Do double exp weekends discourage people from playing?

You have valid points. I think we are both going off of anecdotal information as far as grouping. For me, I personally 6 box so I exp at all times. However, I have friends who raid and they do (like you said) grind hard at the start of an expac to get the exp needed to raid. They then only exp during bonuses. So the question then is, would they have exped if there wasn't a bonus? I think they would as I have seen them exp mid expansion if there isn't a holiday bonus any time soon.

Yeah I think people who want to play EQ will play EQ, I do not think they purposely avoid playing just because XP weekends exist.

These threads always go way off track whenever Skuz isn't around.

You've misunderstood what the OP is suggesting. It's irrefutable that some, perhaps even most players have a certain time budget to devote to EQ. If they spend "x" hours in an bonus period, they'll devote less time outside that period. Is that deduction more, less, or equivalent to x? That's the question. But attempting to deny that the deduction exists is, of course, absurd.

Yikes!

Bonus weekends are more likely to get me to buy experience potions for that time period and less likely to buy them otherwise. I don't like the long grinding sessions so when I do them I like to have them be as productive as possible.

Without such bonus periods I think the grind of AA in early TLPs would be a bit of a turn off to the game, but probably not enough to make me quit or play less overall.

Folks that want to play will be on regardless.

Those who are on the fence, mostly done, or have limited time/patience with the XP grinds are more likely to make an effort to be on during the increase XP time.

I suspect that if XP weekends were not a thing you'd just see a consistent downward trend of players on line, until the next expansion, TLP, etc. go active.

Bonus exp weekends are a problem, but so is the massive bonus that comes from a full group.

The fact that you can gain more exp in 1 hour during the weekend in a full group than you can soloing or duoing during the week for 20 hours is a massive problem.

It's actually a huge part of the reason why TLPs die in later expansions. People with established cliches and groups to log into gain EXP at a far higher rate than any new player to the server. New players struggle to find groups on established servers so they gain exp very slowly, catching up to the pack is impossible.

Lol, what? Gaining exp -- with or without the bonus periods -- is trivial; even a casual player can max out their exp long before most expansions end. Personally, I see the opposite. The reason new players, as you say, struggle to find groups is because most players have maxed out their mains almost immediately, and now, instead of exp-grouping, are farming, powering alts, or playing a different game entirely.

Imagine, having a network of friends in a social multiplayer game being an advantage. Shame on those people making connections.

You're right but new players can't make friends on established servers because they can't catch up. The game needs better catch-up mechanisms for TLPs.

Nah man, that's just not true. You make a new cleric on an established TLP like Mangler or Aradune, you're chaffed. You won't be able to find groups for most of your play session so you're stuck soloing and cleric solo is terrible regardless of how good the exp rate is. The game needs better catch-up mechanisms for players on established TLPs that haven't hit mercs yet. A bump to small group and solo exp would go a long way.

Yes, but why are those established players ahead in the first place? Because they have more exp. How did they get more exp? In part because of the exp bonuses they received in earlier sessions.

The only things that help narrow the gap between new players and old are level hard stops (TLP unlock schedules), semi-logarithmic exp gain curves (reducing exp based on your rate of gain), or the like. Established players benefit equally from those bonus weekends; they merely benefited from earlier ones, not later ones.

Where is Recruit a Alt.... err . Friend! when you need it!

OP is just cranky he LFG.

Box a few toons problem solved. Apologies in advance if you on a truebox server.

FTFY

Grouping being incentivised this way in a group game is designed that way on purpose to make grouping so attractive you'd have to be an idiot to avoid grouping.

While I understand that if you are catching up to the max level players you may have few or no groups and have to rely on soloing and soloing in EQ is not easy it is entirely wrong-headed to blame your difficulties on group xp bonuses.

Again, wrong way to look at group XP bonuses, you're laying the blame at the wrong door, EQ was built as a group game and has been designed in so many ways to remain so even in the face of competing games that are designed to be solo-friendly.
While other games design quests for group play and also a good chunk of them for solo play EQ has stuck to being the old-school group-play only design and solo content is practically non-existent.
EQ soloing for most classes usually consists of extremely long grinds on out of era mobs which still grant XP, though SHD/SHM/NEC tend to have a much easier time soloing current era mobs.

Catching up on a TLP is definitely harder than on a Live server imho.
On a TLP with much less time between expansion unlocks the players usually have just 8 to 12 weeks to get their levels/AA/progression/aug farming done.
While raider mains boxing a few alts with their main is common, them playing anything other than their main is uncommon on TLP, on live servers there are way more playing alts on the same account as their main and even more boxers.
Available time is the key factor here.
"Missing the boat" of the phase of the expansion when groups are common is a much bigger deal on TLP than on live servers & due to the fast pace of the unlocks a player who falls behind falls behind far faster there.

EQ needs improved catch-up systems for all servers, messiing with small group XP is not the right solution, if you can't find players of your level you are not going to find groups at all anyway.
The best solution to soloing is far more expensive on developer time because it involves creating a solo-xp path through the game - upping solo XP would hurt the grouping game, to avoid that you leave solo XP as it is but you need a whole ton of quests, tasks, missions even that are designed to be completed by a single player - and creating a path like that which works for every class is a huge undertaking.

I think the best catch up system is making it so low level players can still play with high level players, not by making the "xp range" wider than 30 levels but by way of a side-kicking mechanic to temporarily boost lower level players up to the level of the group and temporarily allow them use of the higher-level equivalents of their current spell & ability / DIscipline lines while boosted.

EQ is built around grouping, catch up mechanics should be built around grouping too to keep the EQ "brand" on spec.

So you want to punish other players just because your new toon does not get the groups you want?

Learn to read plain English. I don't play "new toons", and I was in no way advocating for any particular change, but merely pointing out that bonus weekends benefit existing players just as much as new ones.

True.

Absolutely backwards here. A live server has zero limitations on levelling. You don't "catch up" until you're level 115. On a TLP, though, that unlock schedule provides speedbumps that allow players to catch up. All but the most casual players finish levelling long before an expansion is half-completed (it took me all of three days the last level-unlock, and some players did it in one). The rest of that time, you don't progress, and the casual players catch up. Maxing AA takes a bit longer -- but you don't need to max AA, or anywhere near, to group with players who have.

Horrible idea; that allows a level one to earn the same experience as a level 115 -- one kill and they gain their first 60 levels. Even ignoring that is the issue that many of the most critical spells/abilities lack lower-level equivalents, and instantly morphing a low-level player into a high-level one means they have no clue how to actually effectively use all those new spells and skills. I'm sure everyone here has played with powerlevelled-toons that are cluelessly ineffective: this would make that problem orders of magnitude worse.

EQ2 took the opposite approach: group a low level with a high, and the higher player has his spells and skills capped lower. That's at least a workable mechanic -- the primary issue, of course, is that not many players enjoy being crippled, even temporarily. A better (albeit much harder to implement) long term solution is to effectively narrow the power gap between levels. EQ was originally built on a model where ten levels of experience was godlike. The gap has narrowed slightly; further narrowing would allow players separated much wider in levels to group, however, it would require retuning literally everything from exp curves onward.

EQ already did this with the shroud system, and just about nobody uses it because no max level player is interested in getting nothing from lowering their level and powerlevelling is so much faster than shrouding down to help and still allows the max level player to at least earn aaxp.

Sidekicking as used by CoH/CoV worked extremely well, the exp earned does not have to be the same as the current expansion exp, it can be a % of level based system which then means no matter what real level the sidekick is at they get the same % of a level per kill - not rocket science.

My take is because these established players know the game inside and how, and use the most efficient leveling tactics to rush their way to end level.

I actually find it funny, myself. The purpose of the TLP's is to have a fresh start through the original game and content and experience it all again, but people are rushing through to get to top level to do the same content they've been doing on the live servers. So all those zones and areas stay dead anyways. Kinda defeats the purpose imo, but I guess it is what it is.