Oakwynd Feedback

Posted by Vicious in discord

Oakwynd Proposal
Here is what I propose would make this server a MASSIVE hit, but keep things within reason to make FTE a success....and also honestly deter Free Trade from being as favorable a ruleset. Free Trade isn't the only way to make EverQuest "fun" not by a long shot.

Primary Changes:
1.) Decrease spawn timers globally right away to 25% of their current today.

Your team already planned on reducing respawn rates, but do it immediatly and more dramtically so FTE makes sense like it does in other MMOs who implemented the feature. Player power is far greater now and has single groups monopolizing entire zones because they are killing too fast and become bored otherwise. This allows more players to populate a smaller footprint reasonably. 3-5 more groups could reasonably hunt in a dungeon zone like Lower Guk with this change alone and it would be much more interesting and slightly faster paced dungeon crawl with risks we don't normally feel in a dungeon grind anymore today. This brings back a little fear the player should feel in these zones.

2.) For expansions you planned to decrease spawn timers globally, instead decrease instance lockout timers and AoC lockout timers like Selos did, just more gradually.

Proposed schedule: Change in Bold italics
Classic - Legacy Characters and Encounter Locking and Lowered spawn timers on all NPCs - 25% (Respawns 25% of normal)
The Ruins of Kunark - Loot Modifier - 125%
The Scars of Velious - Faction Modifier - 125%
The Shadows of Luclin - AA EXP Modifier - 125%
The Planes of Power - Coin Drop Modifier - 150%
The Legacy of Ykesha - Lowered AoC / instance Lockout timers - 75%
Lost Dungeons of Norrath - Alternate Currency Modifier - 150%
Gates of Discord - Tribute Donation Modifier - 200%
Omens of War - Rare Spawn Modifier - 200% - Relax Truebox to 3
Dragons of Norrath - Faction Modifier - 200%
Depths of Darkhollow - Evolving Item EXP Modifier - 150%
Prophecy of Ro – Chance to Increase Skills Modifier (includes Tradeskills) - 200%
The Serpent's Spine - Loot Modifier - 200%
The Buried Sea - Alternate Currency Modifier - 200% - Remove Truebox
Secrets of Faydwer - Faction Modifier - 300%
Seeds of Destruction - EXP Modifier - 125%
Underfoot - Tribute Use Reduction - 75%
House of Thule - AA EXP Modifier - 150%
Veil of Alaris - Alternate Currency Modifier - 250%
Rain of Fear - Collection Spawn Time Modifier - 75%
Call of the Forsaken - Mercenary AA EXP Modifier - 200%
The Darkened Sea - Lowered AoC / instance Lockout timers - 50%
The Broken Mirror - EXP Modifier - 150%
Empires of Kunark - Rare Spawn Modifier - 300%
Ring of Scale - AA EXP Modifier - 175%
The Burning Lands - Luck Modifier - 125%
Torment of Velious - Evolving Item EXP Modifier - 200%
Claws of Veeshan - AA EXP Modifier - 200%
Terror of Luclin - EXP Modifier - 200%
Night of Shadows - Rare Spawn Modifier - 400%

I think they need to add Free Trade and a hybrid randomized loot system then move FTE to a beta server to see how it plays out there. Hybrid randomized loot means mobs drop their normal loot table and additionally they have a high chance of dropping from the random loot table. This improves random loot ruleset by allowing those that want to camp a specific item to be guaranteed to get it from camping the normal mob that drops it, while also denying the ability of players to monopolize loot drops since the random loot component allows the items to drop off other mobs too.

How does no one understand that lowered lockout timers are terrible? Increase drops, don't decrease timers. Congrats to Vicious for managing to come up with a less appealing ruleset than even the default oakwynd one.

A server that very few people play on wouldn't give them any data that they could use to see how it works.

The VP quest isn’t hard after a couple weeks. Who cares. If you’re casual then do it mid expansion with absolutely zero effort. Literally that is the point of mmos. Effort = reward. Just another person trying to strip away more core game components.

I like it. Would also like to see legacy character bonus upped to 20% per. If they could do 1 normal drop and 1 random drop from named based on mischief loot tables also, that would be amazing. No free trade, no pinata, just 1 extra item that's from the random loot table. Add all this and the server would be a blast.

I think FTE is a bad idea. I dont see how they can work around the seemingly unintended issues that it will cause. I posted this (below) in another thread, but it belongs here more:

@DBG and @Anyone else that wants to get behind something reasonable to appose FTE and the toxic behavior of the RMT type "player":


Obvious Problems that FTE is attempting to combat:

• RMTers monopolizing zones via AOE pl.
  • Causes excessive server load due to AOE pl activities from 50+ mobs' pathing calcs hitting the server at the same time.
  • Locks out the entire zone/area to actual players.
  • Large trains agro whichever poor saps try and actually use the zone in a normal way.
• RMTers monopolizing virtually all high value camps, planar armor drops in classic, epic spawns etc. .
  • Seemingly FTE may give these RMTers different forms of competition. Theoretically a group or individual can compete in an easier way with the RMTer (and vise versa, but with a more even chance of being successfully contested as they do not have to out DPS the opposition and cannot be trained by the opposition.)
  • RMTer bots cause massive player grief, drama and large amounts of server wide toxicity. They are known to camp steal, kill steal, train and do anything else they can to keep or take the zone/camp that they are useing for their RL job.

Some obvious info but it must be said to justify the points: As we all know, most of these bots are just that, automated characters that have no one at the helm (Really though, there is a person responsible for the toon somewhere, they are just "managing" toons across many servers, camps, zones etc. . they are typically unresponsive and one will quickly conclude that they can almost never be reasoned or negotiated with.)

• A seemingly side issue of combating trains.
  • Boo! risk vs reward imbalanced greatly, no more major consequences if you overpull and your group has to run, no more immediate consequences if someone pulls through your camp or ganks your named! (if they pull our named and their pull agros on your group, they just trained you and they can be banned or suspended.. er not anymore they cant) and player interaction and engagement reduced.

My opinion on a better solution than FTE is:

1. Daybreak should fully embrace the market for AOE PL + RMT for items (but not become the RMT dealer themselves by directly offering PTW services, other than keep providing/profiting off Krono for the transactions).

• • RMTers would have the option to register with Daybreak as an RMT account type (registration benefits tailored so the incentives far outweigh not registering).
    • For example, perhaps they can pay an enhanced monthly fee to access special pick zones (of certain zones) Altered or even made new/specifically with RMTers in mind. (yes yes, similar sounding to what some others have already foolishly brought up, but read on as the problems with those previous "ideas" do in fact have easy solutions that no one has yet been vocal about. lets make it easy for daybreak to "find" a solution to this instead of steamroll it upon us all and possibly push it to LIVE.)

Pickzone features such as: (sorry about formatting, it messed things up after I posted and the junk wont go away)

• • • • Enhanced spawn timers
      • Less caster mobs (or none).
      • A slight delay before mobs begin their first melee round once in range of a player, making AOE stun far less risky once a mass of mobs enters the camp.
      • Maybe something like a zonewide DS buff that adds a % to the targets existing DS's.
      • Enhanced loot incentives. Maybe the fee tiers for registration could include access to drops from other zones/expansions (random zone wide or off existing named in these special picks) so the RMTers can kill 2 birds with one stone (pl + item RMT at the same time with the same/less accounts/bots).
      • Access to rare epic drops/spawns that they can then auction off to have a customer come do their turn in or loot their drop. (with similar scarcity to the corresponding actual zone scarcity.)
      • Insert whatever else is easy to code and benefits them in ways that are worth using over regular zones.
      • (yes all this doesn't address that they can still use normal zones for their RMT, read on for that detail.)
  • To combat server resource drain from these special picks, mob calcs in these zones such as pathing and other mob behavior could be processed far more simply than in normal zones like:
    • • Implement something like "mob groups" (which can then merge into other mob groups) which then all share the same pathing calcs (by warping to each others' location once a member of the mob group gains agro on a player, not the pullers loc though + merging their runspeed and hit boxes etc. .)
      • Other calcs that are mob specific could be merged into these mob groups in these picks such as:
        • Respawn timers (if a merged group from the pull dies, they all share the same respawn timer and then become part of that mob group, potentially sharing future timers)
        • Averaged out mob dmg output to a flat, non random value (all mobs accessing the same variable or tableized value which houses their melee dmg output that round)
        • Averaged out plat drops (in a similar way)
        • Whatever else can be consolidated into 1 calculation for affecting multiple aspects of each of the pick zones.
        • Another possibility is, instead of many many mobs needed to give massive EXP, perhaps make 1 mob with loads of HPs but say, 50x more exp. Have it take just as long to pull and kill as the vast hoard of mobs. Give it equivalent plat/loot drops etc. . and then the RMTer can have an easier, less risky time (more incentive to use the registration and enhanced fee structure than normal zones) and the same result with less server impact and coding is achieved.

2. The account/registration fees would need to be tailored (and likely flexible/changeable on the fly as supply and demand of RMT on a server will fluctuate routinely. We don't want the incentive to tip back to using normal zones because of imbalanced fees).

• • To make it so that actual players still have more incentive to play in normal zones rather than registering themselves as RMTers, thresholds on number of registered accounts required to access the RMT picks and specifying which accounts and/or characters will have access along with specifying the amount of "other" accounts have access at any given time (being their paying customers)
  • This would also have an added benefit of being able to keep track of specific RMTers / RMT groups.
    • Should they misbehave, consequences would be easier to enforce/document/track for Daybreak.
    • Daybreak could also put stipulations on these RMTers such as registered IP addresses, business name, or whatever they identify as. (I imagine a lot of these RMT groups don't want to be known by any identifying name or what not as I suspect most are circumventing their own countries' tax laws etc. . being as how they are more than ok with screwing people over by training, camp/kill stealing and in general infuriating the very "customers" they are then exploiting. People willing to do such things are typically not reputable businesses.)
      • If they are caught trying to use normal zones for their RMT activities then they can be penalized in some way. Maybe like the whole RMT community takes some penalty if an RMT bot is caught connecting with unregistered IPs.
      • They might even police themselves if the incentive to use the system is strong enough/if the structure is balanced in their favor correctly.
    • To police this in normal zones, give volunteer guides abilities to banish violating characters (afk botters/KSers/trainers/Campstealers/griefers) to a shared RMT pick zone that gives the offender access to that camp's drops but since it is shared by lower tier RMT access fees and other RMT rule offenders, it forces them to contend with ONLY other RMTers and not actual players. (Though they would likely be contending with themselves a lot of the time ).
      • This way the red tape, financial burden on daybreak of policing/banning/suspending people is circumvented and there is still a real and immediate consequence.
      • Accounts that routinely end up banished without legit complaints as to the unjustness of their banishment can be easily tracked and investigated (giving the RMTer a visible and immediate consequence for bad behavior that is low impact to actual paid customer service.)
      • If there is a mistake made or guide privileges are abused and a real player is misidentified as an RMT botter, it's not all that big of a deal as the player can still get the drop they are after (unless privileges are abused, these banished players were still involved in some sort of toxic behavior and would be faced with a cheap way to be punished but not so much that they want to quit EQ but all while being incented to stay in line with "play nice" "rules" because it would still suck to be in the RMT prison zone.
    • I am sure there would be MANY people who would take great pleasure in volunteering for guide duty if they could banish an RMT bot toon to an RMT "prison" zone. Give the guides a double exp potion/s equating to their volunteer time + 30% or something so they don't actually end up with lost time and some sort of reward instead of just donating their time. Nearly no one wants to do that...
  • This way:
    1. Daybreak gets more of a cut of the RMT business with minimal server load increases and minimal policing and coding.
    2. Daybreak gains more subs, TLP health and longevity increases and instead of RMT being such a large drain on the community and Daybreak themselves, all of it is reduced to the minimum possible impact.
    3. RMTers wont have incentives to use actual real zones, and will be near immediately penalized by on duty guides if they do so.
    4. Toxic interaction between actual players and people who engage in RMT like monopolization will be drastically reduced.
    5. People who have the desire and money to pay to win can still do so and will have an easier time going about it.
    6. Normal players will finally be able to enjoy TLP EQ gameplay as it was intended. All without changing actual fundamental game mechanics with stuff like FTE. The free market will still reign and everyone essentially gets what they want out of it all.

Reducing lockout timers instead of increasing loot is a bad call. The server should launch with double loot and -25% respawn timers.

All TLPs should be at least double loot. We're not spending a year in these expansions like back in the day, why are they dropping the same amount of loot?

Agreed on the double loot but let's have the second item be from the mischief random loot tables. Lockout timers could be a slippery slope but he doesn't have them coming in until ykesha so probably not a huge deal. Possibly change the first reduction to -30% instead of -75%.

Reducing mob respawn timers also make it harder for groups to clear down to a grind spot in a dungeon. Reducing AOC timers just means you end up having to raid more times per week, which is anti-casual. Instead increasing the loot amounts per raid would be better.

Nope. Just an adult with an enlighted and spiritual perspective who does enjoy MMOs and would like to see more people able to enjoy them responsibly and in a fun way.

There is a time and place for player vs player conflict and competitive gamepplay...not for the VP key. Not rehashed on the umpteenth TLP. One designed better. For more casual play. And in 2023.

You cannot relive your VP only guild on the server with access for two years glory days. Those days belong back in time. I've lived through them. It's time to let people see VP and enjoy the art and nostalgia of Everquest without asking them to ruin their lives with consecutive 17 hour camps and other players trying to stop them for player power gains in an expansion that will last several weeks.

I mean. Sure. The devs can allow this toxic mentality to fester... or they can launch this box and experiment with alternatives and solutions. There's tons of great feedback in these threads.

They should also promise the die hard player vs player guild versus guild crowd something too. Would be nice for you guys to have a sandbox where you can lord over how hard and big and epic your server firsts and character ratings are.

The majority of us have aged out of that though. We are retiring. Returning. Nostalgiac. We want a place to socialize and group and shoot the proverbial "stuff". Not beat eachother dead and programs hacks and build armies to engage in server dominance rituals.

They shouldn't cater to the die hard krono and plat farmers on Oakwynd. There are still many good servers. And there will be more in the future.

If they did. Ill still play. And I won't cry. I'm making these posts now in an attempt to get through to you there are different ways to play and live life that are as valid as your conditioned and familiar ways of the past.

I'm making an emotional argument here. Because you need to understand how important this is for the health of MMOs and the future of Everquest. I've played this game and over the course of my life spent thousands of dollars on Everquest. And thousands of hours. It's been a good investment so far. However. Things do need to change at this point. You will see one day exactly what I'm talking about. Don't let your ego and vain glory rule your time now to truly adventure. Cheating. Hacking. Automating. Boxing armies. Being asocial. Fighting with and disrupting other players and the devs for a quick fix. And easy gratification. Because you are not interested in the game improving or developing. Because you want to control everything. Every spawn. Keep your power. In liue instead of growing your servers community and creating a thriving game accessible to normal and healthy players who have one account. Play a few characters a few hours per week. Maybe 12-20 hrs per week. And don't need to cheat.

Well if you cannot understand what I'm saying or your trite response is its only fun to play 50 characters at once and KS or grief plebes who can just go to VP next year once no ones interested... well. I can't help you.


Look. The devs cannot force people to mature and foster a better environment through FTE. They can cut back on bottlenecks that have not been relevant since 2001. And offer people alternative rules sets catering to different demographics.

It's clear a majority want a mischief or yelinak or fv clone for some reason. I feel like they should give you exactly what you want.

They definitely should also do this experiment and cater to single account casuals as well. You wanting what you want is not a good reason to not do this experiment. If you want to abandon yelinak... mischief fine. Whatever. Check your attitude tho. We all aren't the same bloodthirsty race to world firsters. Gotta go fast speedrunners and hackers.

Oakwynd Proposal
1. Right click Copy Mischief server file
2. Navigate to Oakwynd server folder
3. Select Oakwynd server file, Right click and select Delete
4. Right click Paste
5. Right click Rename Mischief server file to 'Oakwynd'

Here's the thing, evaluation of FTE isn't going to depend on server popularity but on whatever feedback the devs get from the game.

So what I read is people claiming there will be "griefing" which translates to engaging first. Claims about god level bards kiting entire zones and holding everything hostage.

Those things sound silly

Go play on the server and see if you can break FTE instead. It may be the only way that it doesn't end up on live where we don't need it

Silver Anniversary TLP gonna be fire son.

Sure, lets give them the benefit of the doubt based on their absolutely stellar track record.

We finally found the idea that is worse than pvp tlp. Honestly, after the first part, I skimmed the rest because it's staggering that you actually typed that all and hit Post. I do want to pick out this line

I typed many replies to this and deleted them... so i'm just gonna say, bruh...

Lock out time yes should be character specific not account wide with these exp changes other wise the exp bonus to level alts why bother ?

locked encounters is great - i believe this was put in to remove the Necro and Monk camp owning as they can FD to avoid death - with losing aggro the boss is reset so someone else can tag it then - they stated if you lose aggro then the encounter is reset - so if you pull and run around it only attaching you and your group no training and once you lose agro it goes back to spawn and resets i think its a great idea farmers dont of course ROFL

I legit have no idea how anyone could see that over the mass of 60+ people using autoclickers on top of that spawn for entire days/weeks.

The lack of interest from the player base to even test this change is all the data they should need.

Put it on a free to play server, TLP is not free to play, we aren't guinea pigs. Try it and deal with the blowback from the live crowd if you want it tested so bad.

Well it was easy to see. Because you would drop a bag somewhere in the middle of SoNH and multiple fd gnome necros would appear, grab the bag and disappear