EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Accendo, Apr 5, 2023.

  1. Atabishii Elder

    1. Keep free trade and random loot to Mischief
    -Mischief players live and breath in a vacuum. They love to think that Mischief is the most popular TLP ever but every metric proves otherwise. It just happens to be that a good percentage of the EQ TLP forum warrior population, both on the official forums and other EQ forums like FOH, are Mischief players which makes it look like a more desired rule set on the forums than what it actually is in reality. Hopefully the fact that they didn't opt to do a Mischief clone is an indication that this ruleset wasn't as popular as the Mischief players like to promote.

    2. Account wide bonuses
    -The account wide bonuses appear to be mostly irrelevant. This would be a much better mechanic if you were able to link your accounts together and share these account bonuses to box accounts. The ability to link accounts to share bonuses would also be advantageous to DBG as they would then be able to punish players across all linked accounts instead of just one, and would also lower the number of accounts being sold on third-party sites as it would be much harder to sell accounts that are linked.

    3. FTE
    -There isn't much information to go on about the implementation of this and how it will specifically work, so everything said about it is purely speculation. But based on just assumptions from other games:
    -It will damage the power leveling market which is probably a good thing. The data has been very clear for over a decade on this from what game developers in MMORPG's have said, including interviews on youtube with past EQ developers, stating that data shows the ability to power level accounts or buy accounts is bad for player retention long term.
    -Not being able to train anymore is definitely a good thing as well. I'm sure people will find a way to abuse this in raiding, but existing mechanics get abused all the time so the abuse factor is mostly irrelevant.
    -I think people will go super hard at the beginning to use this mechanic to hard grief, but over time a lot of that will subside.
    -I don't think the FTE rule should apply to rare spawns and ESPECIALLY not MOTM raid mobs. When it comes to raid mobs, the reality is that a few things will happen: P**psock** will make a big return, which we know from how prevalent that was on Aradune and some other older TLP's that no one enjoys this. Raids will also be forced to have someone with active hacks to have any chance at getting the FTE during contested spawns since the hacks allow you to engage mobs before they even render on the screen. This will also be something prevalent with some rare spawns like epic and key mobs. Maybe a fix to this when it comes to MOTM raid mobs is the first raid to do a certain % of damage to the mob.
    -There should be a range from the spawn point that FTE mobs have to stay in before leashing.
    -Rooted NPC's definitely need to be looked in to in how to stop people from permanently keeping them engaged.
    -There definitely needs to be an overall look in to the many ways people can use this mechanic to grief others and at least make some attempt to fix or mitigate those issues.

    Either way, the FTE mechanic seems like it is the major thing about the server and likely to be the experimental part that DBG might look to implement in to live. That being said, people simply posting that FTE is terrible or don't implement it are likely wasting their time. Instead, people should be giving constructive feedback in order to help DBG implement this mechanic in the best possible way. FTE obviously has both pro's and con's, it fixes some issues and creates others, but as long as it can fix more issues than it creates than it could be a good thing for the players that decide to play on this server.
    Skuz, KobalWR, Dragon Jockey and 3 others like this.
  2. ForumBoss Augur

    FTE will simply shift the advantage from those with a full group, or highest dps composition to those with instant cast spells, clickies, and/or an autoclicker. I think it's cool that they want to reduce training and griefing, but I don't see this becoming anything other than a toxic can of worms without a huge amount of thought, input, testing put into it.

    Personal loot/xp would eliminate the toxic behavior much more directly than FTE, which just shifts it to different methods. FTE will have so many unintended consequences, which will cause player outrage, followed by knee-jerk patches that then have new unintended consequences. I also believe the burden on customer service will be high, as people are going to petition when they lose the race to click first, accusing them of using automation when it may just be that they have poor ping and/or reflexes.

    As others have said, to make this server more palatable, the easiest solution would be:
    • remove FTE, or add personal loot for participation
    • add Free Trade if a high population is desired. If this is wanted next year instead for business reasons, that is up to DPG.
    • Improve legacy alt character xp bonus, as the current amount is relatively small
    • disable AOC account wide lockouts to take advantage of the alts that the rule set encourages, since we cannot raid with alt characters on the same account during the first several expansions.
    Yinla and Magneress like this.
  3. Go Take A Nap Augur

    Everything about this is Mid.

    FTE works great in WOW, but thats a different game entirely. EQ has always been more open world focused. The content is much more difficult in EQ. Clearing to a safer spot in a hard dungeon takes a lot of time. clearing a raid dungeon with your guild and having another guild backpack to tag the raid boss when its safe, mean while you are over loaded with the trash packs. Hell no.... this just aint it.

    On top of that you've attempted to destroy PLing , which has helped married men with children keep playing their fantasy. Way to much of an AA grind in the later expansions for me to keep up. I love the classic grind, and ill do my part to "work for it" , but man were all adults here all most of us want to do is log in and raid and what is wrong with that?? Responsible adults with a family shouldnt be playing EQ for 4-6 hours a night.
    Magneress likes this.
  4. Tyranthraxus Grognard


    To echo an earlier Poster, I think personal loot was the plan. The blowback from EQ2 community was so hard they chose to scrap it and this is the emergency what the heck can we throw together knee jerk fix. FTE? Sure, lets go with that...
    ForumBoss, Velisaris_MS and Magneress like this.
  5. Go Take A Nap Augur

    The only part of FTE that is nice imo is not being trained, but im not willing to play in a world where its so easy to lock down hard earned raids/rares by some rando bard or monk. Also, how many times have you run into a group that needed help? Im not trying to play some dashboard game. Please dont make this WOW where no one gives a damn about anyone and are just randomly nobodies phasing in and out of existence.

    Lastly, nerfing aoe pling is one thing but you are nerfing even out of group dps!!! this is complete trash... leveling in EQ is horrid after the first time. Any extra advantage to get to the interesting content "quicker" is what keeps me in the seat. Not making it take longer to play the game at the point that is intended.

    Mischief was a gold mine for EQ, clearly these experiments are not needed and only please a small group. Side note, Wheres my pvp server??
    KobalWR and Yinla like this.
  6. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Its easier to maintain AA and everything else on live than on TLPs....
    Koshk and Magneress like this.
  7. Lineater Augur

    If you want this server to be as successful as possible, consider ramping up the loot and faction bonuses more quickly. Those two rulesets sound great, but I don't really get the long wait (almost two years for 200% loot?)

    Especially considering faction will ostensibly be harder to grind with the new FTE mechanics. It would be nice to have more than a 25% boost by the time Velious unlocks. And waiting until TSS to implement double loot is a mistake.
    Magneress and Zrender like this.
  8. Kahna Augur


    AoCs are a game wide thing. On all servers. Specifying they are in at this point would be like specifying Kelethin would be in the game. It's a given.
    Magneress likes this.
  9. uk6999 Augur

    Potentially killing PLs via locked encounters by offering a small increase to same account alts is not a movement in the right direction. At the very least you should be able to choose what account where to bonus goes. Even if you give it to a friend that is still another paid account being played.
    Yinla likes this.
  10. Tucoh Augur

    Mid is generous. FTE is nocap doa. They need to reevaluate everything about this server.
    Doze, Xanathol, Kunfo and 1 other person like this.
  11. Kahna Augur

    Uhh, what metrics are you using? Because simply logging onto the server is sufficient to see that Mischief has held it's population better than literally every other TLP that has come before it. But I would love to see some hard evidence that it isn't.


    No one cares about open world mobs anymore. There will be one open world guild just like there is on every TLP. Epic items will be no more annoying than when a wizzy with some insta-click items was keeping the mob dead for months at a time. Hell, it will probably be the same guy there doing the same thing.
    Appren, Xanathol and Yinla like this.
  12. Go Take A Nap Augur

    I wont have a bunch of alts on one account. I dont think the bonus exp is very good. I have a hard enough time keeping up with one character. I vaguely remember a system years ago that allowed friends to join and use campfire. Along with that was some exp gimmick? That would be better, then we can include our box alts and friends that dont play much.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare, Koshk and Yinla like this.
  13. Vindar Augur

    Maybe consider making the exp bonus based on total level of all characters combined and permanent, the way it is right now is extremely lame. Some values would need to be adjusted of course for level increases, but it feels a lot better that you get to keep your bonus, as losing it every level increase just sounds exhausting. That way if I just want to focus on a few characters, I still get to have some bonus and not feel forced to constantly level every single one.
  14. Jyve Augur

    So many questions on the mechanics, look forward to... 'playing' with them.
  15. Magneress Augur

    As an altaholic who really only upkeeps one account. I don't feel like the bonuses are enough. They are definitely nice. And definitely a step in the right direction.

    I'm also not dead set on raid gearing my alts in BiS each expac either. They would definitely require a lot more bonuses to be a reasonable expectation.

    This server will be great for casual players. Not so much for the really competitive sorts.
  16. Cainen Augur

    Encounter locking feels out of touch to me. What was the issue this was designed to solve?

    Open world raid contests - Already solved with AOCs(and is what some people play the game for)
    AOE groups - Pick zones exist
    KSing named - maybe this? but again pick zones and Dzs exist if it gets to bad

    Open world DPS races were one of the few unique things early EQ had going for it, this feels like ti will remove this and add a TON of griefing tools to the game.... not a fan at all.

    Also the bonuses feel like they are encouraging people to have alts ready to switch to as expansions unlock, which is cool, but without free trade this feels weird. Feels like a freetrade bonus on a non freetrade server.

    And what happened to LDON launching faster after POP(4 weeks i think)? Wasnt that a thing on one of the TLPS(and didnt everyone generally like it?)
    Appren, Yinla, Kunfo and 1 other person like this.
  17. D4 it is FTE is the real EQ killer

    So I take this as the TLP crowd doesn’t mean much to management. The audacity to use the once a year launch of a TLP to play test a mechanic that radically changes the game and introduces an endless list of ways to grief and encourages even less social play is sickening. Helping those around you is the core of casual EQ play. Now when some lowbie gets poisoned fighting a rattlesnake outside the tunnel and yells for help he’ll just have to stand there and die. No one can heal him. No one can kill the snake. This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. We need an Alex level response.
    Doze, Appren, Xanathol and 4 others like this.
  18. Nessirfiti Augur

    I think it's two things. A last minute back up idea for what I'm assuming was their original idea of personal loot and loot boxes like EQ2 tried.

    And appeasement of the very loud group of people on the TLP forums that hate anything past PoP, and go on and on about these mythical necro groups camping the only camp that seems to exist in classic for them, Efreeti.
    Tyranthraxus likes this.
  19. Vindar Augur

    I'm guessing their way of solving massive boxing armies/botter group krono lord cheaters.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  20. Jasper Wiz Journeyman

    It might solve that problem. Cuz it'll be a ghost town in 6 months... Maybe sooner. ;)