EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

As I said...
In EQ with an FTE, you would still be able to PL assist others with buffs and heals between encounters which go a lot more toward the character themselves doing the "work" of leveling than just sitting and having someone else do it all for them. FTE could encourage grouping, including pugs, far more than even the absence of merc and with a true box requirement.

Plus, there is a sense of accomplishment when surviving a tough fight on your own instead of someone standing outside group healing or finish the fight when the DPS is low enough not to steal the kill get the XP yourself.

Dying however wipes out any benefit from a sense of accomplishment.

It won't be a casual server. In fact, the rules will make it anti-casual.

I've run into a lot of inconsiderate people in my time in eq and out of EQ -- and running a PL service and thinking you OWN a zone like the deep and that everyone should just get out and go elsewhere and that you are entitled to automate an army of ppl to farm plat/krono without even considering the effect on the game and economy is the height of negligence and rudeness.

Ya PL service can be nice, how often are PL people even willing to talk to or accommodate a group tho? It's a cover for running a box army on a true box or relaxed true box server and monopolizing the best ways to generate plat /krono to feed said army.

I disagree. Respectfully. PLing is often not a good behavior. And allowing the game to remain designed around it is not good for the longevity of the game either. It should be considered and removed as a pain point for catchup/-legacy.

Look I know there is no "no solitacion sign" up infront of the doors to the deep or general chat, however spamming it constantly and demanding the game remains viable for this kind of behavior --- is not considerate either. We pay to play here on this game and use zones like the deep and to not be pressured into using PL services and box multiple accounts by the community or devs would be a great step forward for EQ. Leave it optional.

PL'ers and big boxers / automaters /cheaters are way out of their lane on Yelinak. They go hand in hand. And those are the same ppl who run a private army of DPS necro or mages to KS everyone and refuse to be a social or responsible part of the server and gaming community. How else do you think they fund their endeavor?

Having free to play and krono servers seperate or firewalled from pay to play servers (basically TLPs) would also go a long way towards making this problem go away. --- I garantee that the non krono servers would be much more - once a server dies, fine let it earn krono and be a part of the system that creates this kind of behavior. Until then. It's just bad in general. I'm not complaining about DBG points. I'm complaining about players abusing the krono and game system system to circumvent true box or ideally (relaxed true box). Automation is another part of this issue. You can't have a PL grp *like we see on Yelinak* without some level of automation and afk automated play behavior. Smart ppl know this is bad for the game and community. It's just bad when it's catered to and allowed to flourish and push out the folks who won't spend big money on krono and creating plat farming armies (that is not fun for everyone, it's not why most ppl want to play this game still I think). Want a party game, try baldurs gate! Or NWN. Or a strategy or RTS game.

There is never going to be a TLP server with that. The classes are balanced around the expansion they released during. They would be OP at launch even with the mitigation buffs the mobs have.

Listen all, we have fixed FTE by introducing increased respawn rates, this has been agrees to be the best FTE implementation discussed openly with dev tagging on official discord

Devs? Could we get the FTE set up on the test server? This would be the least disruptive place to try this feature and an easy place to assemble toons for testing. If people see it in action it should clarify opinions.

I'd like to see some PvP flagging benefits.

lol yea you lost me there...

Bruh... they'll still own your zone - this change doesn't eliminate PL, it just makes it take a bit longer and cost more Krono.

If they want em gone, ban them.

The encounter lock is a bad thing for EQ. It will only increase griefing. Not everyone wants their encounters to be locked to just themselves.

This will greatly increase the amount of checks that need to be done. Now every attack every mob will have to check are you in the group raid with person X that pulled me.

Further, as described, the NPCs are the ones ignoring the damage and effects from unauthorized attackers, but the language used implies that the NPCs will still be able to damage and attack others.

Most of the time the issue with actual KSing is that they do attacks in the last 1/3 of the fight that out does the damage done in the original. 2/3 of it.

Pick zones need to be made easier to create on demand. Dont have raid targets in then, but if 20 groups want to farm the same mob let them use /pickzone to do that.

Way to cut out context. Level 1-60 beastlords and levels 1-65 berserkers are balanced around Shadow of Luclin and Gates of Discord era playing. There was no claim that the different classes are balanced relative to each other. You are trying to imply something that was not stated.

But that would require actual proof that the PL people did something that would be ban able.

I have no idea if this is possible, but one thing that would be really cool in a new progression server would be a way for players of any level to group together and still get exp. I know this happens in later expansions with shrouds and such, but if there was a way to do this for the early expansions I think it would bring back a lot of people who want to play casually with friends and allow their friends to not have to worry about out leveling them etc.

It is intentional that this does not happen. A level 1 monk should be get XP while grouped with a level 120 monk who can 1 shot mobs that are 60-70+ levels higher than the level 1.

Shrouds failed in all ways to do being too different from a normal class and and confusing. No one uses them because you don't play a class you play a weird stitched together thing.

What they need to do is so what they did for the Old Man MacKenzie missions, and just make the shrouds be the actual classes at that level equipped with the best group gear for that level, max auto-granted AA, and have it locked to 35 levels below whatever then current Max level would be.

1. Balance is clearly not a thing in classic or luclin or god or many other eras, so why would it matter what they were balanced around.
2. The strength of a berserker is going to 100% rely on the weapons it can get, which in classic, the 2h weapons are pretty awful.
3.Beastlords have a fine selection of piercers but without double/triple attack there melee is like a bard. mage/necro pets dont change at low levels from classic to luclin, so the bst pets being slotted in between those have no difference in strength between those to eras either.
4. The fact you think they would be too strong and I think neither would be is all the more reason to have them in classic to see what they can do! Something new, fun and fresh...

Actually, it doesn't break all of them, unless there are statements from the Devs that I missed. The only thing being hindered is offensive and negative effects directed towards the NPC. Nothing is said about supportive and positive effects for the player.

A bunch of the people talking about PLing in this thread are going off of what other games do and assuming EQ will do the same.

Regardless, I think the Encounter locking will be a disaster and only bad things will come of it.

For sure, I wouldn't want it to be a short cut for people to PL without trying. In my head it would be heavily scaled so that it's not abusable. I just know whenever these servers drop, I always want to play again with RL friends, and we try for a week or 2, but inevitably one of us has more playtime than others and ends up out leveling the rest and then that's the end of it.

I'm sure randomized loot was a crazy idea when it was first suggested too. I definitely wouldn't want to see it in a state where it trivializes leveling, I think the best way would be if the higher level toon could temporarily level down and gain very modest exp while doing so. Shrug, just an idea.

The majority of Live server players don't want it ask for any kind of encounter locking. The legacy character stuff alienates the majority of live server players as well because they tend to only have a single character that they level to max. It also alienates those who never want to be Max level.

Literally nobody was calling for this ruleset. Nothing in it. FTE encounters is unacceptable. The rest is passable although uncreative and lackluster. Scrap the FAQ you are working on- and instead invest your time on an apology for announcing this blasphemous ruleset and atone for your sins by giving the people what they truly want, a mischief 2.0

I think if any improvement could be made it would be to add free trade and increase the early bonuses or add the bonuses together and make them all occur earlier.