Plane of Growth trash dropping Vulak Loot needs to be fixed ASAP

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by JohnnyBgood, Aug 18, 2021.

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  1. Karhar Dream Crusher

    This server is fun with chaos and randomness, this server will turn into a standard free trade server without the randomness. Don't do that.
    Eldrian, Yinla, Boze and 5 others like this.
  2. ForumBoss Augur

    Though overall I've enjoyed the mischief server, removing the randomness and uniqueness from the server really detracts from the appeal. The strong points while playing here have been precisely the loot variety and quantity that keeps things interesting, and makes it easy to catch up, gear up and play alts.

    I am very aware that itemizing and balancing is difficult in a game of this scope, but we should remember this is a game, and that it's ok to have oddities and extra loot here and there on a mischief server. The immediate complaints and following knee jerk nerfs to loot are painful to watch unfold each expansion. I wish the only quick changes should be to make loot more random, mischievous and plentiful, and give a lot of thought before going in the opposite direction.
  3. Jackson New Member

    I think what would make this expansion fun would be to get Vulak/AoW/Tunare loot from something that isn't one of those 3. Something just barely below them. A boss that isn't easy and can't be chain spawned or split DZ extremely easy.

    I think King Tormax would fit nicely in there. He is not killed near as much as his counterparts in Lord Yelinak (haha to anyone who suggest Yelinak should be paired with Vulak) and Dain (Also haha because of people chain spawning him).

    This gives guilds a chance to get the top items while they are trying to build to those more difficult encounters.
  4. Trevalon Augur


    Ngreth, gotta say man, its good to see ya posting around again! You've always been my favorite dev with Prathun but now that he's gone I'm glad we still got you!

    Very happy to see you here responding and taking suggestions!!!
    Stymie and Sokki like this.
  5. Weaps Journeyman

    The list mostly makes sense to me, except for the warders being in a different tier than the ancient dragons. Is that just for the purpose of restricting access to those loot tables to the smallest possible group of people..?
  6. tyrantula Elder

    By the time people get their ToV quest items, it'll be time to move onto Luclin and PoP if they aren't on a fast spawn NPC. I think it'll be much more fun and accessible for people to have tears drop off fast spawning raid bosses like Vindi.
  7. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    As someone that doesn't ultimately care much about all this (I don't RMT, I don't care about krono, I raid in the top guild in the game on a live server and this is a diversion during summer), here is my take about why I am playing on this TLP beyond the level 15-20 I made it on previous ones:

    1) FV loot rules are definitely fun for a variety of reasons (better gear all around, can hand down things to other people, the entire economy on what is valuable or not changes, so more novelty)

    2) The random loot thing meant people couldn't monopolize content in the group game in terms of rewards, spreads everything out and you end up checking out stuff you may have skipped in the past, the random raid loot means that being unable to kill X mob doesn't mean your guild falls apart, or can't progress because its all there available with various probabilities

    3) The increased drop rates, means more to go around, and feeds back into the concept of there is no reason for guilds to fall apart due to not being able to kill certain things. This really does lend viability to smaller guilds in a way we haven't had since prior to TSS on live servers.

    4) The surprises. It is FUN to kill things and be surprised at what drops, adds some more excitement even if these pixels mean nothing in a couple months.

    So I hope you don't lose sight of the maybe unforeseen benefits of the choices made on this server.

    Locking loot behind gatekeeper tiers is not fun. It only benefits a tiny fraction of the people paying for the game specifically for these servers. I think you should look at:

    a) Seeing about code changes required to let you more fine tune possible loot pulls from buckets (I'm fine with any raid mob in velious having a CHANCE at vulak loot, for example, but it shouldn't be something to reliably farm OR being a whole loot table dropped). So instead of having a random roll from X mob from Y bucket, something that gives an adjustable % chance at ONE item dropping, with the rest coming from more typical (RvR appropriate) targets would be better.

    So yeah, you kill vindi and he usually drops lodi or doze or whatever RvR appropriate loot pool mostly, but this week he ALSO drops a yelinak item, next week a vulak item, or ST warder item, whatever. (not saying like a 1% chance either, keep in mind its 2 months on the server where this even matters).

    b) ST loot should drop from NToV minimum. There is no reason to lock ST 1.0 or 2.0 loot to that zone, effectively leaving it out from many guilds. Gatekeeping gains you nothing. I feel like most I talked to have preferred having 20-30 guilds able to kill stuff, versus 1 super guild killing everything. Even if 1 top guild gets most of the open world, which is fine, the other guilds still can do AoC and have fun.

    c) PoG dropping the skyshrine quest armor is fine IMO, if it only drops PoG stuff, no one will kill there anyway other than a few guilds that hit Tunare. Or have it drop Hate 2.0 stuff randomly. Give a reason to kill trash in there. It was always, even back in era, lame having only a couple classes gear dropping in that zone. That was even a complaint with Hate and Fear back in the day as is, doubling down on that with PoG was dumb and will just fracture smaller guilds who make choices to skip inefficient content. Minis dropping that loot was dumb, but the mini loot in that zone was mostly awful. Maybe keep them on a shared drop system with things like lodi and vindi or whatever loot tables, but limit how much actually drops. Have them drop 1-3 items, not 3-10.

    My most pleasant surprise about this server was the viability of the kinds of guilds we had back during EQ from 1999-2007 or so. Those guilds died when the paradigm shifted on raid content and group vs raid gear balance and mudflation exploded. Let's not destroy that.
    Lemaitre, Stymie, Sokki and 3 others like this.
  8. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    If they drop good loot, they need to have it though.
  9. FranktheBank Augur


    Why?
  10. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    So 72 people don't split "raid" it in 12 DZs for loot that was meant to be gained by 36-72 people?

    I don't like hitting for mostly 20s on these mobs either, just saying, you need SOME standards. Depends on mob though. MOTM on Rumbleroot is probably a bit much if its not dropping great loot. On some of the level 60 con minis? Its fine.
  11. Indigo_Quarmite Augur

    Ooof creating buckets takes the fun out though. Just keep it random.

    Understand the fix to POG minis.
    Lemaitre and Yinla like this.
  12. Loxias New Member

    Ehhh, not really. This only has a small amount of overlap specific to this server...but MotM is in fact what killed the small guilds that existed in early EQ, like you were talking about. And it's not a requirement by any stretch of the imagination.

    MotM is part of daybreak's love for fixing every problem in two different ways. We lost a round of TLPs to mage box armies, and in order to fix that daybreak gave us two things - DZs and MotM. DZs meant that everyone had their own raid mobs every week that couldn't be taken away from them, and MotM meant that box armies and small numbers couldn't compete for open world anymore.

    But in return, we now have raid targets that require 2-3x more people to kill in era than they were designed for, but drop the same amount of loot as when initially designed, on a TLP server where expansions come a lot faster than they initially did (and yet still sometimes not fast enough). Is it any wonder that so many people love the explosion of loot on this server? It's almost like tripling the amount of drops finally put us in a good place based on how many people are required to raid from classic to PoP.

    While I think Ngreth is charging down the path of ruining this server for me by going back to gatekeeping loot to appease the vocal minority, I also think this server only touched on aspects that would be a lot more fun, like removing MotM, and not caring that sometimes in a DZ somewhere 42 mages might kill Nagafen.
    Eldrian likes this.
  13. FranktheBank Augur


    I don't think this perspective has a place on mischief. Why does it matter if the biggest guilds 12 split it? All it does is make it more common and drive price down. It also allows smaller boxers and smaller/casual guilds to obtain the loot.
  14. Ythera Augur

    I'd like to see the fewest buckets as possible for raid bosses, like in Kunark.
  15. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    I mean, for selfish reasons, sure. We all benefit except the krono RMTers. But the reality is that they do balance RvR, and if you go all in on easy mode or loot rain or whatever you want to call it, the likelihood is that the devs just don't listen at all.
  16. Trance Lorekeeper

    It's way more fun for my guild not knowing what's going to drop. This is what mischief is all about. We absolutely loved the fact that faydedar might give us awesome loot and trakanon might stink out.
    HAHAHA bristlebane strikes again!

    Please don't ruin a good thing by stirring the koolaid too much because of some vocal forum components who don't represent the average player.
    Lemaitre, Stymie, ForumBoss and 4 others like this.
  17. Leseul Journeyman

    Darkpaw games, makes a random loot server.

    Darkpaw games, also nerfs randomness to basically just make it play the same as every other server, just with more loot.

    The developers created something that gave people a new way to play EQ - the more random the loot is, the more different the experience is. For the people who want to play the same EQ experience there are about 40 options out there for them. For people who were looking for something new and exciting in the game they've been playing for 20 years, this was our only option.

    I just hope the devs are keeping that in mind when they are making these changes.
    Lemaitre, Stymie, Eldrian and 3 others like this.
  18. Kahna Augur

    Tiers are garbage. Random loot should be random. That is what made this server the most enjoyable server I have played on to date. Those tiers are not random. Gatekeeping is not random. It is not fun. I do not care, at all, how hard or easy a mob is. IT IS ALL EASY. Point me to one even semi-serious guild that hasn't facerolled all this stuff in the past 5 TLPs combined. I don't care if you killed AOW and he dropped nothing. It's Mischief! You also killed a POG mini and got AOW loot. It will all balance out. Let us have fun.

    Give us back our random. Make small group content viable again. Make Mischief fun again! These changes make me question even continuing on the server. I do not want it to be just an FV loot TLP server, not after being promised Mischief. Not after experiencing actual mischief in classic and Kunark.
    Lemaitre, Eldrian, Polekn and 3 others like this.
  19. Rulaal New Member


    +1.

    It was nice being able to kill dark elves in kith and get relevant loot. Every big EQ guild these days is a toxic cesspool lead by sad lonely men trying to chase glory in a video game that hasn't been really relevant for decades. Keep making decisions for them instead of taking an occasional risk sounds like a great business strategy.
    Lemaitre likes this.
  20. Aegir Augur

    Argh! Don't change the mischief!
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