Secrets of Faydwer - 12 flags for 54 people?

Just don't open any doors.

I am strongly against this unnecessary change and destruction of the intended and accepted way of playing Secrets of Faydwer, one of EverQuest's best expansions. TLPs have long been able to complete SoF in era, including my most recent TLP Selo which only had one month to do it and we farmed Crystallos several times in era before moving on to SoD the day it launched and never looking back.

There is nothing to "fix", so please quit using that word. Going up to an Oldsmobile and demanding it be "fixed" by turning it into a Corvette isn't a fix, you're asking for a different thing than is being offered. It was intended that a guild repeatedly clear each tier of content to advance to the next tier. You can facilitate this by split raiding--you can do most of the content in SoF with lower numbers of people, for example the hardest fight to get into Crystallos will be Meldrath who is killable with something like 25ish characters, maybe less.

I'll note that the contingent of people that hated the "original" style TLP where unlocks happened a few weeks after content was cleared got their wish with fixed-unlockTLPs, but now you seem to think it's a "problem" that the next content might open before you've cleared the current content? That seems like what you've asked for with fixed-unlock TLPs.

If your guild can't split the early raids you won't be able to beat Meldrath, so it's kind of a moot point.

Also I've seen those split with some of the lowest tier boxes that I've ever seen.

No response. Laughable comment.

Again, laughable, but I'll bite.

If the scaling of progression doesn't match the original, then fundamentally it needs to be fixed. What are you getting on about? Raids were never designed with splitting in mind. Don't be so naive. You're providing a player-made band-aid to a design problem. It's absurd. Just stop.

Nobody is asking to completely remove guilds repeatedly doing the content, but having the minimum time needed to complete progression scaled properly to resemble what it was on live. 12 month flagging design should not be literally identical to a 12 week TLP. The ratio should be identical.

Just because raids can be split now due to the various power boosts and nerfs to the content, it doesn't mean it should be forced upon a guild in order to progress in a timely matter. That's what design is for. SoF is designed around it being a 1 year cycle. TLPs are 12 weeks. The progression of SoF needs to be scaled in a TLP to properly line up. If the original design of SoF was intended to take 2 months out of 12 months (17%), then the progression shouldn't take more than 2 weeks out of 12 weeks under normal raiding conditions aka no splits. Saying content should be split and and not updated provides an easy way out for the devs to not do their paid jobs. Stop making this a player-issue when it's clearly a dev issue. The devs don't need you to come running to their defense.

I also love the fact that you say it was intended for a guild to clear the content multiple times, but provide a solution of splitting. Well, splitting would almost ensure that the intended design isn't followed. Nice contradiction there, genius.

I don't know what you're talking about. This is my first TLP and never had an opinion of how unlocks worked previously. Stop conflating.

P.S your metaphor is garbage and doesn't make sense. A better one is walking into the SAT knowing you need to complete 154 questions in 3 hours. The following year you take the SAT again but this time you need to complete 154 questions in 1 hour and getting told you should be taking the test by writing with both hands at the same time instead of one, but not from the test instructor, but your fellow peers. Do you understand how that is asinine?

Sorry nope. If you don't want to split raid you can take longer to beat the content. This is not a fix, it is a major nerf to the core design of SoF and how guilds have been beating it on TLP for years. Any change to it would basically ruin SoF by making it unchallenging and unfun.

Sorry nope, but you don't understand the fundamental issue. Player-made workarounds for a design issue isn't a reasonable solution. This content wasn't designed with the intention of being split. Try harder or don't bother posting.

The fact that you claim you want it "challenging" but provide a solution to split content is a complete contradiction. It proves that the content isn't fundamentally challenging anymore. If you want the content to remain challenging, request for it to be tuned again. Your rebuttals are so laughably entertaining and bad.

SoF is great the way it is, and I don't want to see things I have done and enjoyed previously ruined for future generations. I'm sorry you don't seem to think you will like it, maybe you shouldn't play on TLP?

You grossly overestimate the "skill" in "higher" guilds. Every guild is entirely filled with mouth breathers who are terrible at EQ being directed by like 3 ppl who know sorta what is happened.

No, this is an unreasonable restriction you are adding.

:thinking:

As for OP, I disagree. SoF flagging is part of it's charm. It's not like it's difficult. We had some truly, truly awful boxes make up our raid splits.

SoF doesn't need more flags, it's trivial to complete in era.

Let's talk about TBL though...

I don't really care one way or the other on this subject. I think it would probably be something positive for the overall health of the server population if flags were slightly increased (to 18 perhaps?) But, I am totally fine doing it with only 12 flags. Worked out OK on phinny for the most part. I would probably feel very different if I were in a guild that does not/could not split.

There is some precedent here for making the change though. TDS posed a similar issue when we were getting to that point on phinny. Having only 8 weeks in that xpac, it was going to take 3-4 weeks to get to the final fight of Arx Mentis. In that case even splits wouldn't have helped. I don't think splitting should be a requirement to making it to end game content within a reasonable amount of time within any given xpac. We voiced our concerns and a change was made that allowed us to get to the final fight of Arx Mentis after the 2nd week I think.

It should not be the case that TDS flagging was fixed because of the time constraints of TLP, but we ignore SoF simply because there is a non-conventional way of getting around it. Splitting should not be required of any guild, ever, to progress in an expansion in a reasonable amount of time. Consistency should win the day here - but I have zero hope of it happening before SoF launch on Aradune, so perhaps for the next set of TLP to reach this era.

EDIT - I found the patch notes that changed TDS in our favor, turns out, there is even more of a precedent here than I previously thought:

- Raid events from Veil of Alaris and later will now grant more progression keys after they have been open for 3, 6, and 9 months on all servers.
- - Previously this would begin after 6 months. On progression servers these events will grant more progression keys as soon as the expansion unlocks, and add additional bonuses after each of the next two expansions unlock or at 3 month intervals, whichever is faster.

You're Wrong. Thankfully Darkpaw has shown over the last 10 years of TLP they don't listen to people like you and have made countless great changes to legacy content to make these terrible design decisions into more manageable solutions.

Either way, Keep posting this OP and let Ngreth know on the Discord. The good news is, he doesn't agree with people like Sieger and is more than happy to make great changes to these terrible design decisions!

I agree, as someone who leads a guild who doesn't split raid out of principle we shouldn't be forced into splitting our team up just because of bad game design.

Oh, gotcha. So your solution for keying for the final zone within 4 weeks without splitting is to... split stuff. Got it. Thanks for explaining!

Doing raids in their designed format is an unreasonable restriction but creating player-made workarounds to properly get through content at a reasonable rate is not? You're exactly what you said in the previous statement if that's what you think.

You, like your buddy Sieger, completely ignore the principle of the matter and continue to just regurgitate the same meaningless suggestions at us, which doesn't inherently resolve the issue at play.

It's the equivalent of arriving at the dealership to pick up a car, finding out it was only made with three wheels, and another customer telling you to just stick a wheel from your old car on and that it's unreasonable that the dealer should provide 4 wheels.

Lower tier raids are easier and require less people and less gear to complete. A singular raid force that has the capability to clear endgame content, you know, the goal here, can break into small groups to do more trivial raids for pre flagging.

Refusing to split easier content simply because you want to put artificial restrictions on yourself and complain is foolish.

Ill repeat again, I think its silly that everyone who participates doesnt get a flag, but it still doesnt change the fact that a guild capable of doing Solteris, will take no more than 4 weeks to be able to get a full 54 in there counting the piggy slots, so you still have plenty of farm time in SoF

Doing raids in their intended design isn't an artificial restriction. That's a unbelievably dumb comment.

Requiring people to split to break into the end zone before 50% of the expansion has elapsed is dumb. Its a clear design issue that should be addressed.

I'm unable to guess why people are so vehement against it. People who choose to split can and will do so and reap the benefits. This change won't affect anyone artificially trying to make easy content more difficult.

P.S my guild is gonna split. I just think its asinine requiring a workaround for badly tuned content for TLPs. Continuing to suggest splitting isn't the point of the conversation and provides no fix to a design issue.

As I said, it was part of the charm. Infact, I did it on Selo with an even tighter timeline. When we talk about SoF now, we talk about how hilarious it was seeing absolutely garbage boxes in raids, because we just needed something to make it work.

1. Nobody is taking that charm away from you. If you want to continue splitting heavily, you can. You will get into MMM/Crystallos quicker so it's not like you won't have an advantage already. The benefit to splitting will remain, but the flagging will allow guilds who choose to do the content in the way it was intended/designed to be done.

2. What you find to be charm others find to be annoyances and stupidity.

3. Your reason doesn't actually strengthen your argument. It actually highlights how improperly tuned SoF is. When you need to resort to alts of alts and terrible boxes to get through the content in a decent time, do you not understand how glaringly bad that design is at a fundamental level?

No guild should have to play heavily under-geared alts to get their mains into the end zone within a reasonable period. Not a single era of EQ was designed with that in mind nor should it ever. If that's what is required on a TLP it needs to be adjusted. Period. No excuses. This isn't giving yourself artificial restrictions, it's creating ridiculously tedious and unenjoyable workarounds for lack of dev responsibility and letting the devs off the hook (again).

I'm personally not a big alt guy. I have them more of necessity than enjoyment. I'd rather not have to raid these progression raids over and over on alts. A highway is built with cars in mind, I shouldn't be forced to have my family get out of the car and ride solo bikes get where we're going.

I'm actually not advocating to require bringing terrible boxes to split content the deepest possible. That was a choice we made, because we wanted to flagged as fast as possible.
It's far more reasonable to take your raid of 48-54, split it in half, add a couple decent boxes, if desired, and do the fights with 24-30 very well raid geared folks.

I have no idea why you keep replying. You first posted that "if you can't split content, it will take you no more than 4 weeks to get your full raid into the final zone." Then all your subsequent posts suggest splitting content. Maybe your first post was a really bizarre typo where you specifically said the exact opposite of what you meant? I dunno. But basically you are just arguing with yourself here. I was just pointing out that your first post was obviously incorrect. You do make sense in the later posts though!

I think the people complaining about flagging issues are those that know deep down, they would be the last in their guild to get flagged and it just makes them hurt inside.