TLPs, loots, and lockouts

This could be a touchy subject, or whatever.

Some TLPs need something done with loot drops and/or lockouts. Once TBS is unlocked, most of the following expansions were originally a year long or at least close to it.

We play expansions for 8 to 12 weeks before the next expansion is dropped. The raid lockouts and loot drops, however, are the same as they were back then. Guilds get, at best, 1/4 the time to play in a year-long expansion than players did in era. That means 1/4 of the loot, 1/4 of the raids to prepare for the next expansion. For expansions without level increase, change those 1/4s to 1/6s.

If loot drops were doubled, that would mean we would have, at best, half the possible drops of players when these expansions were live. Don't want to give us more loot? Then cut the lockouts down to half the current time. Either option would be wonderful, of course it would take both options to put TLP on par with the expansions as they were on live.

It is clear TLPs are something the company likes to offer. There has to be a way to keep people more involved and eager to play on these servers, other than the same old eras when servers die off.

Rizlona is on PoR right now, and there are people who don't even want to log in anymore. Flagging required, zones without /pick zones with required flagging mobs present. This suggestion is not far fetched. Everything on TLPs are faster, then please adjust everything else to that speed. More loot drops, lower lockouts, and in some cases, lower spawn times. Then... watch people rush these servers.

Thanks.

I hear you. who doesn't love/want moar lootz!!!!
I think AOC's take care of most of the problem though. I'm not sure when they were added originally, as open world raiding was usually reserved for the top couple guilds on the server and basically nobody else was able to get raid loot unless it was a few expansions old. But I only played until OOW originally.

Play on live servers then.

Vaniki has double loot.

Mischief & Thornblade have loot Pinata Mode.

Options exist.

I would love to see the raid currency system retro-fitted backwards though, maybe as far back as Luclin then stop, since raid loot before that was tradable & every time I've suggested it it being changed to no-trade people throw a wobbbly.

That sounds like boxing fatigue.
Possibly related to the workload of flagging all of your boxes, but that's a part of the price you pay for boxing and I do not think the loot solution you have suggested is going to fix that.

Please god do not shorten lockouts. But yes I think several servers have demonstrated that double drops is fine, certainly wouldn't mind that being turned on, UF was a nice change of pace with some bonus drops.

The OP is in a guild where the (in-era) raids are made up of mains so boxing has no bearing on the request. Conversely, those who play on Rizlona primarily do so for the (group content/previous raid-era) non-truebox boxing so Vaniki, Mischief and TB are not options which exist for us. (edit: I see now you were quoting Maesin's comment about progression flagging but this really hasn't been much of an issue for people willing to try and flag their main. There are always the slackers though and that's maybe who Maesin was referring to as not wanting to log in for PoR if they missed the initial rush. Either way, people are still actively getting it done.)

I'm not sure how better to phrase the problem than how Maesin put it. It's a numbers game. We have X amount of raiders, Y amount of loot drops and we have Z amount of time in an expansion. Z is 1/4 or 1/6 compared to when the expansions were current but X and Y have remained the same making the formula way off. It feels bad only getting a handful (or less) of drops during the course of the expansion because there are so many mouths to feed and so few drops in so little time.

I didn't play Selo but everyone says the half lockouts were brutal. I'd much prefer the increased drops route personally.

In-era, the top guilds were raiding new expansion content in a matter of days, and all raids were completed in 4-6 weeks. The year-long expansion window meant there was a lot more slack/waiting time, not so much that all these raids were being repeated incessantly for a year and generating a big loot pileup. Some people would work on alts. Some would work on TS stuff. Some would go back in time and work on achievements. The point is, you don't really need double loot to get what in-era guilds were getting in the TLP time allotted. This has already been verified by other TLPs which have made it to Live or very close to it. If you want to play at a slower pace more typical of the so-called casual guild in-era, then you might be better off on a Live server.

The 12/8 schedule exists because that's what the [vast] majority of players have asked for. Asking for double loot to be made part of the standard TLP ruleset would be a fundamental change to the game which some (including me) would dislike. As noted by others, there are already servers with special rulesets which include double loot, so if it is that important to you, there is that option.

I also agree with the suggestion that people are far more likely to be leaving due to burnout, not because they can't get enough lootz.

To be fair, in a lot of the early-mid expansions most guild's - including the top 5 - didn't beat expansions for a few months.

To use your TBS example. It was a 6-month expansion and the final raid in TBS wasn't beaten until 4 months after launch. They only had 2 months of full farm status. Only 7 total guilds cleared TBS in era GAMEWIDE. You get more guilds beating it per server each TLP cycle within 1-2 weeks.

You are on rizlona split raid more. I see tons of boxes running around in bad gear or missing 2.0s. You have had 8 months of anguish but a lot of guilds don’t split and just run with like 54 people. That said she increase loot I really don’t care either way.

I'm gonna echo the general sentiment in this thread. Double loot would be fine I guess, but its not needed. PoR with its weird no pick Devastation and Sverag setup is an anomaly, multiple servers have gone past PoR and come out just fine loot/gear wise.

I think I wrote that a little quickly after having a discussion with a bunch of people. I could have summarized it in that one sentence: Everything on TLPs are faster, then please adjust everything else to that speed.

I know DBG experiments with things on TLPs, like the loot pinata for example. If things work, then maybe they should be implemented on other servers as well.

Sure, there are other options, but after investing years on a server, just dropping to another server, and on Rizlona that could mean people with between 18 and 40+ accounts, just isn't very appealing. Split raids are what most people do now, and on a smaller scale that is great, but it's hard to ask 50 or 60 people to do that.

This was just to maybe get into someone's ears and get them to consider it. It certainly isn't NEEDED, but I think it would make these servers more appealing.

I fully share Maesin's sentiment on TLP pace not currently matching the loot pace. Double the drops... easiest thing for them to do.

We get several bonus windows on every server every year. In addition to bonus XP, most of them come with other multipliers, such as increased spawn rates, increased faction rates, etc. For players who think they need that extra bump, taking advantage of the bonus windows is part of the gameplay strategy. You can certainly lobby for a new server in the next cycle having a "double everything" special rule, but you won't get them to change the rules on an existing server, that's already been made clear.

Where does the flagging issues start?

I know originally it was 1 in in prior raids, but at which point do you need multi wins?

VoA?

Yeah this was my experience back in original EQ. Everything took longer including leveling. I for example was unemployed when I first started EQ playing at least 12 hours a day and it took me months level. I remember a good day netting me 1.5 bubbles when I was in my high 40s and then there were hell levels too boot, on the current TLPs I have had nights where I gain 2-3 levels.

That being said, you still had a year to engage in current expansion content so plenty of time to raid. On the TLP it feels very condensed. I hit 46 about 2 1/2 weeks in and have raided a total of 8 time since hitting level 46. In total I have won 3 items. We have about 4 weeks left before Kunark, even with raiding 3-5 nights a week, I doubt I will be fully raid geared by Kunark.

If we do the math and say in original EQ you could be raiding inside of say 2 month with Kunark coming out 12 months from the release, you would have 8 months to consume Classic EQ content. If you consider a 3-day a week raid cycle, you would have had 102 opportunities to get gear, in a raid, before the next expansion dropped a year later. Fast forward to Yelinak. The ratio of time to level is about the same, i.e. raiding level in probably 1.5 weeks. With an 8 week duration before Kunark drops, again using a 3 day a week raiding cycle, you would have rough 19-20 opportunities to get gear before Kunark.

So just doing basic math, you would have to give TLP players 5 times the loot per expansion to equal what they could have gotten back in original EQ. Even if we say no one would raid 3 days a week for almost an entire year, even if we halved the number of opportunities to get raid gear in Original EQ, your still looking at MoBs needing to drop nearly 2.5 times as much loot to ensure the average TLP raider being geared just as thoroughly as the average Original EQ raider at the time Kunark dropped.

At least VoA has a system where backflagging doesn't require going back to do fights no one wants to do again, UF and HoT really took steps backwards when for awhile EQ had made backflagging not a terrible experience.

Good thing classic raid gear is is almost entirely worthless and can be skipped. You basically need no raid gear from classic-kunark as most of it is pure junk outclassed by group gear. Outside of maybe bp from Trak, legs from VS, some epic drops, and couple items from Phara, there's nothing good in Kunark raids.

You also realize Original EQ only had 4 raid targets, correct? The planes weren't released with original EQ. You had Nagafen, Vox, Phinigel (lol), and Avatar of Fear in CT. You're also not accounting for the fact that there were zero instances. Everything was open-world that you needed to compete for with multiple guilds on each server. TLPers are way more geared than original EQers ever were. It's not even a doubt.

TLP characters won't see a major gear discrepancy vs their former live counterpart until the switch from 6-month to 1-year expansion releases, which began with SoF. I didn't raid during some of those expansions, primarily SoD-VoA, but I hear gearing isn't an issue for most of that. I hear UF is an absolute loot pinata so I doubt there were will be any noticeable shortage of loot until HoT. People who went through TLPs already and done these expansions can speak more on it. Furthermore, devs implemented increased gear from chests at certain thresholds for modern expansions (3 months, 6 months, 9 months). If those kick off during a TLP, gear will not be an issue for newer expansions. On live there are people gearing alts of alts of alts in BIS gear already.

It's supposed to feel condensed. That's the whole idea of a TLP. You do what you need to do to experience the gist of each expansion's content, and then you move on to the next one. As it is, it will take current-cycle TLPs over five years to go from Classic to Live. That's a huge time commitment for anyone who intends to see the process through to the end. If you don't want to play at that pace, the alternative is to choose a Live server, where there is no time pressure and you're free to repeat things as often as you like.

Every thread on this topic is full of bad math and bad memories. Classic wasn't a year, it was six months. Kunark was six months. Year-long expansions began at SoF, and at that point the game is already well into the so-called modern era. TSS is an absolutely huge expansion, and yet it only lasted six months in-era. People are able to farm loot a whole lot faster now than they ever could in-era, because all content has been discovered, more difficult encounters have been mapped out, and there are reference sites telling you everything you need to know. IMHO, the whole concept of needing extra loot drops to keep up with in-era farming rates is facetious. What certain people are asking for / demanding is for the company to turn every TLP into easy mode, and I for one don't want that.

There are players who have done this already, run the gauntlet, and have managed to complete all content without needing to rework the game. Devs have tweaked some raid currency calculations along the way, and I expect will tweak a little more in the next cycle. That's the only bonus loot drop you really need to be concerned about in the modern game. You don't need BiS in every slot to progress, you never have; each class has an assortment of gearing options to choose from. The whole notion of "we gotta get enuf lootz to have BiS in every slot before the next expansion unlocks" is bogus. No you don't. You're trying to play a completely different game from what EQ has been if you keep thinking that way.

As I told the OP, anyone who wants the next TLP cycle to include a "double loot" server is free to request it. Please leave the servers I play on out of that equation.

i played through phinny from start to finish, and usually upgraded either my visible slots, or non visible slots in an expansion. Usually i could also upgrade my weapons. you really dont need to be fully geared from 1 expansion to be good in the next.