I think FV rules keep everyone on the server invested in the game. Even people who can't raid for whatever reason will try harder within their own limits to save up to eventually buy some raid items, they're more likely to take the time to sell mid-grade stuff and tradeskill items in the bazaar, etc. And that reverberating effect is what makes the player economies on open loot so much better. RMT sucks, but it's going to be done with or without krono, and it's going to be done on no-trade servers too, at least on a server with open loot rules it's legitimized and out in the open, instead of someone taking the risk of either handing the krono over and trusting that they'll be given access to the loot rights. Or pre-krono, handing over their real life money and trusting that they'll be given the item (on open loot) or loot rights (on no-trade). The only thing that truly comes close to stopping RMT is games that basically give the same reward to everyone that participates in an event. Kill the raid mob, all 50 players get their class BP or whatever. But that approach has its own drawbacks, don't you think?
Actually more loot that is available for any type of player - player trade will cause a heavy price push downwards on all items, which is actually worse for those that camp 24/7 big cash camps. No drop items actually keep a higher value from the big box team that sells LR, because there isn't a market being flooded with similar no-drop items for sale.... As far as the experience, ya I wouldn't touch any slow exp server with a 10 foot pole already did that on phinny before I quit. Makes zero sense and seems like nothing more than a cash grab for xp potions for the senseless racers to max level.
If we really wanted to be revolutionary I'd go the other way and make everything no drop. There's nothing like that feeling when everything on your toon has a quest, group or raid tied to it. It was one of Classic EQs main draws.
On the last few TLPs simply getting XP is why people grouped. They weren't grouping for specific drops or for stuff they could sell. You also don't need to buy/sell anything to play this game. Even a Warrior, which is one of the most gear dependent toons, can do just fine along the way. Then the rest comes from raiding which is either paid for via DKP or has always been no drop. Why would a Warrior raid if he could just buy raid gear? FV rules take the whole challenge of gear acquisition out of the game. Many of us who have played for years have more Kronos than we could ever possibly need. Others have enough money to buy them when they want them. All you'd basically have to do is level and buy stuff and then retire I guess. What kind of game is that?
It's a game that has been wildly successful on the FV server? There is a reason it is the most populated live server.
I agree that an all no-drop server could be interesting. Not Coirnav though. Let it be as it is, or the group lobbying for FV loot have there thing. all no drop would need tuning to be clear in what the vision is (do you limit characters per account, does it need other tweaks to the rules, who is it actually aimed at?). I think that is a different discussion, and one that there isn't time to make real for Coirnav's launch.
Maybe because we all play the game different, not everyone raids every day for gear, not everyone groups for gear everyday, not everyone trades for gear everyday. Worst idea to date, why not add in corpse pulls as well and naked runs and only allow the person who died to pull their corpse as well..... Seems like nothing but time-sink after time-sink for a particular game play style called "I have all the time in the world to play"
Can you weigh in on this? I remembered you said the above before. It sounds like you're suggesting that the gear that was sold, was either from older expansions, or from the lower tiers of the current expansion. Was this gear being diverted away from mains that needed it? And even if it was, it sounds like a guild management issue, not a loot system issue. Personally I don't see the harm (to the server, ignoring the guild management issue) if excess and surplus gear from the last expansion or the lower tier raids of the current expansion is sold. The challenge of the raid guilds acquiring the current expansion's top tier gear remains. And, even on no trade servers, acquiring older raid gear can be done with no challenge by group-geared players of the current expansion. The real challenge is not the older content itself but gathering enough players to do the content, and this is not (or shouldn't be) BuyPizzasForClericsToRaidQuest.
To support the above with an example of a soloist. I mostly solo. I wish I had dedicated blocks of time to group more, but... life... That doesn't mean I don't get to play and can't work towards in-game goals. However, I know I will never be able to keep up with the raiding crowd, nor the full group crowd, nor expect to have/buy top end gear. That's not my target loot. My target loot, if using FV rules, is to be able to purchase or work towards hand-me-down gear an expansion or three old. All of that gear potential makes for a broad upgrade path stream for people like me. It allows me to hunt where and when I'm able, and apply the gains made towards what I need. Without FV rules, I still have the same skeletal frame of progress, but it doesn't have nearly the breadth of options, nor as good of quality of options. I'll be able to upgrade over time, sure, but it just won't contain nearly as much potential as it would under the FV rules.
Bingo! I was going to post the same thing. An increase in the amount of tradeable goods will DECREASE the price of items NOT make it more lucrative for Krono farmers. This also makes it easier to gear up alts by still playing your main.
To answer your first question, yes the gear being sold was often things that could upgrade main characters, just not the ones who didn't suck up to the leadership. In a way you ARE correct, a big part of the problem was the guild management side of things. However, the nature of the circumstances also played a big part in the outcome, and by that I mean the everything can be traded server loot rules. If those special rules were not in place, there would not have been any reason for the guild leadership to become corrupt and profit off of its general member base's hard work. As for the idea of it being easy for group geared players to go back a few expansions and easily acquire said older expansions raid gear, that wasn't really true back then on FV, at least not when I was still playing. Before joining Fire and Fury, I was in a guild called Celestial Temple. It was a smaller, much more casual, family-style guild that would occasionally try to do some raids for fun. The majority were not rich folks who bought more current raid gear, but rather group geared folks just looking to have a good time. I can remember raid forces of 24-30 in the DoDH/PoR era struggling with the likes of GoD raids. It was MUCH different back then, the idea of trying to do several expansions old content in current GROUP gear. The only other raiding entity on the server at the time was a "coalition" of sorts, made up of members of a number of guilds, headed by leaders of the guild Stirling. They could field much closer to full raid numbers, but even then would struggle with raid content 2 or 3 expansions old. The difference with that group was the fact that a small handful of participants were individuals who would pay big money for more current raid gear, in order to facilitate the success of the ragtag bunch of more casual players wanting to experience raiding. The point of me explaining all of this is, it basically boiled down to there being one super power raiding guild on the server that controlled the high end market by screwing over half or more of its own active raiding members so that the leadership could profit off more casual players who didn't have the means to organize and raid newer content themselves. That's not a healthy environment for any MMO player, in my opinion. Anyways, I apologize for going off a bit there, rambling, etc. But, given this discussion is about a new TLP server, it's safe to say that a lot of the issues and limitations I'm talking about would likely exist to some degree at various points in the server's progression, were a server with FV loot rules to come around. And with Krono now being a thing, it would more or less be a massive cash grab for Daybreak than anything else. TLP servers are enough of that already, there doesn't need to be a new server that has a very high chance of resulting in a lot of disappointed players and customers sooner or later.
That's easy to answer... If someone infinitely wealthy was hypothetically playing the game and wanted to purchase all their gear, they still would have a hard time purchasing top end gear due to availability. The potential to raid for that gear, albeit more limited in need, is still there and still quite the challenge. And considering top end raid gear has an approximate 12 week shelf life, it would be challenging to remain top end geared. But, let's assume they did auto-buy every single piece of top end gear at every expansion release. They still have levels to earn, eventually AAs to earn, tradeskills to learn, quests to complete, achievements to binge, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a ton of people that can't raid or group at all and can't realistically dream of even one piece of top end raid gear. They still have the potential to work hard and save up for gear upgrades. They might go out and farm lots and lots of spider silk for the raider that is too busy raiding to gather tradeskill mats. That time spent farming, albeit not as platinum valued as raiding, is still value earned that can be spent on gear upgrades. And between the two, there is an immense variation of challenge for gear acquisition using the FV loot system. That makes for a great game!
Except pretty much everything in classic EQ is tradable - except some of the quests from Sol Ro temple. In fact, I believe this is true of Kunark too, except for VP. Of course, I'm sure there are some exceptions. On FV, there are still no-drop tags on many quest items - including epics. The advantage to the FV loot rules comes more into play in the later expansions, the period in which the TLP servers tend to drop off in population. When Coirnav was announced I was a little confused. First question that popped into my head was, "Why would anyone want to go through Classic, kunark and Velious yet again?" And, "Why is DBGs not putting a spin on the server?" At some point you are going to get some TLP burnout if they keep doing exactly the same thing. Some suggestions might be: Reduced instance lockout timers. Release expansions by level cap (Classic -> Kunark + SoV + SoL -> etc.) 8 week expansion release cycle with normal experience gain and auto-grant for all AAs up to the previously released expansion. FV Loot rules. There are many other things that might be considered, however, the FV loot rules is just a switch that would probably be easier to implement than any of the other above changes. So it's something that could actually happen before they released Coirnav. I love making new alts and twinking them out. Camping items in later expansions on my main and then handing them off to my new alt is one the the most fun I've had on FV. +1 for FV loot rules.
Would be fun if they actually went on with FV loot rules, but gave you the full package including Trivial Loot code as well
I wanted to throw in my support too! +1 for FV loot rules. If you've never played FV then you're missing out on a great experience. I'd love to re-experience it on a new server from day 1. FV has this greatly unique environment where things you find aren't wasted. Upgrades don't mean deleting old gear, it means making some plat or helping a friend or an alt. Nothing makes me cringe more than deleting the raid gear I suffered for a few months ago because it has no use. Yes for FV rule set server!!!
I just see that as failure of the membership to exercise control over its leadership. I mean, on the one hand, most raid guild members know the game very well, and have a hardcore time and effort investment. And yet, when it comes to participating in the guild's, er, shall we say, "political process", they're lemmings. Anyway, point is, to the extent that guildleaders robbing their members is a reason for no-trade, yes, it does prevent abuse but in exchange it punishes an entire server's worth of players, or indeed, it punishes every server in the game, over the inability of a few raid guildleaders to keep their hands out of the pot. When I was on FV and raided, it obviously was in a second-string organization. Man, this many years later I don't even remember who I was with...but I do know they strictly followed a policy of offering ALL drops to a need-first attendee at the actual raid. If no one at the raid needed it, I can't say for sure that it didn't disappear on the way to the guildbank, but I do know stuff didn't get filched at the point of looting. Plus, and this is maximally important, TLP servers tend to be most active in the first few expansions where gear is mostly tradeable. And many people keep saying Classic or Kunark is the most popular, which is right there in the tradeable era. I have a hard time seeing the TLP cycle of "start new character in Classic, play barely through PoP, then restart new TLP on Classic" as a whole lot different from FV style.
Would be a nice change from the bread and butter TLP that we are getting now, its feeling quite stale. I'm at the point where I'm not even sure I will bother unless its something more interesting.
