essence, the trite "enjoy the ride" expression holds true. There's no point in really trying to fundamentally speed up just the leveling.

    I think a better approach may be to make it more engaging (i.e. "gamify" it) since it is currently just a mindless grind.
  10. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    The problem is that being a "no lifer" versus "anyone with a family, job or a life" is not what creates the exp speed problem. The route to fast exp in EQ is quality play sessions, where you get in a full group and kill red mobs. One 4-6 hour play session done right can get you farther than soloing or duoing even white or yellow mobs for twice that amount of time. And that's about as good as you will do solo/duo, depending on how fast your class kills.

    For anybody who finds themselves with limited time and is serious about leveling up, stop trying to squeeze time in here and there. You get more time, but you get less out of that time. Arrange a block of time to play, preferably during evening primetime, or at least during the day on a weekend or something. Do what you have to do to arrange that. Deal with the kids all week, run errands for your spouse, whatever makes them willing to take those responsibilities for a big chunk of time once a week. Make sure it's understood that aside from something bleeding, or tornados, or blood tornados, you need this time to be interruption free. Make that deal, see if it works. If it does, keep doing it.

    I did it at Agnarr's launch, my wife was out of town all week with the kids. It was glorious, I joined any group I could find. But then she came home, and life got back to normal. I ended up going back to my Live server because that fit better with my normal life. But sometimes I miss it, despite extreme introversion, I do like to PUG every so often.
  11. Montag Augur

    That's legit fail reasoning. First of all Classic in TLPs right now can very much be about raiding, it totally is for my guild on mischief right now. Classic raids right now are like 13 minutes to kill a dragon or spend an evening in the planes. No raids in early TLPS take a long time other than Sky if you farm certain parts and VT if your dps is trash.

    There's no part of your post that makes any sense as a rebuttal against "hey busy people would pay for your game if there was a way to massively reduce the levelling and AA time-sinks".

    I know it's cool to be all contrary to every idea someone posts but you suck at it and should stop trying because your arguments are fail.
  12. Xerzist Augur

    Too slow? It's faster than classic, faster than P99, faster than anything else, and you have QOL items like experience potions.

    I was able to go 1 to 50 in a week and a half of casual play even after the initial boost. I swear, the world is full of a bunch of adult babies now. The server hasn't even been out a month and you are all "oh woe is me, teardrops on my guitar" ...

    :eek:

    Make some friends. Group with them. Level. if you are trying to solo on mischief, you are doing it wrong 100%.

    Or be a box fairy nerd and complain with the rest of them on how even though they have an advantage in almost every situation, that they need more ease of life changes in-game to ease their advantage.
  13. Triconix Augur

    Literally every planes raid now introduced in classic (which history would tell you is not really classic raiding) is nothing more than a zonewide zone clear, whether it be a complete or partial clear. It wasn't well into the game where trash clears starting to die down.

    The true original raid encounters in EQ are blips in the game compared to what most people did (which was grind). Again, the focus in classic originally wasn't to raid. However, EQ devs have since realized that many people enjoy the raiding aspect and have offered many options to assist a player to accelerate themselves into that environment (exp potions, heroic chars, autogrant, etc etc).

    However, that still leaves the dilemma of there not being much to do in classic because the entire design was centered around that 1-50 stretch, not about raids. You take that away from the population and you're left with some very bored individuals who do not want to raid.

    Yes, devs have given us the Planes for classic to sort of balance it out more and provide more options at the end game, but they are still glorified grind sessions.

    You take one of the ways to delineate the casuals and the hardcore and you drive the hardcore away. For every casual you gain you risk losing a more hardcore player because their effort (time) they put in is then completely mitigated by making half the game trivial to complete.
  14. Elite_raider Augur

    I am not speaking for you, you are clearly neglecting something, I am speaking for the about 100+ casual members out of xxx that are struggling to even reach 50 before Kunrak launches.
  15. Montag Augur

    Lol, We got a regular Sigmund Freud over here. Yeah dude it's not that complex, there's a lot of people that have the time to either level or raid, but not both, and since you can't raid if you don't level, the people who to focus on raiding end up quitting when the time commitment of exp'ing becomes untenable.

    A superfast exp TLP would work (think selo but without the accelerated expac release schedule), super huge exp pots would work. Lots of ways of doing it that don't involve removing the exp grind for those who want it.
  16. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    With only one month of classic this time around, casuals shouldn't expect to hit 50 before Kunark launches, and there is nothing wrong with that. Kunark has sub-50 content, plenty of it. I'm just hoping to be high enough to go to Dalnir when it launches.
  17. Triconix Augur

    The 100+ casual people joined a server, knowing full well it was the fastest unlock of Kunark ever. Why should they expect to be max level? All the clues were there to string together and they still entered the server. Now they are complaining they aren't going to be max? That doesn't make any sense. It was their choice to join the server having full details on the server rules - release schedule, exp rates, loot, etc. They don't hit max level? Too bad, that's not a dev issue.
  18. Kahna Augur


    I have a full time job, a family and I made it to 50, I will prolly make it to 50 on a second toon too. No, I am not neglecting anything. Then again, I wasn't foolish enough to have children. If you have kids you give up the free time you might have devoted to any hobby. That was a choice you made.

    Play smarter. Join a casual guild, use the guild discord to set up a group to play during a certain block of time. Meet up with said group at said time and profit. I leveled by leveling with friends at set blocks of time. I can open up LFG on Mischief any weeknight and find the full makings of a group just sitting there waiting for someone to invite them.
  19. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    I'm just looking for the root of the problem instead of trying to address the symptoms. You seem to be advocating for some kind of casual raider that I didn't know existed. Raiders have always been hardcore, and maybe that changed since instanced raids, I don't know. But in the end, raiding is like 80% chat and 20% following instructions. It amazes me that anybody would burn out from actually doing something as opposed to doing that. But if you say they exist, I'm willing to believe that.


    It might work, certainly it would work for those you describe above, but casual raiders aren't what make a raid guild. They are what keeps it from being short on players. The core of a raid guild will be people who put in a lot of time, who make sure the team can succeed. They will always level up fast, get AA's fast, and stay on the edge. So if this was a server intended to draw in family guilds that do some raiding, that would fit well. But the actual core of raiders would be bored to tears before Kunark landed.

    People ask for variants of Selo fairly often around here, I don't think slower unlocks is ever on their list of changes to make. Adjustments to lockouts, loot drop frequency, sure, but not slower expansion unlocks. I think Mischief and Thornblade may have killed the multi-month classic ruleset for good, but we will see how that goes.

    They went outside the box this year, so anything could happen next year.
  20. Healiez Augur

    Pretty sure (by pretty sure I mean 100% sure), they put in servers with longer unlocks for the "casual crowd". They had 6 months between expansions. The servers died horrible horrible deaths, as there was a mass exodus of players from them because they got bored. There was an eventual vote, and it overwhelmingly passed with faster unlocks.

    Also you need to look at the different types of players, most people break it up into 2 groups, casual and hardcore. This is not even categories.

    You have.

    Super Casual- This person logs in when they can, sometimes not for days at a time, plays for an hour or two, and logs out. Occasionally they get their "play days" where they get to play 3-4 hours when the S/) takes the kids to do something (you can change that last statement to whatever lets you get your "longer playtimes")

    Casual-This player logs on usually every day for a couple of hours, maybe missing an occasional day here and there for RL stuff. They can play a couple of hours a day, and typically on their days off they play for longer periods.

    **Average Player- This player typically gets home from work, does their usual routine, and then plays until time for bed. on their days off a majority of their time goes into the game. Sometimes they have RL stuff that takes them away from the game of those days, but I would say a majority of their free time is spent online.

    Hardcore- This player plays almost every chance they get. They afk during playtime to take care of easy RL tasks, and their breaks do not last very long to do other things. On their days off they spend pretty much every waking hour on the game, maybe only taking an hour or two break on one of the days to run errands etc.

    Super Hardcore- These guys live and breathe the game. They are on every waking hour when they arent at work. They usually have jobs that allow them to take breaks and play for things like batphones. They will constantly set alarms and be on call lists to wake them up for in game related things.

    Generally everyone groups the blue text into "the casual player" and the red text into the "hardcore Player". In Reality everyone but the super casual can easily make it to max level, all but the super casual can raid on a schedule (thanks AoC's!). I have also realized during my almost decade of playing TLP's that the super casual is a MASSIVE minority of players, (just like the super hardcore are another massive minority), they also tend to be very vocal about slower unlocks and slower exp. However, if they all disappear the server wouldnt even notice, but if the other groups start disappearing, especially the average player, the server dies. This is why in pretty much every MMO ever made, an occasional bone is thrown to the super casual, but you will never get everything you want, there is no money in it.

    **Surprisingly in my experience, this group makes up most of a TLP, they also make up 80-90% of even guilds like faceless/TL core raiders. The casual players view them as hardcore players, but in reality they dont play nearly as much as people think.