Selo Truebox

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Pappasalt, Jun 19, 2020.

  1. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Was only possible once the game had a windowed mode enabled (once the game was upgraded to DX 9) as I recall, trying to swap windows prior to that would just result in device reset errors on most gfx cards.
  2. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.



    Boxing as far back as that required third party software, and yes it was definitely viewed as cheating by most players then.
    My point was that by doing that change in DoDH they had embraced boxing far more than they had in the past where they merely tolerated it.
    It also made boxing far more accessible to many more players.
  3. FranktheBank Augur

    I think Truebox is useful until omens. After that there is really nothing contested until PoR. PoR could be fixed independently (Berserker bones).

    IMO, the ideal outcome is the "TLP dumping ground" to have AoCs, bonus xp and (like FV) allow xfers on, but not off. Or maybe only xfer to FV? and no truebox and normal lockours.

    Also, truebox is not as hard as we might previously believe to remove. It's more about the team being on the same page about whether or not it should be removed... despite overwhelming votes for it. Especially on Selo where I can probably get 60-70%+ of the servers population to vote yes to truebox removal.

    Either way, we will find out soon(tm)!
    Skuz likes this.
  4. theonepercent Augur

    At this point I suspect it would be more like 99% with the other 1% being people too drunk to click the right button.
    Skuz likes this.
  5. Discord Ocean of Tears Conservationist

    Please keep truebox. I love this server and it's ruleset and I'd rather not see it fail because some people want the ruleset changed mid server.
  6. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    You're the guy who would have argued that the invention of fire & the wheel was the work of the devil if it pissed on everyone else's bonfire.

    Newsflash: Truebox will be removed once the server is live, so eventually you are a loser anyway the only change that can be expected vs standard live servers is maybe a chance of the server keeping its xp bonus and AoC, you might as well quit and cancel your sub on all of your accounts in indignant protest right now.
  7. HoodenShuklak Augur

    He's also an Ocean of Tears Conservationist.
  8. sieger Augur


    I imagine Phinny players are in the same boat as us at this point--no one cares about Truebox anymore. Back when this thread started I think removing it would've helped Selo, Phinny and Miragul. Miragul still has quite a bit before it hits live so it would still help Miragul. At the point where we're entering ToV and Phinny does so in about a month, it just doesn't really matter. Any real benefits it might have given us have gone away over the course of the seven months this thread has been active. Selo was in VoA back when this thread started and we're basically going into live now so it's whatever.

    I think most of the Selo/Phinny veterans now are mostly just advocating it for general TLP health the game should not carry truebox forward forever. It's something that was implemented (with very little thought, planning, or aptitude) due to uproar over Lockjaw Ragefire--servers that were still in Classic when Truebox was announced. It clearly was never considered what its long term effects would be especially as the game entered eras where boxing had been the norm on live for ages. But it looks like the powers that be disagree so it's whatever. I'm well done of the situation at this point so have no real vested interest in it.

    I'll note it's hardly ever mentioned how many married couples have to use VPNs in later era EQ because the terrible truebox code makes it so that just "playing your character" to live standards (which involves continually activating lots of abilities, rapidly) gets your whole household trueboxed. We have a couple in our guild and another member of our guild who is a family member and was at their house due to a power outage, all three of them were trueboxed within like 30 seconds of playing. It's trash code and a trash system, and absolutely, clearly, was never seriously thought about in terms of its impacts on later era EQ. Yet the wall of silence makes it obvious Darkpaw just feels like it's the best thing ever and should never be touched.
    Tweakfour17 likes this.
  9. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Yes, I agree with essentially everything you've said up to here.
    Selo/Phinny have basically been the live-test lab-rats for the current TLP concept & have largely paved the way for the successes of everything following behind, it was inevitable some mistakes would be made & that some lessons would be learned.
    I think the dev team's stubborn sticking to "server rules should last for the server's lifetime" was something of a bogus position to begin with since they clearly planned for them to become bog-standard live servers once they caught up to live - something that would necessitate them changing rulesets at that point.

    What players have argued for in this thread & others amounts to a request for the devs to have a more flexible stance on rulesets for TLP servers, and while as you rightly say it is pretty much too late for Selo & Phinigel to benefit from a change in stance to something more dynamic/evolutionary the arguments are pretty strong why that needs to be weighed up & considered for future servers so that they can benefit from a server ruleset that changes as the servers themselves change and its not as if there is no precedent, live servers have changed, first they changed the one client per machine restriction that first made access to boxing much more open to everyone playing on live servers, they then later changed again when Free to Play was introduced.

    So summarising up to this point the argument for flexibility of server rulesets is reasonable and the dev team should (possibly are) consider that Truebox has a worthwhile purpose for some time in a TLP server's lifecycle but that each server will reach a point where it becomes onerous, mirroring how live servers evolved more closely by removing truebox in DoDH & then allowing F2P in VoA would recreate the live server evolution better & has proven benefits in player retention by doing so.

    I don't think they were intentionally setting out to make life difficult for anyone, they saw what happened to Ragefire & truebox plus AoC was the reaction to that. Where they "over-corrected" was in believing that keeping both those things for the entire duration of the server's lifetime from release to reaching live status was something that should be set in stone, they had not learned from live server examples or even weighed up how the live servers had evolved over time very well.

    Player attrition is something the devs likely do care about but have limited scope or understanding of how to manage better despite players giving them a case study on live servers & the TLP by now.

    TLP servers evolve over time just like Live servers have, the key difference was that live servers somewhat stabilised while the TLP servers with Truebox have not, Ragefire with no Truebox did stabilise in population & the attrition slowed, on every Truebox TLP the attrition has been pretty much the same gradient of downhill all the way down to nothing, with some variations depending on when the next "attractive" new TLP was launched.
    Fippy had attrition too & while that was not due to Truebox it did have a stark similarity in how the server had restrictions unlike the live servers that made playing there progressively (literally & figuratively) more difficult as the population decreased - Fippy did not evolve therefore Fippy died, Truebox servers did not evolve & pretty much died too, Selo & Phinny might have 1-3 guilds when they reach live but could just has easily have died too if they had not started off so well. I strongly believe that had Truebox been removed even as late as SoD they would have got there with many more total players active.
    One factor that helped Phinny have such a great start was the TLP servers that followed were Agnarr & Coirnav - one was era locked the other started with terribly slow XP and nothing about it was much different to Phinigel so for some 2 years no new TLP was a direct competitor to Phinigel - until Mangler & Selo arrived and had enough different /enough time passed to stand on their own, neither at that point really had a huge impact on Phinigel.

    Worth noting is that Miragul was a "big mistake" in the eyes of many players for having Truebox in an era (HoT) that on live servers had seen a fairly high proportion play EQ as boxers, had Miragul not had Truebox I think it would have fared a LOT better than it did.

    Truebox is not entirely a villain but its no hero either, before GoD I think Truebox is a net positive after that it slowly becomes a giant millstone around the necks of players, nobody really minds not being able to easily box on one PC while there are lots & lots of other players to group with, but as the population decreases it gets harder & harder for most players to not mind and the realisation dawns upon them they are now truly ball & chained to multiple machine boxing for a long time to come & GoD to Live is a vastly larger timespan than Classic to LDoN.
  10. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    So here's a "recipe" of sorts for future TLP, from what I have learned from 5 years of playing on Ragefire & Phinigel. This recipe lets TLP mirror the evolution of live servers more closely.
    Think of these as some core guidelines for PvE TLP server success - whatever other rules are added alongside these.
    .............................................................
    Start TLP servers with progression XP at worst.*1
    Classic to OoW/DoN - Truebox on
    Depths of Darkhollow to live - Truebox off #2
    Classic to OoW/DoN - AoC on
    DoDH to Live - AoC off OR keep it but add AoC to live as a all-access QoL feature.
    Once Veil of Alaris unlocks enable F2P
    ..............................................................

    *1. Nobody enjoys slow XP except the kind of hardcore-mode EQ masochists who lobby for gear to stay on corpses when you die and for mobs to have double damage, double run-speed & double spawn rates etc.

    #2. I didn't join the Phinigel server for Truebox, I joined it for AoC, no more poop-socking ever again huzzah!
    Magefire sucked, a lot. so Truebox up to & including PoP is completely fine by me, almost every TLP has had healthy populations, eneough for a PuG scene at least as long as that, when DoDH unlocks switch that crap off.

    ...............

    With that said I think the devs should keep an open mind about Truebox the current crop of TLP, Miragul should never have been Truebox to begin with but on Mangler/Aradune - when they Reach DoDH think about consulting them if they want Truebox on/off, if the majority there are actively asking to keep it at that point fine, but then ask them again once SoD unlocks there.

    Add AoC to Ragefire & Live servers, keep it on the current TLP even after they reach live.
  11. Accipiter Old Timer


    If I recall, EQWindows shared the assets/memory amongst several instances of EQ so each one ran a bit better.
  12. Machen New Member


    What are you talking about? Other than being a progression server, Fippy did not have any restrictions compared to live. Fippy's biggest problem was that there just were not a lot of players who were interested in playing the expansions past DoN or so at that point. That's obviously changed some since then, but only some.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Maybe I got Fippy mixed up with the Combine/Sleeper where they had to unlock expansions by having certain achievements - i.e Mob beaten, epic gained etc? never played on any of those so memory is fuzzy.
    Barton likes this.
  14. FranktheBank Augur

  15. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    Sigh, disappointed
    HoodenShuklak likes this.
  16. Rage Lorekeeper

    Not sure what's disappointing, getting some time to do CoV before moving and getting a free transfer is literally the best possible outcome I think.
    Skuz likes this.
  17. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Loss of bonus xp, reduced timers and AoC are some reasons I guess, although the transfer OPEN on that day, doesn't say when they end so you can still take advantage for some unknown timeframe..
  18. Rage Lorekeeper

    We were never going to keep the Selo bonuses as a live server, getting them for a few weeks during CoV to catch up is nice though.
    Skuz and Tweakfour17 like this.
  19. HoodenShuklak Augur

  20. Pikollo Augur

    @dreamweaver thank you for the post explaining what will happen. Can you confirm that Selo will keep its bonuses until the eventual merge to Povar? Also will there be enough warning before the merge for people to play until the last minute before transferring to a server for free?