VP key the current cancer of Aradune

If the TDF organizers and the WADA had said, "EPO, HGH and Testosterone are now allowed in competition" and Lance Armstrong had then taken used those, you couldn't really complain about Lance Armstrong's conduct. That's what's happened here.

Or maybe what really happened, where those drugs weren't allowed and he accused and attacked everyone who said he was cheating, but because no one could definitively prove that he was cheating, he was able to keep toeing the line, crossing over, and getting away with it because he wasn't getting caught.

That is what is happening here. Everyone knows what is happening, but no one can deliver the stone cold evidence that would force Darkpaw to take action.

I'll remind you here of your own quote:

The line is moving. DPG enforcement standards are changing. The issue isn't a lack of evidence, the issue is that the "evidence" that players are gathering are for things that are no longer violations or enforceable in DPG's mind. Yes, there are still people who cross the (current) line, and action is generally taken. But lots of things that used to be against the rules are now legal. The line has moved. Reporting or petitioning players who violate the rules from five years ago isn't going to be successful.

I don't even know why people keep responding to him lol. He hasn't even stated any rule that has been broken, or a even a rule that would have been in place 5 years ago. All he keeps saying is cheating and exploiting, but gives no examples.

There's a substantial difference between cheating/exploiting and following the rules to the letter, even if following the rules allows you to be disruptive. You can still follow rules and be an a-hole, they're not mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, DPG isn't a democracy, so you can't vote to change the rules, so you have to chose to play by the rules that are in place, or move along to someplace where the rules are more fitting of your play style.

Maybe an organized effort by the other guilds on Aradune to compete with "The Top Guild" and share the spoils?

I honestly haven't had any run-ins with TEQB, though admittedly, I'm a filthy casual on Aradune and am still active on Coirnav. The only time I have been contested was by a group of clowns threatening to take Efreeti from us after accusing us of being non-English speaking plat farmers. A string of expletives that were undeniably American English colloquialisms changed their mind and the went off to find another pick with less reputable players to harass.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying that it has happened on every TLP that I've played on. So dry those tears and fight fire with fire, or cry yourself to sleep every night. The only way this could ever be mitigated is if DPG reinstates the Play Nice Policy, and we all know that they can't enforce it, so they wont.

So where has DPG officially stated Show EQ is allowable?

They haven’t? Guess it’s still safe to complain!

But hey, people can be happy to brag about their accomplishments done using outside programs to give them an edge. Just a little injection never hurt anyone.

good to know the devs listen heh/

CM too busy censoring, banning, and deleting posts to proctor community-dev feedback on this. #priorities

The answer is simple: if you want players to experience content in-era, the keying criteria needs to be removed after a set period of time. This accommodates hardcore aiming to access early and often. Given the nature of AOC, keys do not meet the demand given this functionality.

Proposal: unlock content one week after the first clear of the zone occurs, linked to system wide messages. This retains the hardcore race to be the “first” while opening the content for the rest of the server population in-era.

Something needs to be done for sure. My guild has a pretty big push to go to VP in era and I was all gung ho to get started on the keying process EXCEPT, as my guild mates are going through the process, it is nothing else in /gu other than the horror stories and frustrations that all the people trying to key up are going though. Not one thing positive, just stories of waiting around for hours only to get KS'ed or the spawn jacked or just waiting hours and having to compete against 20 people to get a spawn.

I was Gung Ho, but after hearing all that I am strongly wondering if there is anything in VP that is really worth having a miserable time in a game I am supposed to be enjoying. Thank god my guild is not making getting keyed mandatory but even then, among those in my guild trying to get keyed, the competition for key parts has already started causing strife between those people. There is a distinct have or have not division happening.

One of the questions we are dealing with is we do official raids 3 nights a week for dkp, so what happens to all of us Raiders who are either having difficulting getting keyed, can't get keys because their RL schedule doesn't allow for 10+ hour camps or don't want to take the time to get keyed? Do we just not get to raid and get DKP while the "core" gets not only the VP loot, but more and more DKP to the point us left behind can't compete for drops in later content?

The VP keying is just a huge fricken issue that is making everyone trying to enough the TLP unhappy.

I am currently playing on the Yelinak server. I don't raid myself anymore, I solo, box, and group for fun. I port players, I buff players, I help players, I explore old zones, and I talk to players. That's my jam.

But, I see what the VP key quest is doing to my guild. It's tearing them apart. I've never heard so much anger and acrimony directed at Daybreak for what the VP quest is doing to my guild. These are normal people with families doing their best to get the key so they can participate in guild activities. I dare not repeat the expletives they have used to express their dismay at this sensless and barbaric key quest.

If prisoners of war were subject to the mind-numbing torture that is the VP quest, it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention. There is nothing good or admirable about this silly quest from a game design perspective. Staring at the ground in hopes that something will spawn is not good game design.

Many people would say that the devs are "too busy" to make changes to the VP quest. I don't think this is the case. Let's not forget that a few years ago, the devs had both the time and inclination to NERF NPCs in Veeshan's Peak and make them uncharmable. That one small increase in DPS that would help guilds in VP was nerfed. It was not game breaking in the slightest. I have many other examples of other mean-spirted nerfs that were done in the past with no appreciable rhyme or reason.

I guarantee you if the devs had to complete the VP key quest as it stands today, they would change it immediately. Which leads me to wonder if the devs are even playing on EQ TLP servers with any regularity? Maybe they will tell us and put speculation to rest.

The quest to enter VP is far more challening than the content in VP. That's a sign of poor game design and a sign that the developers are out of touch with the player base.

The days of players being able to play for 16 hours a day are long gone. Most of the players here have families, children, and/or sick and elderly parents to look after and lots of other important responsibilities. Many of them never go to see VP back when it came out.

Is it really too much to ask the devs to either remove the quest entirely or make it less arduous and more accessible to players?

Hyperbole aside, what should really make you angry is that they fixed this quest on Mischief (as well as all key quests) and then....for the dumbest reason ever...took those fixes away.

Yea, it doesn't make any sense to me either. I just cannot get over how they can make these absolutely ridiculous toxic time sinks manageable and then somewhere Ngreth is like: "Nah, they need to go back to toxic EQ...because, ya know, "classic".

Honestly, its one of the dumbest things they have done in a long time...

Even if you ignored all the toxicity, one of the bigger points is originally you had 9 months between kunark and velious, having a long drawn out key made more sense. On our tlp we have 2 months. You can’t be expected to do the same long keying process is less than 25% of the time. The whole point of the tlps is getting to experience older content on a faster release schedule. Imo there shouldn’t be any keys at all needed for anything. Raid flags are fine like in pop, but expecting the entire raiding community to fight over hour long spawns is insanity.

Someone really performing some Necromancy with this thread. I cant say I blame you though. VP has been toxic on every TLP. It needs to change. They changed Vex Thal keying to be less toxic, why not change this as well?

I personally will never play another TLP unless it starts in TSS or beyond because for one, I cant stomach Classic-GoD again, and the level 70s stretch is just too long, but I think this change would be good for every future TLP server in removing one of the most toxic, needlessly time consuming, un-fun quests I have ever had the displeasure of participating in.

Not to nitpick, but Kunark ran for seven months in-era, not nine. The respawn timers back then were a LOT longer than an hour, and there were no AoCs, everything was open world. I doubt that more than 10% of the player base completed the keying process strictly in-era, even fewer actually played and beat the raid in-era, and as you said yourself, they had a lot longer. Raiding in general was not nearly such a strong focus in the game back then as it is now, another key difference (pun intended). Many changes have been made in the game since to make the process somewhat easier. I don't disagree that this particular keying step could justifiably be eliminated outright, but as others have already pointed out, even with no key, the time investment vs. the reward is very poor. Because the game moves much faster, you will quickly reach much more lucrative paths of progression. Most of the people you're competing against now won't even be playing on that server past PoP.

They don't have the development resources to make everything 4x more bountiful on a TLP than it was in-era. The faster pace exists because it's what the vast majority of the player base has voted for. You're never going to be able to experience everything in the game on a TLP pace; if you think this task is too time-consuming, you have some big surprises down the road when AAs become significant.

why not?

changing the respawn time of ground pop from 45 min to 5 min shouldnt take long. or the spawn chance of AJ / pained soul, or the number of teeth trak drop.

I mean.. they already did it once... how about instead of doing baby step ( ""slightly" increase the spawn time of pained soul) you just nerf it properly once?

VP key is a 22 years old mistake.

so why are you playing Everquest? go play World of Warcraft
Everquest is about investment of time ; you DON"T HAVE TO COMPLETE ALL QUESTS AND BE BIS IN 8 WEEKS.
It sounds more like a personal issue that you can't commit the energy or time yet you want to have it all; VP is still there in 8 weeks, VP is going to be there in 16 weeks; So it sounds like you really don't care about going to VP you care about being BiS. This is a 20 year old game you must know how the base game already works; this has been dumb down and water down as is; if its not enough for you , maybe they can put an option in the cash shop, so you can buy all your gear / keys for free
-You chose to join an 8 week server
-You chose to join a guild that is not interested in spending resources in VP
-You chose join Everquest without have time to invest ; yet expect the same
Something has to give; you can't have a cake and eat it too

They made changes to the Vex Thal key to make it less time consuming and less toxic so that players could experience the content IN ERA - AS INTENDED. Telling someone that the content will still be there in 8 weeks or 16 weeks when it is outdated and nearly irrelevant is not the "gotcha" you think it is. People care about doing content IN ERA. Your post makes it sound as if you think sitting at the same camp for hours on end takes some sort of skill.

If you feel that streamlining an older quest to make the content behind it more accessible to everyone is a "dumbing down" of the game, then instead of asking others why they don't go play World of Warcraft, why are you not playing P99?

If you think this game exists to be a time-sink, or that the purpose of the game is to invest time or that anyone who plays this game gains enjoyment out of sitting in one spot for 8 hours waiting for a drop, then I have to assume you have never spoken to another EverQuest player. The entire point of the game is to complete content with your friends - to form alliances with other players and defeat epic monsters in dangerous places. The point is not, no matter how much you may think it is, to sit for hours and hours at the same place in a non-raid zone killing trash mobs over and over waiting for a drop. EverQuest is not, nor was it ever, about an investment of time just because things in 1999 took forever.

This post sounds exactly like some of the posts we saw on the forums when people on Ragefire were asking for instanced raids. We got AoCs a few months later because the company listened to our concerns and now I don't know of a single person still playing the game who wishes it would go back to the way it was at the start of Ragefire.

I love those post.

The good ol' " well it sucked back then for everyone so there's no reason to make it better now! if they start improving the mistake they did 22 years ago then the world might end!"

Are the TLP player really asking for that much? We're not asking to rebalance classes despite how horrible the meta is. We're not asking to take a second look at the itemization despite 90% of VP loot being complete garbage. We're not asking them to design new or interesting content despite all nearly all dragon in the first 3 expension basically being the same " joust around a corner" mob.

it's a fairly simple request really. drastically increase spawn time / respawn rate on VP key mob.

If devs listened to you, we'd still be stuck on ragefire with overcrowded zone, 7 day respawn on raid mob, no pick, 200 SK waiting for Marl kastane and so on.

Every time I see someone use this kind of response to any discussion about EverQuest, it makes me wonder how we even have anybody left playing the game.

Stop being so rude to your fellow gamer dude. You're potentially running off what could have been your next guild's raid member that just happens to be having a bad day when they made their original post.

Why is it so hard for people to be nice to one another?