EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

Push the encounter lock to Live so I’ll have an excuse to quit forever. I already have 100 other excuses, but hypothetical encounter lock on Live would probably be the winner.

After having a few days to digest the new ruleset, I find that I still have so many questions regarding the FTE/encounter locking mechanics. I think a massive question that still remains to be answered is how the mobs will behave after they have no one left on their hate list.

The obvious situation is - bard pulls OW dragon, dragon kills bard, then what happens? Is the FTE reset immediately or once it reaches its spawn point? Can someone else tag it and encounter lock it immediately?

Along the same lines, what happens when an enchanter memblurs a mob? Does it immediately return to its spawn point with no care for any PCs around it? What about mobs with memblur mechanics? My initial feeling of not wanting to pay a monthly subscription to be a beta tester is still very much alive.

That's a guild loot rules problem

I would have to agree with others that without free trade such a radical server system would be a hard sell to most players. I mean who wants to try and get 8 or more max level characters on their account if only one has decent gear and the others are in Defiant or worse.

Why do people keep throwing out 'heirloom' as an idea? It is awful. Most folks don't play alts on the same account and surely don't care about passing items down to them.

After talking with friends about this, a couple ideas came up around FTE as being the main issue really. The server underneath is borderline criminally bland, but FTE is, as presented, the issue here, because it seems it would cause more issues than it resolves.

Assuming the presence of FTE or something similar is a requirement for the server, I think the following needs to also be implemented or at least road-mapped.
1) Corpse unlocking needs to be removed\tied to the members of the lock. (no stealing a mob then selling the loot)
2) Multi-Questable quests need to be fixed and have -ability removed. Some quests have been fixed so they can no longer be 'd, the rest need to be fixed. Focus on the big impact quests, like epic quests and key quests first, then work on removing as a bug-feature entirely. (no stealing a mob, looting the loot, then selling it to complete the quest you just blocked)
3) Quest items need to all become lore no-destoy. In the cases of quests needing x# of an item, those should then be Lore (#). (no killing mobs and loot-destroying to just block other's progress)

Secondary to the FTE thing, with the Legacy Characters, as has been mentioned, really it just begs to have AoC lockouts tied to the character, not the account, which probably how it should have been from the beginning anyway- so just do that and make people happy.

I am late to the party, but honestly, is this an April fools joke?

First to engage is a terrible idea.

How about this; accept the fact that for good or bad, most people either want to box, or play the majority of their time solo. So, just make most things shared. You damage it, you get exp. You damage it, you get some loot. People would probably work together more this way than requiring them to do something uncomfortable like group up. Keep raid bosses locked to raid members to avoid the tag and forget about it crowd, but other than that make it a free for all.

Yeah some people may screech that that goes against the spirit of the game, but honestly, look at the state of the game. It's spirit died a long long time ago.

Subscription cancelled.

What a disappointment.

Change aoc lockouts to be character instead of account specific, make no drop items heirloom. These seem like no brainers to make the server feel a little different, especially when combined with the legacy character function. I would absolutely level an alt or 2, especially since the server is on a standard timeline. I actually like the standard 8/12 week unlocks, I hate feeling rushed in Everquest of all games.

I dont need free trade on every TLP like some people seem to want. I want it to be one of the things they keep in their pocket for special occasions or at least kept pretty rare. next year 25th anny would be a good time imo.

Was looking forward to a new TLP but encounter locking is a terrible idea. Guess I will wait another year.

I will just put my money where my mouth is. I am done with this game if bring any sort of lock encounters to live.

the real question we need answered, is will see the Oakwynd bow on the Oakwynd server?

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=24739

gotta know if I'm rolling ranger again!

that right there is how you make bows viable before luclin

All of this, minus the unlock schedule though I know I'm in the minority there, is in line with my thoughts I posted earlier, so glad to see I didn't miss the mark for some people. I do think your EXP bonus might be too front heavy. My optimal for an 8 character split was 20/20/15/15/10/10/10 which is 70/40 in favor of your front half and goes to 110%. With your formula you'd hit 100% after three characters, which, is definitely more beneficial from the perspective of the player base, but since DPG/DBG currently have it as 10 fully leveled characters, I figured I'd try to get a better middle ground with 8 characters to 100%.

Also, I still haven't seen anyone else mention what I think is probably my best "fix" for Legacy Characters which is that the account wide buff applies to your "main" character whenever the level cap is increased and your next "main" buff is dependent on how many subsequent maxes you hit. The example I gave in my post is:

It's currently PoP and the Level Cap is 65. The Player has reached cap on 5 characters and is currently experiencing a 50% EXP bonus account wide. When OoW drops and the cap increases to 70, the first/main character on the account keeps the 50% bonus. This same Player decides that they're not going to get any of their other 4 characters to 70. When TSS launches their first/main character would drop back down to the flat EXP rate.

The idea is that there's incentive to level alts outside of making leveling other alts faster. Curious your thoughts on this since we agreed on a lot of other points.

Ok, I can only say the same as I said when blizzard wanted to put your real name in the forums.

Congratulations Daybreak you have made your first forum flame!
No troll could have done so great!

Now think the way eq is played and the impact of the changes you are doing.


PS. Give ME a free box server. Rizlona is old.

I do not like the first to engage idea. There is absolutely nothing appealing about it to me. I also do not think this server should be free trade tho the idea to make items attunable suggestion I have seen several people mention seems reasonable (or something similar). This would be less restrictive than the normal loot rules but not to the same level as full free trade. Mischief and Thornblade are available for those who want free trade. After playing on two TLPs in the past I do not think cannabalizing server rulesets over and over is good for anyone.

FTE is something that only makes any sense when you ALSO have Random Loot to prevent named monopolization.

FTE without Random Loot is doomed to annoy the crap out of pretty much everyone.

Yinla's suggestion of locking named to the group killing the PHers as it was in PoWar (for one mob at least) makes more sense than FTE.

except casual gamers dont pay the bills and even if they did, will be the ones negatively impacted by this?

Encounter locking sucks period. That should never be added to the standard servers.

I don't recall seeing the word "everybody" in my post. But congrats on what looks to be your 4th exaggerated the sky is falling with FTE post in the last 15 minutes.

There is nobody making the actual effort to monopolize named spawns that wants FTE in that win/loss probability equation. Just you people, with no legitimate plans on doing it, that think the hypothetical scenario sounds like the winner it isn't.