Posting this again for attention

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by cybertoothlion, Feb 10, 2022.

  1. cybertoothlion Journeyman

    Maybe DarkPaw will read it.

    Alternate hot zones every couple weeks on a TLP.

    Your damn straight I want Runnyeye to have 5 instances instead of Unrest for a change, its a super easy way to get people moving around and enjoying the leveling experience again.

    Norrath is bigger than the 3 zones it takes people to get to 50 or 4 to 60 if you count Velks and its a beautiful, nostalgic, world full of creatures.

    Keep the random loot on if you want, it might be even more enticing to go to the "out of way zones" while leveling.

    If your thinking about commenting some smart , before you do here are some common responses to this I have heard by neck beards already :

    1. But the mob pathing SUCKS in other zones! That's why we go to the same ones!
    Answer : Listen man, we all played those zones 20 years ago, so what is the difference now? Yeah some zones are harder to group in. Sometimes you fall in Lava, sometimes the mob runs backwards and trains the zone, that's Everquest. I guess people will have to learn how to play in the hot zone if they want 2x XP for their level that week. ;)

    2. There are more mobs in Unrest!!
    Answer : That is was instancing is for dingleberry, you got some cheetos in your beard keyboard warrior. This is idea is about being fun, and enjoying the leveling process in everquest not MIN-MAX'ing, and trust me. There is a whole lot of people who want to group up and kill Griffons in the Karanas for double XP.

    3. You can just go to those zones if you want, no one is stopping you dur hur
    Answer : By far the snarkiest and most neckbeard comment of them al. Of course I can go those zones, but if everyone is in a race to get to max level (which they are) the whole sever is going to be in the same zones trying to be the best, just... one... more..... unrest.... spider.... YES I AM THE BEST. Suck it bro.
    People need a shove in the right direction, usually. And 2x XP in highpass this week will certainly do that, and it would be a lot of fun too, bet your .

    I speak for those of us who love Everquest, the adventure, the warm hug it gives us when we log on. The adventures we had, the nostalgia. We want to explore Norrath again. I want to group in Lake of ill Omen again in my younger levels. Buffs at the windmill!

    I don't want to do the same 5 zones to max again because that's where everyone is.

    Rotating hot zones for every 10 levels per expansion WILL make it a lot more fun, it WILL get people moving around Norrath, leaving the random loot on will be even better because you might get something good from any zone.

    Imagine being someone who doesn't play ALT's, you just make one character and go through the Xpacs on cruise control because its the same every time, your a busy guy /gal right

    Well when a new xpac launches and the hot zones are changed frequently, you'll probably WANT some lower levels so you can go level up in those zones you miss that you never see anymore. FUN!!

    I have once again, said my peace.
    Rotating hot zones baby, fun for everyone, fun for all.
    Vetis, Lawyer, Siah and 1 other person like this.
  2. cybertoothlion Journeyman

    I also might add, I would wager 75% of a TLP server at any given time is mostly casual players, especially in the beginning. They only follow the hardcore players to the "top zones" we'll call them.. because thats where they are going to level the fastest, its easy, they get buffed by a hardcore ALT more, etc.

    The tunnel effect to certain zones really is more than just the dynamics of them. Its a compound effect. Or a snowball effect.

    Simply changing hot zones every couple weeks would make a server the most fun server I have ever played since 2000, good luck changing my mind on this

    Wouldn't it warm your heart to see different areas of Norrath populated and over-run by player characters looking for a group again? You must admit it.
  3. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    I didn’t know it wasn’t possible to xp in a zone unless it was a hotzone.
    Lawyer and Yinla like this.
  4. Kahna Augur

    You dismiss a lot of valid arguments in this. Highpass, for example. You could put triple exp in there and no one would go because unrest would still be better exp per hour. Because there just aren't enough mobs there, not even for a single group. Outdoor zones? Long slow pulls make even double exp not worth it compared to tightly packed dungeons.

    Not to mention in dungeons there are often multiple spots to camp in, which for the casual player, is an advantage. If one camp is full perhaps there is a spot in another. Outdoor zones often only have one decent camp to choose from. Combine that with the fact that the dungeon with 4 camps has a pick cap of 20 people and the outdoor zone with 1-2 camps has a pick cap of 50 people and the good old spots win again.

    Then there is the fact that min-maxers are 50 in a week, and even the average player takes, at most, 3 weeks to get to max level and there really isn't much point in putting a ton of effort into low level zones.

    The days of leveling in LOIO are over. If people really wanted to go back there they would. They don't.

    I would suggest P99 if you want to live in those old zones. I'm not saying this in a snarky kind of way, but it would scratch the itch that you seem to have. The biggest reason for this is no picks and slow exp. That is what really forces people to go to less desirable places and spend more time in the low level zones.
  5. Bobbybick Only Banned Twice

    Hotzones aren't even active during the majority of the time people PUG at lower levels. Whether they should be or not is another argument.
  6. cybertoothlion Journeyman


    Instances solve the mob problem. Zones are already set up based on the amount of players it takes to pop another instance. Easy fix. This server would be directed at the more casual player, who wants to adventure around Norrath.
    Its the only solution I can think of to getting people out of the same zones. Which is killing sub numbers probably! Some casual players just don't wanna do it again this year, and I don't blame them.

    They want the nostalgia, if we can somehow harness the nostalgia better than changing hot zones, im all ears.
  7. mcsleezy Elder

    hey bobby i enjoyed your lore videos

    when you coming back to norrath?
  8. Xhartor Augur

    Another factor you are missing is that a lot of people don't like dealing with fleeing mobs while grinding up levels. Nearly nothing flees in unrest or the undead side of lower guk.
    Brontus likes this.
  9. Kahna Augur

    Instances don't solve this problem. DPG has made some interesting choices on how many people it takes to pop a new zone, and it is not tailored well for most zones, particularly outdoor zones. East Karana for example, can support 1, maybe 2 groups in the 18-24 range. That's 12 people, let's get generous and say that 3-4 more folks are picking off solo mobs. So 16 people and the mobs are all claimed and folks are fighting over what is out there in a reasonable pulling range. It takes 40 people to pop a new pick of that zone.

    Also, on a current TLP you will go from 18-24 in 4 hours, even in a less popular zone. Double that exp and you are outleveling a zone in 2 hours? Maybe 3? Who is going to run all the way out to EK for 2 hours before they have to go run someplace else? Especially when they can still get that 18-24 range done in roughly the same time in Upper guk or Unrest where they will have 20 picks to cycle through to find a group and a chance at loot. Popular zones are also popular due to their proximity to a centralized "town" AKA Commonlands.

    Double exp is not going to be incentive enough to get people out of their comfort zones. Maybe, MAYBE if you paired it with the Mischief ruleset people would be willing to run all the way out to the middle of nowhere, because they would still have a chance to get good loot. Without Mischief rules, people will still flock to the standard zones. It's not worth the run even for double exp.


    Your goals are honorable, but that ship has sailed. The only thing that would get people to go back to those zones is what drove them there 22 years ago. Removing picks. People only ever went to out of the way zones because all the good camps were taken. DPG isn't going to remove picks.
  10. ForumBoss Augur

    As people mentioned, the pick thresholds are quite high for many of the zones relative to the mob count. However I would be interested in normalizing the ZEM, even on outdoor zones. it wouldnt make every zone viable, but could make a couple more zones worthwhile each expansion.
    Treage_Imminent likes this.
  11. Accipiter Old Timer


    They have a formula that they use to determine the threshold for a new pick. It appears to be skewed toward dungeons as you point out. They'd be better off starting with the formula and tweaking individual zones to optimize the threshold. They'll never do that, of course. That takes people.
  12. Poydras Augur

    There were lots of other reasons. Players were a lot weaker so dungeons were death traps and often notorious for trains ruining your day. And of course you had to figure out how to get your corpse out of there every time there was a wipe. Loot is often the main thing that attracted people to dungeons. Melees were loot-dependent, and by the way poor soloers (and soloing, done outdoors usually, also was better xp than grouping for many casters), so the dungeons with good melee loot were popular. As for LOIO, it had a newbie-zone bonus because of the low-level part.

    I agree though, nowadays the danger is minimal and soloing sucks, so people will mostly just go where they can find groups. Meanwhile a less popular dungeon with a high ZEM is just going to attract powerlevellers. Then the occasional player or group that heads out there has wasted their time anyway because there's no mobs but not enough players to spawn a new pick.

    Pesonally I think they should just remove the modifiers altogether. Or else do something to just screw with people's patterns, like adaptively reducing ZEM's where lots of mobs die.
  13. Lawyer Augur

    I like the idea of a TLP that encourages play in under-utilized zones. Rotating which zones have bonuses and pick-ability according to a schedule shouldn't be too hard a coding ask. So it seems like a reasonable effort.

    I kinda miss the slow XP of original EQ. It did cause people to spend more time bunched up in various low level zones for a longer time period. But I also get why that can suck, and why the plethora of other MMO options makes a tough slog of 22 year old game a hard sell. Still, I'd slog it out.
    cybertoothlion likes this.
  14. Lawyer Augur

    I wonder how hard it would be for the devs to simply scale up the HPs and damage output of classic mobs? If it's all in a database, it seems like it should be that difficult, nor even take programming.

    If the HPs/AC/attack damage of classic, kunark, velious were ramped up a bit, I wonder if that would bring some challenge and spreading-out-across zones back. Or perhaps it would just make the problems that already exist that much worse.

    Dang, game design is harder than I thought; isn't it just a bunch of guys playing hacky sack and smoking blunts all day?
  15. Brontus EQ Player Activist


    Great point Xhartor! Blackburrow is full of fleeing mobs. They flee at 50% hit points and cause massive trains. This is something newbies and low level players should not have to contend with. Can you imagine the horror show if mobs in Guk, Solb, Sebilis, and Velk fled at 50% hit points?

    However, Darkpaw has no intention of fixing this as it is "working as intended"...
    Doranur_Aleguzzler likes this.
  16. Kahna Augur

    I don't remember dying in dungeons. I do remember sitting at the zoneline in Lower Guk waiting in line for a frenzy group for three hours. I was a healer, so my friend wanted me to get into the group and take over the list so he could get his monk in. Because his monk would have to wait in line for much longer than 3 hours. That was the kind of play that was common in a world where people grouped in less popular zones.
  17. Doranur_Aleguzzler Filthy Casual™

    I agree, people are lazy. I've been in groups on Mischief that had rangers, necros, SKs or druids, and they didn't bother snaring. That's four classes that have snare from very low levels. Then there are DE cleric and troll shaman and their clicky necklace, lots of potential sources for snare. And that doesn't even take into consideration root. I'd be happy to do more things in outdoor zones, if we had time for lengthy lazy xp groups, like in days of yore.
    Brontus likes this.
  18. Gnothappening Augur

    I remember no bards being alive in Norrath. Any place that would have a solo bard NPC, had someone camping them.
  19. Psalmz Elder

    That was back before leveling at the fastest way possible was considered the "only" way to play. Sometimes there was even a waiting list to kill the bard inside Hogcaller's in Freeport.
    Separately, it is not just the ZEM that entices players but also the gear drops. LGuk has several desired early classic drops.
  20. Poydras Augur

    Frenzy means melee loot like I was talking about (FBSS, perhaps the most desired groupable melee item in the game for a long stretch). Classic may have been crowded, sure, but once you're talking about people in LOIO/OT/DL, there were lots of big empty mid-level dungeons in kunark.