Why is random loot disliked by some?

I have seen on some threads people state that they disliked the random nature of Mischief. I was curious as to why folks don't like it. I enjoy it so much I am having a hard time understanding why some folks are strongly against it. I won't try to convince you to change your mind, if you don't like it you don't like it, I am just curious as to why.

I doubt many cares, it's just a one off server anyway unlikely to be replicated anytime soon

The inability to control is most likely the main reason. You can apply this for /pick, AOCs, random loot, etc.

Some people really enjoy controlling others in these type of games hence they dislike these more open rule sets.

I have a feeling this server is going to make things rough for the next TLP. Free trade alone would have made tons of players stay. Also, people are going to complain going forward. Having 3x to 5x loot drop and end game level loot drop from mobs that can be duo'd will combine to make the player base even more entitled. We still have people wanting Selo exp rate as the base combined with 6 month unlocks.

Isn't that being patched out this week?

Also, random loot is meh. I think free trade is worse. It breeds toxicity and selfishness imo. Based on what I've read, FV was hit hardest with the latest suspension wave. Coincidence?

You call it more open, I call it hand outs and easy mode. Some of my issue is that I still think of EQ as the hard game that it once was but no longer is. WoW was the easy game that anyone could max everything with two nights of playing a week. EQ was an investment.

I don't know. I think someone mentioned that his goal was to tune down the amount of loot, but not the ease of getting it. I haven't ready anything official so I can't say for sure.

I think random without free trade would have been a lot better than random with free trade. Mainly I don't think free trade should be combined with any other special rules involving loot unless it is less drops or something.

For the past 20 years EQ has been like going to the store. You go to the grocery store for food, the hardware store for batteries and such, etc. One knows where to go to get what, and what's there is part of the flavor of the zone. But with random loot, you may as well just be beating on an unskinned, generic mob to see what loot you get. It's like playing a slot machine.

I dislike taking something interesting and difficult to obtain and making it drop all over the place. That cheapens the game to me. If I want to camp... an Iksar Hide Mask, for instance, I can find where to go, dedicate some time to it in a specific spot and get it. The entire ruleset feels like LDoN "rare" mobs that share a pool and I don't really care or even notice the difference between a named in one instance and a named in the next. It's not a method I enjoy.

OTOH, I like that completely useless "rares" (looking at you, Jaggedpine, SoNH, etc) now have some use as they can potentially drop valuable items. I think the randomness would have been better if there had been far more tiers rather than just "every mob in X level range can drop this pool of loot."

That said, I'm glad they made this ruleset so people who DO like it can play this way. I'd prefer people who want this paradigm have a place to enjoy it.

Everquest is what it is and that is why people continue playing it vs the newer and better looking games, trying to change stuff is a double-edged sword, one change too many, and you might change yourself out of a player base

This doesn't really apply to one off servers or changes that aren't made to the core game. If the server fails they just don't do it again. Servers have been unsuccessful in the past and it hardly had a massive impact on the player base.

The TLP's were a shot of adrenaline to the slowly dying community that is EQ. Over time and after many repeats of similar rulesets, the TLP community started to burnout and lost interest as well.

Mischief ruleset was like another shot of adrenaline to the TLP community. Many folks that were done w/ EQ & TLP's came back for Mischief because the change of ruleset was different and engaging. Others came to play it because they kept hearing how different it was with the random loot and how you can equip your alts and help friends with tradable raid gear. Only DPG knows the actual financials but I've heard the same story again and again from a wide variety of people.

Why some folks hate it... You have some people that want to continually relive the same thing. It's safe, they know it, they love it, they want more of it and they don't want to be surprised or confused with new and unknown things interfering with them. They just want the same thing recycled through the machine and reproduced. Great for them but they will inherently reject these kinds of changes.

Maybe they will just retread another classic TLP server next because they lack the time and energy to do something special. That said, I sure hope they keep some of what makes mischief great and continue to try and tweak various elements to mix it up. Lots of good ideas on the forums here about doing level locks, opening classes/races sooner, etc. Would be cool to see the same core elements tweaked in new ways to continue to engage the TLP crowd.

Thinking about it, I think the biggest annoyance of random loot is that many items, especially in early expansions, had very close ties to the encounters/mobs it dropped from. For one quick example, all the MPG trial gear had names related to the trial. Stuff like RZ dropping greatstaff of power had lore meaning as to why (and if anyone doesn't know why, they don't know EQ). Having it drop from other mobs/events makes no sense from a lore standpoint.

I call it not being able to lock down high value targets to sell for krono.

There may be some people who play that way, but it isn't me. I am not an elite raider by any means. You say locking down high value targets but I now see all open world mobs killed by raiders. It isn't like they are now saying "well you can have these mobs and we will take these other open world targets," instead of some mobs being locked down, now they all are. Also, from the point of view of selling gear for krono, these servers seem more eat up with it than any before. The free trade combined with questionable itemization has done that. I know a guy who has 12 toons and does shade six times every time he can.

If you want to make EQ harder great, but there is a difference between difficult and tedious in an old game. You can't call EQ hard when you can automate entire raids / groups and leveling on 3rd party programs.

All for difficult, no thanks on tedious.

Mischief was the best by far in terms of loot availability, amount of trading going on and the items you could purchase for the least amount of krono / plat.

Boxing 12 toons fully automated is not skill, it's just using 3rd party programs. Just like automating a trader empire from classic into the /baz era 100% cheating watching a program run.

i have played numerous tlp's... i usually end up leaving quickly because it's just the same old boring grind.
On mischief i am having the time of my life.
We can do the raid targets that are fun to do, and still get great loot.
We can even do group targets and get raid quality loot, and really challenge ourself to what is one groupable or 2 groupable. It's so much fun and it makes our guild stronger, more fun and gets more together.
Most i have grouped with, says this will be their last tlp, because they are having so good a time this time around.
I like playing numerous characters, and most of them are better equipped than my non raiding main back on original servers. Makes me able to easily swap out characters depending on what is needed.

Personally i'm invested in this server. And plan to actually stick with it for as long as i can, hopefully until live.

EQ was never hard, it was obfuscated, time consuming, and frustrating. WoW set a much higher bar for player skill, and for all your complaints about it taking 'two nights a week' the upper ceiling for grinding in WoW was higher as well. Comments like this just make it obvious that you're uninformed about the end game for each of them respectively.

He duo's shade. Not sure how he gets 6 instances, but he does it. Then he kills it 6 times.

You might think that EQ was never hard, and maybe for you it wasn't, but back in 99-02 I remember it being difficult. I remember raids wiping and having to actually get other guilds to help you get your corpses back in Fear.

As for WoW, either it took a lot less skill or we were all just better players by then. Also, the way gear worked in WoW contributed to raiding 1-2 nights a week. You upgrade gear multiple times in an expansion. When a new expac dropped the trash greens in it were equal to raid gear in the prior expac. Gear had zero lifespan in WoW. In EQ, before mischief at least, people would still be doing Vex Thal on off nights for extra gear during PoP. Some clickies were so neat and useful that people would go back and spend a long time farming them just to have it. In WoW, you never touched an old expac unless you had to use it for exp and then only the bare minimum.