True Box

If even 2-boxing (which is VERY easy) offers a strong power advantage in the game, and our player in mind is the type who wants to min-max things, then isn't the model of the game compelling them into boxing?

I haven't gone through the pages in this thread, so I'm not sure to what specifics your comment is addressing. I agree that shaking-up the game and changing what is already established is (1) unfair/deceitful and (2) may damage the gameplay that some people enjoy (I like boxing too!)

But would it be so bad to have a new server where they found a way to eliminate boxing or limit it to 2 per household? You still got your options with like 4 other TLPs and then those who don't like boxing have theirs : )

If the boxer is a Type A personality then perhaps. But there are plenty of people out there who aren't looking for a fight. In those cases the boxer is almost certainly going to move on when a dispute occurs.

Social agency works both ways. Ask the bloods and the crips. Actually that may be dangerous advice, don't do that.

The other thing is that boxing enables the sort of farming garbage that we all hate, the sort that leads to throwaway accounts in chat advertising powerleveling and kronos and stuff. Obviously the positive effects outweigh this particular negative, but it is a negative that exists and is tied to boxing.

Lockjaw was like this when it was released too. Sitting there in gfay killing bats, and random people would go out of their way to come over and say horrible things. I would intentionally find a place where nobody was just so I could kill stuff in peace. In the end it just wasn't enjoyable, so I canceled my 6 accounts and walked away at level 15. I think it must have improved when they released Phinny and all the anti-boxers left. I recently returned to the server, and I'm having a blast. The leveling zones are empty, but it's quiet and peaceful. I'm hoping to catch up to everyone else before OoW is released.

Sustained.

It always improves as time goes on with TLPs. Coirnav has been extra toxic but not much worse than Agnarr. People start to bail and/or get over it pretty quickly. Especially after remdag strolls through lguk or solb and bans a few well-known 6-boxers for show, people feel like DBG has "cleaned up" the problem people. I'm still having fun despite the hate thrown at me constantly. Maybe I've just become desensitized to it... I actually try talking to people that send me hate tells, most of them calm down almost immediately and are able to articulate that they feel boxing gives an unfair advantage.

Man, I would hate to play whatever game they are playing.

I hate to tell you, but that isn't because of boxing but rather the fact that you can create an account and login for free.

Not on the premium servers it isn't.

Most of the people spamming probably already have krono ready to go to create those spam accounts.

Now that the summary is posted for people with no desire to expend effort reading, I truly believe this is an issue that isn't going anywhere because there is NO way to resolve this. If you look in the news and at DBG as a whole, they are in a rough spot. They had two rounds of layoffs last year, with one being right before Christmas, which is usually avoided at all costs in every company that I have worked at or worked with professionally.

Let me say that again for the people in the back:

So how does that affect boxing, true boxing, and the average <a forum reader>? It doesn't...yet. It is hard to miss the effect of Krono trading has on generating revenue. To assume that anyone buying/trading them is only in it for Real Money Trading (RMT) is incredibly vain. The obvious point is to allow DBG to help curb (not stop) RMT by providing players an avenue in which they can pay for another's subscription cost though a virtual currency (more or less, a digital "I-O-U" that can be traded). The less obvious downside is that Krono are replacing in-game currency for quite a few things as some people are struggling to support larger box armies or (careful now, what comes next may shock you) other players have assumed the 'inevitability' of needing Krono in addition to or in place of platinum.

No.

They are assuming the 'inevitability' that Krono is required to trade.

Krono is not required to buy/sell items, it is the more/most common currency besides platinum. If it appears that the majority of the items being bought/sold involve Krono, this gives the perception that it is required. Pack mentality and using the path of least resistance (humans as a species are inherently lazy) helped rocket the growth of Krono for item trades.

Yes, to an extent. It has pros and cons, each strong enough to ensure a stand still.

See above note about revenue. Additionally, tiny threat of legal action from a said title's studio/parent-company.

------

With those questions out of the way, the final questions still remain:

1. How do we fix boxing/not-boxing and make boxers/not-boxers happy?
2. How can we fix Krono trading for items?

If you've read this far, you're not going to be surprised, but there isn't a solution to either of them. Yeah, you just read that correctly. There is no solution that will work as each side of both arguments are far too passionate for various reason(s) and/or belief(s). Any serious drop (demand) in Krono sales is almost certainly going to threaten the livelihood of DBG. At absolutely minimum, the funds allocated to supporting/developing for EverQuest will be re-evaluated and the cost/balance may tip against our favor as players. Yes, DBG has other titles. None of them are pulling in extraordinary amounts of revenue to the amount that they can hire more people to expand existing products drastically.

The closest "middle ground" that I can come to, after reading 13 pages of fairly volatile and bitter posts, is one of the following:

A. During the first phase of a TLP's life (vanilla), disable Krono trading - This brings it closer to the original "glory days", but also allows DBG to still profit from the server at a (assuming) small reduction initially. This could be made up in a "boom" right before Kunark if players stock up on Krono to trade for loot they could not obtain beforehand or new loot from Kunark. The real danger here is that without this influx of Krono, the TLPs could have significantly less players. This can leave players with the sensation of a "dying game" (which usually cause a mass exodus in short order).
B. During the first half of each content phase (6 of 12 weeks), disable Krono trading - This is more gentle than a hard "No" through vanilla, but may foster a hoarder type of playstyle where the first six weeks are farming up items to sell for Krono, then a massive devaluation of platinum as a currency. The real issue here is that it may ensure the first six weeks of every phase ensure that armies of boxers control vital camps, epic NPC spawns, etc. While a guild of true boxers is absolutely able to do the same thing (sometimes with more efficiency and sometimes more greedily), it's hard to convince 2-5 people to sit, stare at a ladder/wall, and wait with you for a spawn.

Both will have positive and negative effects on boxers, non-boxers, and DBG. It just depends on if the pros outweight the cons enough for DBG to make a change that doesn't put their existence in jeopardy.


(Apologies if this was somewhat disjointed, typed this up while on a conference call)

-Hate

Instanced content.

It isn't broken, it is working exactly as intended and there is nothing to fix here.

Yep, its the intention itself thats questionable. We are now in an era of gaming where anytime a choice needs to be made between revenue generation and game system integrity, revenue generation will be chosen. This game is old enough where much of its time overlapped the previous era where the game itself was the product, rather than simply the environment where the real product is bought and used - and people from that era would like to see some game system integrity restored in games who have chosen to tether their revenue generation directly to things which compromise game system integrity. This will happen when nostalgia is what is being marketed - and some seek nostalgia from pre KronoQuest® eras of the game.

There is a pretty recent movement where some games have chosen to NOT tether their revenue generation to selling in game currency for RL currency. Jury is still out on that, but one thing I can say for sure is it is about to get real interesting in the industry, especially for anyone familiar with those titles.

So what? They are going to cancel all f2p and only allow people to play by subscribing? that's not original

What are these titles anyway?

With the two "20th" servers here one should have been a no box server and one a virtual box if ya got em server.

Unfortunately the answer to the second question is once a company tethers their revenue generation to this kind of practice its here to stay if it makes them money. The game system integrity takes a hit. /shrug

Nope.

Hint:


F2P servers with no RL$ transactions (other than cosmetics which do not add character power)

Subscriber servers with RL$ transactions.

Comparing the two shows a completely different META on each as far as game system is concerned. Players filter themselves according to which they prefer.

Stop beating around the bush and name the names of these titles, if you don't I'm just going to assume you're making things up because I will not go and "do the research" on your word alone. That simply leaves you wiggle room to deny that any that I find and fail are the ones you were referencing

Apologies on the formatting as those two were intended to be italicized as if they were questions being asked 'to the writer', not to the reader.

Good answer to both by the way. The only downside that I see with instanced content that I saw dominate the Extended Zones (EZ) EQEmu server, is that it heavily encouraged players to spend time instance hopping to expedite the grind. Admittedly, that doesn't mean it is necessarily bad, just that it tends to guide more towards "online-single-player" behavior. That choice is not mine to make, nor am I foolish enough to tell people how they should play their characters with their limited playtime.


-Hate

Two reasons not to have that discussion then.
1.Unwilling to do the homework, and...
2.assume anyone who disagrees is just making it all up. This sets the table for lots and lots of goal post moving, which we arent interested in.

One is already out and doing fairly well with this model. When we observe the second one out, it will be more recognizable. Two more to be released end of this year and spring of next year.

This p2w stuff people defend tooth and nail is about to be hard challenged. Since the entire industry is being bombarded with this, it has caused folks to be unimaginative and believe this is the only possible direction it can head, simply because companies are quick to use it as a recovery mechanism when revenue gets tight. Once they tether their wagon to p2w however, they never hitch it to anything else.