Prathun04/08/2020 Free trade rulesets bypass the primary game loop, which isn't ideal from a game design PoV. This one is my fav. As if they've got some department dedicated to TLP game design.
I hate that response so much, because it means they gave up on designing a game around player interactions and just a carrot chaser.
Wrong. There are many ways you can foster economic interactions, Collection items being an interesting one that appears later in the lame, arguably housing items could be thought of like that too but they are less connected to the power & achievements of your character. The game still requires player interactions on raids, groups, distribution of responsibilities within a guild etc. Primary game loop avoidance I understand, it's that the gear should reflect the things that you did achieve in game rather than how much money or bartering you did, that it still matters to the designers is important. If you have reduced that to "chasing carrots" you have lost perspective on why you play. The team interaction, the sense of achievement in defeating encounters, the itemisation is just a tool to allow you to do that. Get gear to allow you to beat raids = right way to look at it Raid to get gear = you missed the damn point
Dude, we’ve been over and over this FV is the most popular server. Free Trade restricts nobody and opens a multitude of different gear options. Very few people outside of the main raid guilds have ToV loot. You can play the same game play pattern you do on a No-Drop Server as you do a Free Trade server. Stop being a block head, and wanting restrictions on everyone. Tradeable loot is part of the spirit of EQ.
Then play on FV already. FV generates enough CS tickets by itself, we don't need an additional load of them.
I do and I raid on FV. It’s a great experience and I wish more people could have that opportunity to play with less restrictions, but people like you get so paranoid someone might have a piece of raid gear and they didn’t raid. The horror...
It's funny that they can argue this, and then still open up a new TLP every six months where almost every item is tradeable for the first six months. Surely the unending cycle of classic/kunark has got to be just as big a customer service burden as a single Free loot server would be, if their argument is correct.
Call me paranoid all you want I don't care, they aren't going to not do a FV TLP because of my objection or support. It's all about the numbers - TLP populations are usually way bigger than FV is right now, take a TLP population size & generate the amount of cs tickets FV gets per player & DPG have a massive problem. The exact risk of a FV TLP is it proves way TOO popular, generates an enormous up-tick in CS tickets & the cs team are drowned so badly every other player on every other server is seriously impacted. Yes that server generates extra income but the amount it would generate vs cost to manage & impact to the wider player base is way out of line vs a regular TLP ruleset. Get it now?
Classic Raids - tradeable loot, not much of it. Kunark Raids - tradeable loot, a bit more than classic still not tons of it. Velious Raids - tradeable loot a considerable amount of it Luclin raids - no-trade loot. So they don't have a big a problem in those early expansions as raid loots are short lived as tradeable items and only 1 of them really generates a huge amount of items, so the CS team have just 24 weeks of a new TLP being increasingly busier from cs tickets after which they start to tail off once luclin gets going, not a permanent increase which a Free trade ruleset would have.
One, you keep talking about FV and CS tickets like you have any idea how many CS tickets FV generates. None of us here on the forums have any idea how many tickets FV generates vs a regular server. Second, I don't really see why free trade would inherently generate more tickets. Most tickets likely come from conflict between players. Players compete for resources whether they are no drop or not, just look at the epic camps. In the early expansions it would just change the camps people compete over, they would still compete. In the later expansions the high value no drop items are already extensively camped, would still be camped. Again, I don't really see how that would drastically increase the number of tickets, especially when you consider that the population will drop off as we get to the typically no drop expansions. Less population means less competition for resources which means less conflict. Then in even later expansions everything is in instances, even the group stuff, and there is no competition, so there isn't likely to be an increase in tickets. I am pretty sure the primary reason why Rizlona is "nicer" than Aradune is simply because the smaller population leads to less conflict over resources. DPG could manage this conflict by limiting server size, servers don't have to be ginormous to be successful. Less competition over resources would go far to limit CS tickets on an FV server.
Lol like anyone cares what the cs ticket volume is most people think they are ignored anyways. Warping and macaroni has been on every tlp since agnarr at least.
I'm going from information shared by the devs, the Discord AMA, interviews done by Fading (the EverQuest Show) & streams hosted by former EQ dev Shawn Lord on twitch (AVeryLoving Robot) they don't give numbers just indications of the scale of the problem. That said there clearly IS an issue with them or it would be waved off as unimportant, it was the largest factor in their decision making from what I can gather, had you seen the same material you might have perceived it differently but that was my take on it. I thought I had explained that well enough, the FV population is nowhere near what an active TLP is and yet generates a significant number of CS tickets every day, multiply significant by 4-5x I would think you have a serious issue with knock-on effects being anyone else on any other server is going to experience a serious increase in the time they would be waiting for help. And yet If we have no idea of the numbers we also have no idea of what the issues are about or what categories of issues would be most common on ANY server, without knowing the numbers, and more specifically the numbers of each category then really we know nothing at all & can make no inferences. Have you played on FV? You know almost everything is traded there? Again I already explained how the amounts of tickets would rise, but to expand on that, as each expansion unlocks you generate a new wave of selling of the prior expansion's raid gears on FV, a new wave of CS issues as that trading of items generates problems, while I am sure that most trades pass without issue a large number of trades do cause problems for players, while there are very reputable players who have good records of honouring their part of these trades there will always be some who do not, if you can't see why that behaviour on a server with 4-5 times the population FV has is a problem you are wilfully ignoring the problem. And all that is before you get into items on FV sold via third party websites, stolen plat, stolen gear, stolen credit card information even, all happen all the time, generating tickets & most of the time those cannot be helped by DPG but still eat up their CS agent time. Missing the point here, nothing further to add. I should add, I'm not against an FV TLP, I'm just explaining how I see the state of things currently going from what tidbits of information I have found. You may not agree with my views and that's totally okay, I'm not trying to be a jacka** here, and if we see EQ continue to grow & do so profitably it's totally cool with me if an FV TLP can be released at some point in the future because DPG have the resources in place to handle the increased CS demands of one. After all with Runescape "Oldschool" generating millions a year of income the past couple of years after making it to mobile phone, continued investment into EQ can certainly change the outlook of the franchise a lot, it has still got massive amounts of potential. Maybe a re-factored EverQuest Mobile game does get out there one day, wouldn't be bad if it pulls in a ton of money and at least some of that gets piped back into the game we all play, would make a nice change from our game funding all of those failed projects over the years.
They may not care, but if they think they aren't a big reason for no FV TLP they are wilfully ignoring a key factor.
