TLP idea - A Democratically-created server.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Phire, Mar 16, 2023.

  1. Phire Journeyman

    Was just discussing in guild possible ideas for new TLPs, which I'm sure of course happens a lot.

    But one thing about new TLPs is they're often mostly a guess of what people are looking for.

    So what I'd suggest is this -
    Daybreak does a "Idea submission" period, preferably long enough to give anyone who will submit anything long enough to do so. During this time, players submit anything they want to see in a new TLP. Obviously some ideas that aren't feasible to program in will have to be trashed from the get-go.

    After that - All submitted ideas AND existing TLP functions(such as free trade/RLS) get voted on by the EQ community. Ideas may require more than a simple majority to be accepted, like 60-75% range. If need be, the final combination result can be voted on, although with a lower threshold(because its impossible to make everyone completely happy).

    And then voila. A democratically-created TLP server.
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    They have tried this with in game polls before and the results suggested it wasn't a good idea
  3. Phire Journeyman


    Polls would be better on the forums so they could include people who might be interested in playing but not necessarily currently playing.
    Also, I doubt they did it exactly as suggested above regardless.
  4. filthytlpplayer Elder

    Didn't they get rid of the in game polling mechanism a few years ago anyway? I thought I read that in an archived patch note recently from around 2019.
  5. Alnitak Augur

    Also, some accountability and responsibility should be intoduced. It should cost a Krono to cast a vote, and if the feature/idea gets implemented, then those who voted for it get automatically subscribed for a year via supplied CC, with all sales being final.
    This way those democratic electors will have an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and DPG will get funding for implementing those ideas. Win-win!
    Grok likes this.
  6. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Polls on the forum would be even easier to manipulate then the in game ones. It would be much easier for people to troll by suggesting/voting for a ruleset they know would be a bad idea.
  7. Phire Journeyman

    A krono just to vote is way too high. Like a krono to submit an idea sure, but democracy works far better with LESS money involved. At most, voting could require a subscription, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to limit things even that much.

    And Daybreak will get funding because a server based on popular ideas will attract gold-subscriptions.
  8. Phire Journeyman

    Yeah, it may be necessary to require a subscription just for this reason.

    Or maybe vote with Daybreak cash, not a huge amount, just like 100 or so. Enough to make it so that votes come from serious people, but not enough to discourage voting either.
    Also - Daybreak would be filtering out the really absurd ideas anyway.
  9. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Voting without a subscription means people could create thousands of bot accounts to vote for whatever idea they want and it boils down to who can create the most accounts.
  10. Alnitak Augur

    Nah, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with Kronos of the voters and credit card charges. Not exactly Thomas Jefferson said that.
  11. Phire Journeyman

    There's an easy way to prevent this. Require accounts to be a minimum of a year or whatever old to vote.

    Yes, people have more than one account, but usually under the same name, and DB could threaten to invalidate the votes of anyone voting more than once.
  12. Phire Journeyman

    Also - polls don't have to be on the forums or in-game. DB could easily create a page just for voting and link it from the forums.
  13. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Plenty of players have many different alt accounts that are sitting around that could be used for stuffing the ballot box and that would exclude newer players.

    They had in game polling for various things including expansion unlocks on past TLP servers (had to be a certain level to vote) and they stopped doing those polls. Presumably they did this because the results did not turn out to be as liked as they hoped. I don't see any reason that they would make it easier for some people to throw the vote for some bad options.
    ISmellLikeInnySwamp likes this.
  14. Phire Journeyman


    Challenges can be overcome. I mean, democracy itself is a challenge to maintain, but we still do it because it's thus far the best option available.

    I don't think anything you've mentioned is insurmountable. There are ways of enforcing fair voting process. Not to mention very few people are going to be motivated to put a huge amount of effort into voting on an idea that sucks, anyway. Trolls are typically pretty lazy.

    And it's better than the current process anyway, which tends to be just picking ideas at random.
  15. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Game development is never a democracy and it never should be one. Just because someone is playing a game and has ideas for new things/servers in the game doesn't mean that they are good ideas. There is a reason why they have stopped using the voting systems that they had in the game that were more limited in who can vote in them. Wasn't that uncommon on the early vote locked TLP servers for the community to complain when the vote didn't go their way.
  16. Phire Journeyman

    1 - This isn't game development.
    2 - The voting systems weren't for anything to do with creating a TLP.
    3 - The community didn't complain. A small minority of loud individuals did. Hence, the vote.

    The whole point of a Democratic process like this is so that the community -does- get what it wants, as opposed to simply the most vocal people getting what they want.
  17. Enuen Journeyman


    The company does not care what you want. The company is not a democracy. The company exists to make money. Everything they do, everything, is done in such as way as to maximize profit and increase ROI. What you "want" is totally irrelevant. Welcome to capitalism.
  18. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    1. A new set of rules for a TLP is game development
    2. Yes, they had polls on what rules TLP servers should use and the servers created as a result of those polls did not fair well.
    3. Yes, members of the community did complain as it was split into two groups one that wanted the next expansion to unlock and the other that wanted to delay it.

    They have tried allowing for polls to decide things in the past and they have moved away from that as it did not work as desired.
    Rijacki likes this.
  19. Vindar Augur


    Of course they care what we want, otherwise why would we buy their product? In fact, community feedback is an integral part of game development these days. Voting is just another form of community feedback, it's easy data that can help a company make informed decisions.

    In fact, Vaniki was designed almost primarily based on feedback here in the forums. They've also implemented many other things in past TLPs that have been requested here.
  20. Koggar.Bertoxxulous Elder

    I have to imagine that there's *some* way to do a polling system properly. Of course there maybe some reason or another as to why this isn't comparable that I'm just not thinking of, but in OSRS they have polls to determine if a change should be made and they have a high level requirement combined with a relatively high, but not insurmountable, time played requirement (so that you can't just get a pl) and any changes require a 70% supermajority vote to pass, making stuffing the ballot boxes much more difficult, and people generally seem to be happy with the changes made over there so far. Again, maybe there's some angle as to why EQ is different that I'm just not thinking of, but it seems like if OSRS can do it then so could we.