Relaxed truebox - if you're against it... why?

Not everyone raids or lives in north america, i play in an australian guild in my evening because i live in australia,and its my money and my choice,i use 6 pcs at the moment which his a pain,i prefer to use one pc which would be a lot easier,i will always 6 box while i play everquest and boxed clerics are a reality in most guilds.Also people that dont like people boxing are a minority.

nah mark nah

I would pay a premium subscription (100% more) if I knew I was on a server with no boxing and it was going to be enforced. However, its never going to happen. DB has no incentive to create a playground like that.

It's too time intensive to find/make groups (even if you are in a large guild) when a very large percentage of players are just boxing their own groups.

I gave up the one account playstyle back during Lockjaw when I just could not find/make pugs OR get guildies to group up together consistently. Multi-boxing with help from programs was extremely fun for several years - but its just a glorified single player game that way. I haven't had an active sub since I quit Rizlona about a year ago.

I feel like the biggest flaw in the no-boxing argument is the idea that, if there were no boxes there would be more people to group with you in the later expansions. There wouldn't be. People would just play solo classes, or they would only group with their friends. These things happen on every server and have as big an impact, if not larger, than boxers. A no boxing server past pop would have roughly the same grouping opportunities as a regular boxing server does.

If there was some massive sub-component of the game that really hated boxing and desperately wanted to group with random pugs those folks would be findable on every TLP server. The fact that you aren't finding them is a pretty strong indicator that they don't really exist. Sure making a no box server might pool them all in the same place, but even assuming it was enforceable, it's going to devolve into only grouping with friends pretty darn quick. Pugs are truly the worst.

It wouldn't be the pugging utopia you think it would. Especially now that there are so many other TLPs to choose from. People are far less likely to roll on one that has excessive restrictions, or aspects that don't appeal to them. They will just keep playing on the server they are playing on or wait for the next one. Aradune was still pretty earlier in the TLP era, and folks still had PTSD from Ragefire. Now they know they have choices, and know that restricted boxing doesn't really make the server better.

I played on Aradune, when it came to grouping it didn't really play any differently than any of the other servers I played on, no reason to think a no box server would be any different.

to the original question: because I want full removal of truebox instead of just relaxed truebox. I'm fine with keeping detection/enforcement of cheating software that typically came with truebox.

Restricting other peoples fun does not increase your fun, you are still going to be just as unhappy.

Agreed. Boxing is not related to pugging or people not finding groups. People don't group with you because A) they don't like you B) you are terrible. Anyone who is likable and/or not terrible can quickly make friends to play with in EQ. The idea that you can force people to group with you by removing their boxes is not a real thing. Like Khana said, they would just group with their friends.

The other anti-boxing issue is about monopolizing camps that you want. The answer is the same... get good. If you want that Bergurgle crown for your epic, you need to farm the instant clickies and be ready to slam them when he pops. Are you one of the few classes that can't use an Ivandyr's Hoop? Then you need to make friends/guildies that can. If you can't handle farming a clicky or making friends, then you would have to work around it.. by doing something like farming Squire and selling some runed bone forks, then buying the loot rights from the people who are better/more likable than you.

"Boxing is paying to get an unfair advantage" is also silly. Boxing costs next to nothing... you can get a computer to box on for 150 bucks.. and then you never pay for accounts anyway because you just farm something and consume krono. People are putting in more time/effort, not more dollars. It sounds like what you really want is a cap on the time/effort vs reward people can get. These people might like a server with a rule set that has a cap on the max hours a character can play per day, or a loot and xp bonus for the first N hours per day.

Once again the only person I see talking about extending that proposed single focused outsourced help into more of a position of subjective decision making power is you. Weaponized petitions? Under my own p99 inspired proposal on Daybreak servers there would be no petitioning about boxing bans included in the terms of service every player has to click into every time they enter the game world. Daybreak would basically be washing their hands of that similar'ishly to how they've washed their hands of other petition issues over the years. With no guns getting put to anybody's heads to pick that server choice to roll on for those of you with a real problem with that.

You say "people wouldn't play there", but again the actual and supporting large sample size example evidence we have to directly reference completely contradicts that claim. A claim that again has absolutely nothing of any real substance but a loud and continually voiced insistence from a few concept haters of it being so. Some who apparently find their master degrees in skim level google law research more "impressive" then having any actual extensive firsthand experience with the subject matter they are trying to weigh in about. Same goes for that accompanying boogyman scare concern about all the potentially innocent people who still end up sacrificed at some widespread wrongfully punished ban alter. The large scale supporting example evidence clearly points to that not actually happening either btw.

Agreed. Which also applies to a few very loud opinions here on a gaming message board with an extremely poor amount of overall community participation outside people popping in to read the guild recruitment threads.

That post you quoted btw is also once again ignoring some of the best variety evaluation evidence data one could rationally ask for on whether there is a massive sub-component of the player base that really hates boxing. That being the head-to-head Aradune/Rizlola launch. Which from a less agenda driven perspective gave us 2 extremely valuable market points:

1. There indeed seems to be a significant % of the individual EQ player base that possess at least some level of an anti-boxing sentiment. Enough so that countless amounts of them would rather choose to sit in 6 hour ques for the first a week then roll on a server that wasn't at least offering the window dressing promise of restricting it. In many cases just to get in game, crash, and start the process all over.

2. Regardless of #1, there is still enough left over interest and money to made on a relaxed boxing+ platform to make it a worthy annual consideration server option for one of the two TLPs.

Weaponized petitions aren't petitions about having been banned, they are false reports sent in by people who take offense to another play for one reason or another. They were rampant on Aradune, they would be rampant on any no box server. People would use them to get people they disliked banned. On Aradune they would have their friends and guildmates also submit petitions against the people they were targeting. Those weaponized petitions often resulted in suspensions. Either due to a semi-automated suspension system or laziness on the part of the folks reading the petitions. WoW saw a similar phenomenon when they semi-automated their suspension system. People know how to use false petitions against others, can't put that cat back in the bag.

How, exactly, do you expect guides to be helpful in the policing of the server if they have no actual power to do anything? They can tell the GM's where the bad people are? Who the bad people are? So the CSR bans them on the guide's say so? Sound like that would be ripe for abuse of power. Or does the CSR still have to fully investigate the issue? If the CSR still has to do a full investigation how is the Guide helping at all? A petition would have accomplished the same thing, letting the CSR know where the bad people are.

P99 is not a viable model for an official EQ TLP server. It is just a completely different scenario. And if you think there isn't corruption among the volunteers on P99, the same corruption that would work itself into any guide driven policing program. I have a bridge to sell you.

Honestly at this point I am ambivalent towards a no box server. Part of me would like to see them try it, just so we could watch it fail, then maybe folks would stop clamoring for one. I feel the same way about a PvP server. Wouldn't effect me, I am happy on Mischief.

Wrong on both counts. The queueing argument is completely bogus, because a) it was never six hours long (I was there), b) it didn't last beyond the first day or so, and c) there has been equivalent queueing at other TLP server launches with completely different rulesets. Aradune's history has revealed that it drew a lot of players who intentionally violated the 2-box rule from day 1 for the sake of competitive advantage; the portion of the player base who wanted to see the 2-box rule enforced proved to be in the distinct minority. As it stands now, Aradune is virtually a clone of Rizlona, with most of the guilds being run by 6-boxers. It doesn't look like there will be a single surviving guild going to the finish as a group of legitimate 2-boxers.

You have absolutely no data to support claim #2. The company knows far better than you do who is actually spending the money and where they're spending it. Your argument is entirely wishful thinking. In any case, there aren't going to be two TLPs this year, the roadmap makes it clear they're only planning on one.

Besides all that, you're completely wasting your time trying to argue this with other players. None of us have any say when it comes to the company's business rules. They aren't going to do a P99-type server, period, full stop. it doesn't matter why. You can get your weight up over 400 lbs, travel to San Diego and go sit on one of the devs, and they still won't do it.

Again, there would be no allowed petitions about boxing period. Which would be included in that addition to the server specific terms of service you'll be clicking yes to every time you log in. No where am I claiming that Daybreak would have any real interest in being more directly hands on post-launch then they already are with any their other auto pilot TLP cash grabs.

As already suggested they'd have the isolated power to log on in their spare time, root out the people boxing, and ban any associated accounts where they find sufficient cause. Which in itself can and has been successfully done regardless of the outrage and/or suspicion of the man select people like yourself might have with concept. Who, to point this out for the 4th or so time now, can just choose to make their displeased statement on that by not rolling there.

I actually would have ambivalent feelings about it on personal level as well. In fact if I was to write out and offer my own next TLP suggestion right now it would include truebox for my own self serving reasons.

I'm just not going to hate on what others might want to suggest here simply based on that, and/or some constant need to argue for argument's sake. This board already has enough of that. Especially coming from the one of 20 people I referred to earlier that is 100% correct at least in his latest pop in assessment that i'd be completely wasting my time responding to his post lol.

You do want random players to be able to log in and ban people... And you want those bans to be un-petitionable. So you are seriously suggesting giving random players the power to ban whomever they want. I can't possibly imagine what would possess you to think that wouldn't go horribly horribly wrong in very short order. The CSRs would spend more time policing the guides than they ever spent policing players.

I am sure oodles of folks will line up to play on the server where any rando you piss off could possibly log back in as a guide and ban you with no recourse, and they will happily pay for the privilege. I don't really understand how someone can be so naïve as to think there is any world in which this is a good way to run a business.

The fact you would resort to using word play (with again your own words mind you, not mine) to try and paint some picture that it would simply amount to "omg random people" just making those kind of decisions on a whim ranks right up there on the substance scale with those RL lawsuits supposedly coming out of Joe EQ outraged his box or bot crew got banned. I mean if you have to reach that hard or go to those extremes to make a counter argument point, maybe that point isn't worth making. Just a passing thought.

But yeah the no box server will eventually happen just based on the fact it's really one of the last guaranteed interest winner plays Daybreak probably has left in the possibility bag. Probably sooner rather then latter for that matter given the diminishing returns one might suggest out of yet another phinny clone, and in the event they cut down TLP releases to 1 server at a time. That latter btw which is the real self preservation battle the people here who hate the idea of any type of less bot friendly change or servers should be focusing in on fighting.

From a marketability standpoint a one server release format would basically end up being a death blow for ever seeing anything with relaxed boxing rules at release.

When I played without a box, I had a very narrow group of people I would play with, many times exclusively with guildies.

If nothing was going, I’d play an alt that could solo.

But we also had like a year between content releases, I was a super casual raider (and a noob), and if nothing was going I had all sorts of other things I could do IRL and could check in later

Given that many subscribers are now adults, with jobs and limited time in the evenings for various reasons - that model simply doesn’t work. If nothing is going on I’m probably going to bed or being a more responsible adult. Eventually that happens enough, I’ll stop paying for a subscription because it’s a waste of money - or at the rate TLP move I’ll be so far behind it would take a whole school summer vacation to catch up.

This is a reality for many players and why it drives adults with some disposable income and limited time to move to boxing. I get the whole nostalgia of one account per player…. But the reality is times and the skew of the demographic has changed.

I commend DBG for attempting to appeal to the nostalgia, but the business model of one PC per logged in account is as outdated as the classic eras in this game.

Not that I think this idea is good but the guide program prohibits you from being a guide on any server you have a character on.

That would be so hard to work around!

Sure, players that want to get around it likely can do that but the point being that the program is designed to prevent that from happening.