Thought experiment for new TLP

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Neuro, Mar 8, 2023.

  1. Neuro Elder

    I'm trying to come up with a ruleset that would be interesting, that would minimize the effects of kronofarmers, but would still be viable for Daybreak to allow. They will never allow a no-krono server happen, so that's pointless to talk about, but I had another idea.

    How viable do you think a server could be with on-demand pickzones for certain areas? Example: Instead of new picks opening up whenever a number threshold is reached, pickzones for placed like Unrest or LGuk are only created when a group of 4+ people type /pick, and only that group can use that pick. Anyone grouped with them automatically goes to that pick, and people set to that pick cannot make any other pickzone until that pick expires after being empty for 15 minutes. You can't forcibly delete the pick and make a new one, as to prevent people from spawning them over and over looking for rare spawns.

    This would eliminate spawn-blocking of certain items. On most fresh TLPs, after 24 hours or so, camps like GBE are 24-7 locked down by kronofarmers, and many times groups are trained if they manage to get the Efreeti camp away from them. With this system in place, if you wanted, say, the Frenzy camp in LGuk, you could get a group together and do /pick in LGuk, then you are ported into a custom pickzone with only your group. That pick is the only pick besides the main one that your group can enter now, even if you drop group, until that zone is empty for at least 15 minutes. I would limit this to dungeon zones, personally.

    Issues I see with this: First, technical issues, can the servers support that many pickzones? I imagine there would be 30-40 picks of LGuk and SolB being opened at any one time. Second, how would this effect the economy? Would this mean there were a plethora of high-dollar items like FBSS or Yaks? Or would the lack of scarcity make items not worth farming by those players who only go to new TLPs to earn krono?

    Now, you cannot have Mischief rules with this kind of server, that's ridiculous. Relaxed truebox would be fine, I think Relaxed Truebox is probably going to be the default for all new TLPs going forward, but Random or Free Trade would ruin the server, personally.

    Anyway, thoughts on this type of server?
  2. Grummle Journeyman

    Why not just make it so you can pull a DZ of any zone, and enable respawns in DZs. Everyone gets their own zone to camp.

    Throw on-top of that, all dropped items are no-trade...

    Could be fun, you want that item? go find it.
  3. Neuro Elder

    Well, DZs allow raid targets to spawn, whereas pickzones do not. DZs work great, this is just extending the concept to dungeons as well. I agree, though, pickzone items should be NODROP.
  4. Faydra Augur

    Or experiment with items flagged as attuneable.
  5. Lejaun Augur

    I believe the issue in the past as they have stated is that too many pickzones creates lag issues.
    Waring_McMarrin likes this.
  6. Kahna Augur


    This. Phinny had pick zones that never closed so long as at least one person was in them. It was hell on the server stability. Though I am not certain if that is due to having so many or from having them open for so long. Either way they changed it up to the current format and the servers are much more stable.

    Also, I doubt they are going to go through the effort of making duplicates of every dropable item so that some can be labeled as droppable but the instance ones are no drop. I doubt they can even distinguish items dropped in picks or in the primary zone. They would probably have to make all new duplicate named mob sets and have those only spawn in picks. Oodles of work for an issue (camp hogging or locking down of items) that is already solved by random loot.
  7. Sakuraba Augur

    Give us a reverse situation of Free Trade.

    No Trade TLP, Mangler EXP rates, truebox.

    Starts at Velious.
  8. Roleplay Here Journeyman

    Personally, would like to see corpses permanently loot locked, such that it doesn't unlock at 15 minutes left on timer and it tags as lootable at the time of NPC death. Either it was your group/raid's kill or it wasn't. It serves no purpose to have players auctioning loot rights. I understand some items are tradeable and that's fine, if it can be looted and traded then that was how it was designed. But people playing whole raids with 3 people and selling raid loot rights to fund their massive box armies needs to be addressed.
  9. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    No trade doesn't stop people from selling looting rights.
  10. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    That means players just sell looting rights by inviting people to the group and it makes DPS races worse.
  11. Sakuraba Augur

    This is true too lol. There is no real defense against Krono economies. Random loot might be the only factor that limits it to a degree as camping as traditionally done won't work, but it cannot eliminate it and what little benefit it does offer is negligible as some people are seeing on Mischief.
  12. Captain Video Augur


    Congratulations on being the 37th person to suggest this. How viable? Not at all, as the server would crash every five minutes and you'd never zone in. The server tech will not allow private picks. Period. Full stop.

    If all you care about is fast levelling, experience across multiple TLPs has shown that during the initial levelling rush, at least a few dozen picks of the zones you mentioned get spun up, and everyone who wants to manages to get through. If, on the other hand, what you care about is guaranteed access to that ultra-rare drop, that's not how the game works. It's actually a much more enjoyable game to play when you're not obsessed with having any one item.
    Skuz and Appren like this.
  13. Hdizzle Augur

    Loot is just a crutch.

    I want a server with no loot. Make it all about that social experience, truly. I wanna kill frogs with people who just simply enjoy killing frogs.

    With loot out of the way your raids are now harder (people ask for that) and there's less friction over the same handful of places to kill frogs.
    Hekkthebank likes this.
  14. Roleplay Here Journeyman

    Sure it does. If they want to burn their lockout on a chance at something that may drop that's great! Instead of them pestering the entire server with spam about a cool item that drops and selling loot rights to it. I assure you, this change will eliminate the hassle.
  15. Xhartor Augur


    It's too much stress on the server resources. Since it's buffer too much up into memory on the server. However later expansions the exp content is largely based around instance zones (Heroic Adventures). Which makes me think something is possible, but would require overhauling the code in older zones.

    I think TSS start would help.
    • More Leveling options: This will spread out the player base out.
    • Defiant armor: these armor sets are global drops, so no spawns to lock down.
    • Culture armor: The most desirable armor in TSS is player craftable.
    • Hero journey: offer an interesting new level experience for most players.
    • Epic 1.5 / 2.0 viable at this point without huge resources.
    • Faster exp: decrease demand for power leveling services.
    The people selling power leveling will be there as long as the player base is large enough. It's hard to do away them because laziness and time limitations exist. The exp rate for TSS and the new leveling options might have impact on the early demand for these services.

    Player will still try to sell loot rights. However most of the bigger draws are tasks or DZ, so they really impacting other game experience.
  16. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And people are buying raid loot like that because they are not doing the lockouts themselves.
  17. Roleplay Here Journeyman

    It takes time to participate in a raid. If they put that time in I have no problem allowing said grub to loot. 300 people bidding on an item is far more profitable than 3 people. Make it less profitable and the things will disappear.
  18. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    That doesn't change that loot will still get sold regardless of making it harder to trade items.
  19. Obliteration Elder

    I would just be happy if the dev's banned people who cheat, if someone plays 20+ toons within the rules and wants to sell loot then more power to them but if anyone is caught cheating they need to have all their accounts suspended 30 days on first violation and banned for second and it needs to be policed if anyone is going to take this game seriously again outside of casuals and krono farmers.
  20. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    pickzones require much more ram than dz's, and it is harder for the server to recover the ram for pickzones than dz's, this much has been said by devs a few times in the past - has that changed significantly after the move to 64 bit - I highly doubt it.

    Enabling that kind of functionality would very likely come at a high cost, I would speculate that a cross-server functionality for grouping on live servers would be cheaper to impliment, and that would have a much larger benefit to the game.