Group Instancing is the only solution.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Dawdle, May 2, 2019.

  1. Ceffener Augur

    If the fix you care about and want to make the post about (because the actually post about that subject are not high on the list currently) only takes a couple hours, I don’t think you have a lot to be afraid of resources being diverted away from your key fix.

    Everything else is is just an assumption of how much of an issue you think it would be to instance groups, and your afraid you won’t get your key fix because of “limited recourses”, but once again, what you want is a couple hours. You’ll get it if they want to do it.
  2. Elemenopi Augur

    Id like to see this for the reasons provided above, and another reason. It encourages crawling a dungeon rather than sitting on one point like its an egg ready to hatch and killing the same spawn over and over.
    Aneuren and Mehdic like this.
  3. Elemenopi Augur


    We see the "limited resources" reply in pretty much every suggestion thread. Does this mean they should never ever do anything to improve the game? Because limited resources?

    If it does well they can carry it over to other servers.

    Keep in mind they release entire expansions on these limited resources. :p
  4. Elemenopi Augur


    Or make the instance time gated like they already do.
  5. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    So what? Did the mass influx of available raid gear somehow kill raiding? Of course not.

    If players are able to defeat the content, they should not be blocked from doing so by other players. If there are other players that are willing to fight in open world to get their fill of competition, they should be permitted to do so as well against whoever is willing to engage in that kind of game play.

    Nobody should be forced to engage in toxicity, e-bullying, or harassment, just to have the opportunity to play this game. Once upon a time, this game had a PNP and rules of engagement - which specifically included killstealing. Those protections no longer exist. Daybreak policy makers should allow their dev team to make Everquest more available to its players, especially if the policies are making it less available.

    Now, Phinigel was billed as a different TLP from Ragefire and Lockjaw because of Trueboxing and AoC's. You don't need to spin up a new server to add more of something that the server already has. Mangler already has instanced content, it should simply be expanded to group content as well. Even if you can't hit all of the major camps (which even I would concede would be extremely trying for an-already-very engaged dev team), it would be extremely welcome if they could start with the most traditionally-sought after camps in each level bracket. A camp or two in unrest, a camp or two in uguk, a camp or two in lguk, a camp or two in sola and efreeti and bugs in solb, and AC camp, would be my personal suggestions.

    Edit: also, for clarification, when I say limited resources, I mean in-game content (i.e., in a world without instances, all in-game content is a form of limited resources) - just to differentiate what I am saying from what others may be meaning.
    Brontus likes this.
  6. Lumiens Augur

    Cancelling my accounts and putting that money towards pantheon development while playing vanilla wow in the meantime sounds like a pretty good alternative option to me now.
    Brontus and Liquid like this.
  7. Brontus EQ Player Activist

    I'm not crazy about instancing but I've had enough. The lands of Norrath are being run by a handful of Chinese farmers who make a living on farming plat and buying Krono and reseling that Krono on the black market. I doubt they are paying taxes on their income. This is as close to organized crime as you can get.

    If you are going to instance content for raiders then let's instance zones for groups. The time has come.
  8. Liquid Augur

    This post is why I am now on a populated (non p99) where I can box, and just enjoy myself without all the drama. Love to play casually, without the hardcore attitude. I would only sub. to this game again for a non truebox server. I love to group, but I also love to box due to very limited playtimes due to my steel mill schedule.
  9. Elyani Augur

    Sure, do this, but have zero nameds spawn in those instances. Nah, people wouldn't like that because this has nothing to do with exp mobs, but instead, getting the group content loot you want. If you played on Agnarr/Cornaiv, you already knew what you were in for on Mangler. But, you chose to play there anyhow. As far as "But you did this for raid content, why not group content?" goes. Simple.

    Raid content: 1 Raid Boss Spawns in 1 Zone in the main pick every 3-10 days. There are 3-6 guilds that can beat that content. The guild that poop-socks and zergs the hardest wins (Ragefire/Lockjaw for example, which is also the servers that gave us True Box, if not for a different reason... lol).

    Group Content (Classic): Level 1-10 Basically every starter city immediate outdoor zone + picks are available. Level 10-15 Befallen, Crushbone, NRo, Unrest, Runnyeye, UGuk, just to name a few, and you could easily stay in some of these zones up to 20+ if you wanted to. Level 15-20, Highpass, Lavastorm, SRo, a couple of the Karana's, Rathe Tear, Unrest. 20-25 Mistmoore, Karanas, CT, HK, etc. (Again, many of these previous zones you can stay in for much greater, the deeper you go in the harder the mobs). 30-40 you have The Hole, LGuk, OOT, SolB, SolA, Splitpaw, the lower levels of Runnyeye.

    Various other zones including; Nejena, Blackburrow, Stonebrunt Mnts., Kithicor Forest, Feerott, holy cow the lists are endless, people.

    Each of these zones have the capability to have /picks. Some require less, some require more people. Each of these /picks allows group nameds to spawn. Each of these zones have 4+ "main/popular" camps, with several places in between that no one is pulling due to being out of the radius of the popular camps.

    While I agree many zones could have their numbers looked at and re-evaluated to determine actual "camp" sizes to redetermine how many it should take to respawn a pick, there is actually NOT a shortage of places to gain experience in. Heck in LGuk it's only 20ish to pop a pick, that's a little over 3 groups but there are 5+ camps in that zone (live side and undead side).

    So let's just say what the problem truly is here... you want the loot from certain camps. Not the experience. If it is the experience you're after... well, it's certainly there... go get it!
  10. Elyani Augur

    Never gonna happen on a TLP because within a year the population has already began to rapidly dwindle, and when a new TLP is released, all but a very select few drop the server all together and move on. Agnarr maintained raids, surprisingly through Cornaiv, but with the release of Mangler/Selo the server is all but dead.

    If you want to play on ANY of the previous TLPs at this point, you're gonna have to box. There is no hope for any future TLPs that do not allow boxing, to sustain a population worth sticking around for. They are worse off than ANY live server. ;)

    I also cannot wait for Pantheon. I will box the heck out of that game.

    Edit: At this point DBG is better off calling these TLPs "Seasons". Because that's essentially what they are. LOL! At the start of a new "Season" transfer all old characters to a live server and be done with it.
  11. Nessirfiti Augur

    Or you could skip the middle man and throw your money out the window.
  12. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    The same way that raid instances drop no loot? Did raiders want instances just to see the end game zones? Of course not, because that's not how any of this works.

    The entire point is to allow people to experience in-game content and to reap rewards from experiencing it, which are both integral for developing meaningful interactions with this game. Meaningful interactions with game content allows for a healthy server population (you know, like Phinigel, which had the most wildly successful raiding guild population on any TLP ever).

    This mentality that you need to penalize players to actually experience content in this game has got to go, it's the most toxic hazing-type mentality I've ever seen in any mmo. God forbid we actually make things better for players.
  13. Accipiter Old Timer


    I wouldn't give Brad a penny before the game is finished. Maybe if Pantheon actually releases I'll try it but that's a big maybe.
  14. yerm Augur

    The issue is that raids are almost necessarily a cooperative and social experience, which is what causes eq to thrive. Raids are also not ever 100% of a game experience no matter how hardcore; one MUST put in nonraiding time for levels and keys etc, and early on even for gear.

    Fully instancing the group game would not have the same effect of opening up the world to more people who could venture off into those private spaces to raid before returning to the communal nonraid spaces. This would close off the game, creating private spots everywhere, and largely removing social interaction instead of fostering it.

    There is also the problem in that early eq was not balanced around the sort of bulk that picks and aocs provide, and full instancing would escalate. Rare items lose rarity before an era even ends. People have top items all throughout instead of just a couple, and often just roll new expansions super fast and skipping to its end as they were already overgeared coming in. With full group instancing, all non-top content is now irrelevent. Only the best xp spots and/or item camps are worth doing.

    In contrast, an ideal situation is one in which people always have productive things to do but not necessarily everything on hand. Awkward as it sounds, having popular spots get crowded builds community and also helps spread people to new places. You want people to be able to get eg the frenzy camp or kennels or ud or inner ac etc, but you don't want everyone just funneled into ONLY their instanced FOTM best camps ignoring most of the world.
  15. BlueberryWerewolf Augur

    I don't think there is any actual value in GEBs or an FBSS being rare at this point. You don't actually need either in order to play effectively, and owning them is no longer even remotely a status symbol. Did you get lucky enough to have the camp or did you buy it for plat from someone else? There's no skill involved in acquiring either. No new ground being broken.

    At the same point, since you don't need these items, why should developer time be used to ensure anyone who wants one can get one? Why is that more important than fixing outstanding bugs, or developing the next expansion? I would assert it is not.

    We're having several different conversations at the same time and they bleed together, and so people's objections are being lumped onto issues they may not actually object to. People's suggestions may apply in one case but not in another.

    If character progression is being prevented by permacamping, botting, and KSing, then that should be addressed. Anyone who wants to complete their Epic quest, or any other quest, and has the means to do so, should not have their success be determined by whether or not someone else has decided to lock down that spawn and sell the rights to it, or whether or not someone has decided it's fun to be a jerk and steal a needed mob. That has a solution that is already being implemented elsewhere and could, I imagine, very easily be applied across the board for these kinds of spawns.

    If someone just is angry they can't farm HGs for plat or Efreeti for GEBs or whatever because someone else already is, I cannot see that being an important enough issue to take developer time or resources to solve. The game has always been competitive over these things and it really doesn't matter one bit if you lose that competition every time. You can still otherwise play the game in its entirety.

    Botting and griefing are entirely separate issues altogether and very much should be better addressed than they are currently.
    Hendar likes this.
  16. Rhazes New Member

    The game needs more instances. I'm only logging in for instanced raids now and I canceled my sub because I don't want it to auto renew on me because I'm most likely going to uninstall when it runs out of time. Everything of value is perma locked down 24/7.

    I'm sitting around waiting for a new pick to pop with a group for hours or sitting in lfg for hours as a Cleric, unless of course I want to do the hole the entire expansion with some Hamlord thrown in now that the camp has been devalued and open more often.I like the Hole but I don't want to live in it. If its the only option then there is no point of logging in. I'd like to do some open world hate but boxxers who sell loot rights have it clear and as soon as a new pick for hate pops which is rare 2-3 groups of boxxers show up there and its clear soon after.
    I'd like to play for 2-3 hours almost every day after work but Everquest is dominated by people who make a living off it. Good luck to you all I will check in every now and then to see of some kind of instance settings are added but without it it is just not worth my time. I did have a great time leveling 3 characters to 50 but at 50 the fun ends because its pay krono to gear that character or farm the 2nd, 3rd, 4th class camps for weeks to make enough plat to buy the gear from those that play everquest as a living.
  17. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    You know, I only ever hear an argument like this when it's being used to somehow justify a system that permits and encourages the toxic e-bullying and harassment that comes along with un-instanced content. In fact, the same arguments were made against instancing raid content; yet, Phinigel proved that instancing raid content was the healthiest thing for the raiding population of any TLP. More importantly though, it fails to acknowledge that instances do not remove open world content - they give people an alternative so that they don't have to deal with people training them, ks'ing them, charm gating their kills, and all of the other vile behavior that accompanies open world camps. There will still be open world content and there will still be benefits to killing open world content, especially since we're all pretty much accepting (for purposes of this discussion) that it would not be possible to instance every single open world camp. So no, it would not remove social interaction, it would remove unhealthy social interaction.

    Again, Phinigel proves that a completely cooperative and social experience is not what causes EQ to thrive. Cooperative and social experiences between like-minded people cause EQ to thrive. Cooperative and social experience between people that are forced to fight over limited resources does not, and never has, caused this game to thrive. Compare in-era raid guild population on Phinigel with Fippy, Ragefire, and Lockjaw. There's not even a question, when you give people the opportunity to engage with this game without forcing them to be vulnerable to harassment from other players, the server population thrives.

    So what? It doesn't matter. If the dilution of rarity of items corresponded with any kind of negative impact on server populations, instanced raid content would have caused less in-era raid guilds, because the "bulk" gearing of "top items" would have made huge swaths of the entire game "irrelevant." For years, players have repeated this mantra about rarity or "gear flow" that is associated with instances. The only impact that the data available to us as players shows is that instanced content created more raiders, more raid guilds, and a more stable server population. Any other conclusion, at this point, would be 100% speculation at best and, moreover, pretty contradictory of what we have already seen with Phinigel.

    Fippy, Ragefire, and Lockjaw, all showed that this is a myth. Having "productive" or reach goals that are unreasonably hard to obtain has historically destroyed TLP communities. Players funnel constantly to the same places, every time, and fight over the same things, every time. This is a problem with ZEM and rare item placement, not with instances. Negative interplayer behavior, e-bullying, and harassment, is not an acceptable in-game solution for these problems. If you want to spread people to new places, you need to build an experience and loot distribution system that's not constantly tied to the same places every minute, every hour, every day.

    Being kicked in the gut in order to try to engage with this game is not some kind of brilliant game decision. I love this game because of the gameplay, not because of that one time that my heart amped to over 9000 because I was getting edged up on by some jerk that wanted to take the mob that I'd been working to spawn (or item I'd been working to get to RNGdrop) for several hours. I love this game because I can pick and choose a group of people that I want to log in and spend time with every night, not because I might roll up to hill giants and see a 24 boxer ganking everything in sight. The trend for TLP servers has been to make the game more accessible, not less, through applications of better technology than were available when this game was first created.

    But that's a lot of text for an incredibly simple idea - Daybreak doesn't have the manpower or resources to police the actions of bad actors, and can't give players the ability to compete with them consistently. Instances give players the ability to get experience and loot without having to be harassed and bullied. This is a no-brainer.
  18. Grailer Augur

    if they add instances they can no longer really call it an MMORPG . Have you considered playing Diablo 3 or Path of the Exile? That has solo and grouped instances.

    You could also just play on a private server , you and you 5 friends.
  19. Tierdal Augur

    nobody wants to play wow.
  20. Elyani Augur

    No one is penalizing players except the players themselves. The fact that you see it this way is merely you having a victim mentality. You're not a victim.

    Listen, I knew these camps would be insanely full even on Selo where I had several more choices to level up than Mangler does. A person with common sense and half a brain avoided these camps like the plague and leveled up someplace else. When I was max level and these camps died down in the initial rush, I went back and got the items I wanted (even doing so when most people were going to bed after raids to increase my chances of getting it). Only a couple of weeks ago did I get my DE mask for myself and my boxes. I didn't cry that I had to wait that long, I just knew it was better that I did. Heck, I didn't even look into the direction of Efreeti until I went in to get a piece for my epic and he was up with not a soul in the zone.

    Like I said, you still have several better options to gain experience. That DE mask, FBSS, GEBs and so on will still be there later if you truly "need" it or just want it. Not having it right away does not take away from game experience for anyone. I'm sorry, but it doesn't. For the most part, people can level from 1-50 naked in classic. And most do. And what do you honestly have to do on that server anyhow, except to raid and wait after you hit 50?

    Even with instanced raids, you still are locked out 3+ days and nothing respawns in the instance (for most instances). Would you be fine with that? You get to clear the zone and and be locked out of it for 3 days, no respawns? Probably not. Because of the 6 people in your group, if you did not win the loot, you'd probably just end up trying to fight for it in open world again until your lock out was up, and if you didn't have the same 5 people with you as you did last time, your chances of getting those items is the same once again. And what if he dropped the ring instead of the sash?! Open world still gives you more successful attempts at getting the item you want. ;)