Vaniki Suggestions

The theme of not thinking through their crazy server gimmicks continues with vaniki.

And goes a lot further back than Mischief. Miragul anyone?

Yet you're in this thread talking about a server that literally starts past PoP and is one of the fastest release schedules they've ever done on a tlp...

Some suggestions to improve Vaniki:

Your team needs a significantly better write up on Vaniki - right now a lot of people are confused at the idea/concept of the server and can't fundamentally comprehend how or why it could be fun.

- Loot Rules: Give it double loot and free trade. Do NOT give it Mischief RNG loot rules, the RNG will ruin the concept of the server. Most guilds will be banging their heads on real difficult content and they will want to reward people for their success. Often times guilds will be forced to use certain raid compositions and will likely have to exclude certain classes/individuals depending on the fight. It would be nice if people sitting out were not excluded from looting gear. Especially considering the speed of the server.

- Server Rewards: Post a complete list of the rewards/achievement requirements as soon as possible to draw more attention to this server, also consider allowing people to claim it on Vaniki and +1 other server. Or make the rewards Heirloom/claimable # amount of times on any server. The reason for this is because people who want to continue playing on this server will want to claim the rewards as soon as possible, but will feel discouraged if they feel the server is a vanity server that doesn’t have longevity.
o You should have rewards for every era/expansion, if people feel there is a gap between eras in rewards, people will be less likely to log in and continue playing if that carrot is not readily available.

- Changes Required:

Significant Issues
o Cazic Thule and Innoruuk will likely be non-classic versions on this server, you may want to consider moving the achievement to Plane of Sky (Eye of Veeshan?) instead as reverting them back may break something.

o Do something about LDoNs, if people feel the best way to get gear is by grinding thousands and thousands of LDoNs at level 40, it will immediately turn people off from the concept of the server. People will always take the path of least resistance in the game. The idea should be to go out of your realm to try real hard content.

o Review the Shadowknight Harm touch as it gets reverted to OP status in GoD. You do not want everyone to roll SK’s to steamroll hard content.

o Review level requirements for Mez/Charm – consider fights like Rathe Council where mezzing is an absolute requirement… or bring 300 people…

o No Losing levels upon Death Perk – Consider disabling this or adding a 30 minute timer on use. Consider fights like Avatar of War, where you can all bind at the Wakening Lands zone in, pull him to zone in and zerg him down with no fear of losing your level. (There are a lot of fights you can do this to, this is just the most obvious one).

o Consider Allowing Out of Combat regen on day 1 – There is going to be a significant amount of wipes in this game and it would be great if people didn’t have to med 30-45 minutes per attempt in classic. This isn’t classic raiding where you slap buffs on a tank and you’re good to go, these will be fights where everyone is going to be required to be fully buffed. This will also encourage more people to roll casters so it doesn't turn this server into melee quest.

Lesser Issues
o Epic 1.0s – some of these are level restricted, meaning you can’t even complete it unless you’re a certain level the ones that stick out are Rogue and Monk. Consider removing the level requirements or reducing it to level 40.

I can draw from past experiences and apply them to future situations. Will my assumptions always be right? Nope. If you ignore everyone's opinion, whose expertise hasn't reached your perceived standard, you will find yourself in an echo chamber. Do you want everyone to agree with you, or do you want everyone to agree with you?

You should try asking yourself, if you're right or wrong about each idea. Will this idea make me happy, or will it make everyone happy? You continue to write in absolutes. "We must implement this idea! We must do this. We cannot have this."

I dislike Free Trade. A server without free trade will make me happy, but it will make a lot of others sad. I admitted my biased feelings without apologizing. It's so easy!

Berserkers wouldn't be too much of a problem, but for beastlords it would be huge, with the whole epic not being able to be started until Luclin.

I could see a guild setting up a force in CoD at the A and pulling all of the rare mob ph's each cycle, quite a lot of loot. A 4 hour session would see about 30 drops or so. Could even be an all day thing, start at noon on Saturday and let people come and go (yay banners) until there weren't enough to keep going.

SoS's are better than epic bigly

If they can add server specific mobs to spawn instanced raid content they can add server specific mobs to spawn epic instances. They can also spawn server specific mobs with lazy quest stuff to provide alternate epic stuff.

Hail adventurer, there are cats on the moon with glowy fist weapons. I can send you there if you feel you're worthy of glowy fist things. Just tell me you aren't afraid of the certain [danger] of out of era space travel. If you need a [bag] to make your glowy fist things just let me know.

My understanding with this server's ruleset is the intention is to challenge raid guilds to take on challenging raid content below the originally intended levels. This sounds awesome to me, and I am excited about the faster unlocks to see all of the raid content faster. This does bring concerns though. This server needs to have increased loot similar to Michief and Thornblade to help gear raids to take on the tougher content with the short unlock windows. Free trade would also be a huge benefit to this server. Free trade is likely the only way anyone is going to be able to gear their boxes since I don't expect many people will have the ability to box in raids on this server. Increased xp rate is also a must for this server if you want us more time limited raiders to be able to keep up to be able to effectively raid every expansion without many of us falling off midway due to the AA grind being too much.

I'm not convinced it does need more loot yet, when you have each "era" unlocking you will have a TON of raids to tackle, this may be the first TLP where you can raid something different every day if you want to, and that means a much faster transition from progress to farm for all of the content.

If you are not tacking the raids 5-10 levels above you then you will still have a ton of farming going on, guilds will not need to be going from omens to don to dodh to por they can hit all of it together in the same week, aiming for BiS in each slot when you get 8 weeks to gear up for the next unlock will be a fools errand, it's gonna be grab whatever is an upgrade as you can.

The only exception might be 2.0 epics which many classes will want to get and keep, so Anguish will likely get farmed far longer than other expansions.

For Free trade play on Mischief & Thornblade, once per "cycle" is plenty for that loot ruleset imho. Anyone playing on any Free Trade Server has to accept that there will only be one Live server destination for it - FV.
There is no need for more than 1 Free Trade TLP at a time., and we have 2 already.
Making a server Free Trade drastically reduces the options players might want to have once the server reaches the end of its lifetime. And if the Goal of TLP is to assist in repopulating the lower pop live servs free trade actually works against that, FV is already one of the most highly populated servers so it does not need any more players.

I am not convinced this is needed either. GoD XP is already pretty fast, Live XP will happen fairly quickly & a big part of the "need" for fast XP is down to AA grinding, and wth Vaniki a bunch of AA are going to be autogranted anyway.
Add to this that from Level 65 unlocking players on Vaniki will have access to Hotzones for each level raise - and you are going to be levlling fast & gaining aa quickly if you want to anyhow, casuals should actually have far fewer issues keeping up here than they did on Selo.

I understand the desire for fast xp on this server. The server is built around challenging raiding, the people that want to do this have already leveled up countless characters in this game, and that is plenty of reason to completely minimize grinding.

FV rules completely destroys the concept of the server, and I see no reason for it. This is not so much a TLP as it is a challenge server. With constant raids for names in the first weeks killing names in Barindu, Riwwi and Ferubi (if level reqs allow it), there will already be more than enough RMT and drama about dropped gear being sold.

Random thought. In more modern expansions it has been theorized (or confirmed?) that xp in older expansions gets reduced (except for the puller for whatever reason). I seem to recall experiencing that on Selo seeing old xp spots become worth far less overnight.

Wonder how this will interact with Vaniki, players will have a level cap of 95 when TDS goes live, will the zones in RoF have nerfed xp? Or does it only trigger when you are over level 100?

That's an excellent observation/question.

As I understood things it was EoK that first had this code, hopefully it will be looked at & removed for Vaniki given it's Level Locking design.

1. Loot increase. Your opinion there is basically...raid more kid? Because that's exactly what it was on Selo, half lockouts where you had to raid at 9pm one week and 9am in the next few days and it would seem on this server you just want people to raid every single day then with different content available? And we did Selo's undergeared, every expansion...but on this one you want us to do undergeared AND underleveled then?

2. FV Loot. Your reasoning is we are only allowed to have so many? lol...I must have missed where that rule was stated. Games like this shouldn't be no drop base, FV rules should be standard imo.

3. XP increase. I keep hearing how awesome god xp which makes me believe you guys really don't know much about a fast paced server, again this one being faster than Selo even, and how quickly that you fall behind. GoD xp is nothing in this server just so you know. Yes I know of the autogrant, that will not stop the 1k's of aa's that come in later that you will need as you are 10 levels below...

Side note also, I'm not sure who asked for a "faster than Selo" server...certainly wasn't me and I'm very certain it wasn't anyone from Selo lol. From my understanding most didn't even like the idea of a fast server like Selo and from watching those that lasted on it. I personally enjoy faster released stuff and especially into the later expansions but this is just silly.

Does it even occur to you he wants to finally progress past the point most TLPs die? I know I do!

And that is great! More people actually stepping past PoP the better. But shouldn't really be giving advice or stating opinion on something you know little to nothing about . Just like I don't really tell people how to do classic or what not...I don't like it and forget most of it so I stay out of it.

I could be wrong, or just speaking based on my own biases/preference, but I think what a lot of people were asking for was a server that quickly got through the Classic-PoP timeline.

That could have been accomplished by simply launching in PoP or GoD. However, that's right around where Mischief/Thornblade are. Which rightly raises the question of, if that is what people want, just roll a character on those servers.

They could have accomplished it with a shorter duration in each expansion. Which they are actually accomplishing with Yelinak. This is a 'Mangler' clone that will reach PoP in about half the time.

We'll have to see how things are finalized with Vaniki. I think there is some tweaking left before we understand what it'll really be like. However, it'll be fun, none the less.

My initial thoughts are that I may roll up on launch on Vaniki, hit max in the first 24 hrs. Then roll a toon on Yelinak, with the idea being thats where I'll play longer term.

I'm sorry you were in a hardass second job guild. You know there are even casual guilds on Live right? The game is what you choose to make it. Some guilds WANT to challenge themselves and play as elitest as possible, bat phones that wake you at 2am and all...

Just because the content is open or unlocks DOESN'T MAKE IT A RACE.. unless you like running.. and THAT is ENTIRELY "your choice."