Oakwynd Information and FAQ

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Angeliana, Apr 17, 2023.

  1. Komodon Augur

    Also if we are really pushing the chips all in on this same account leveling incentive concept, maybe there should at least some consideration made to the idea of leveling out the group bonus curb to feel less comparatively damning for solo/duo play.

    I realize with enchanter charm OP'ness absolutely dominating the early expansion gameplay that likely pushes things back towards more endless chanter/healer boxes doing their own thing instead of grouping, but on a server you are basically asking people to box less it might make some sense as far as the overall execution goes.
    ForumBoss likes this.
  2. Bananabread Apprentice

    Honestly just put random loot on group named only. The random loot on group drops did wonders getting rid of a lot of early TLP toxicity at least in what I experienced. Not doing that and adding FTE is just gonna make this more toxic.
  3. ForumBoss Augur

    Regardless of the legacy dynamic, I think raising the solo/duo xp rate and xp cap per kill would go a long way in improving the catch up time in this game. EQ is quite hostile to returning players late if you aren't either buying a PL, or have a dedicated friend to tote you around and help you level. Being able to progress decently solo would be cool with me.
    Magneress and Komodon like this.
  4. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Could you please clarify: is this abomination going to Live servers or not?
  5. WeCameWeConquered Elder

    You are very passionate about your feedback - we get that. At the same time, there is only a handful of you in favor of this, posting over & over, really no different from the few PvP-TLP folks.

    Heirloom & AoC per character is an RMTer's dream. Selling loot rights has always carried the highest krono value but lockouts have limited the market. With alts not getting said locks out and loot being heirloom, their potential market just grew greatly, thereby expanding RMT potential earnings.

    FTE itself is a trainwreck, period. All it does is change the mechanics of griefing and ruin what little means players currently had to combat them. This server is en route to Vaniki / Miragul levels of failure, sans the initial launch when certain types will log in just to prove their points on FTE (and make a few krono doing it).
  6. Dartaniun Augur


    It's going on this new TLP server. They are going to put it on the test server first to......well, test it
  7. Zrender Augur

    1 classic drop and 1 random drop would be great. Best of both worlds.
  8. Servers_are_Down Error 404: Server status not found.

    The irony is watching the forum mobs spew their anger, but if I say to wait until more information is out before jumping to conclusions I'll get this very important forum account a warning strike. :p.

    Can't wait for Oakwynd sounds like a fun TLP, see you there if you're going! If not no worries, enjoy EQ!
    Magneress and Zrender like this.
  9. PhantomRogue New Member


    Really? You think P99 and its 'scheduled raids' is a good thing? Where you have literal waitlists for a camp item. Where if your guild jumps the schedule you all get banned. Where Laywerquest is more important than anything else...

    Please.

    At least in this version of EQ everyone understood no GMs were around, Open World is a DPS race pure and simple. Now, enough of the P99 crowd has played some of the TLPs and gotten a taste for it, but don't like some aspects of the 'new' EQ. So they do what they do best, laywerquest till its changed to be some mutated form of P99 where they get what they want to the detriment of the rest of the TLP playerbase.
  10. xeveq New Member

    Why does the yearly TLP release, which is apparently the *only* TLP this year, have to be a guinea pig for something so highly contentious and poorly thought out? You've fixed KSing with FTE, but nothing else, while also ushering in a new wave of griefing horrors. Give me the devil I know: I'll cope with the occasional KS or dps race over someone locking down mobs indefinitely. Lake Rathe never has picks; can't wait until someone holds Lord Bergurgle hostage...
    pipedreams3 likes this.
  11. kliqIMB Elder

    All right! I'm batting .500 on my proposed feedback / solutions for Legacy Character details to make them feel more impactful. It's also cool to see that those solutions are being intrinsically tied to Legacy Characters such that these changes would be moved to other servers along with the mechanics of Legacy Characters themselves. It's especially cool because I've thought the idea of LCs are much more interesting of a design mechanism for player behavior and positive feedback loops than Encounter Locking—even if I can also admit that ELing (trying to use the official parlance that DPG/DBG is using) is a more wide-sweeping change.

    Even though I detailed it in the other thread, I'd just like to reiterate my other two changes that I hope are coming to Legacy Characters. Now updated with additional considerations based on the information in this thread.

    1) Rather than the buff resetting globally, your first/main character receives whatever the maximum buff you obtained during the previous leveling window until the next leveling window.
    • Reasoning: I gravitated toward this change because I think it can incentivize players that maybe wouldn't normally play alts. The idea is partially inspired by the "funneling" system that notably Korean MMO "Lost Ark" employs. In Lost Ark, you raiding gear is leveled up entirely by RNG rolls that are paid for with a specific currency. Your main character can only earn so much currency per week. However, if you have alts, you can bring your alts basically to the beginning of "end game" and then funnel all of those resources to your main. Once your main hits cap, you can waterfall that same idea down your entire account. Lost Ark is one of the few games I've ever created alts on as I generally tend to prefer things like FFXIV, ESO, OSRS where all you need is one character because they can freely swap between classes/builds/etc.
    • Example: 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.
    • Potential Issues: I've heard lots of talk about how the codebase to EQ is even more spaghetti than people's hands are sweaty, so I can understand that there's a certain logic in keeping things "account wide" and not specifying specific characters within the account itself. I'm unsure what tools EQ has to identify a specific character, but I do have a few solutions.
    • Solution A: Lock the semi-permanent EXP buff to the first character that's created on the server and/or the character with the earliest "Created" date currently still active in the case of a deleted character. This solution is maybe the least intensive, but also the least elegant. I also think it would negatively impact players who main Classes / Races that aren't available at launch.
    • Solution B: Create a bespoke item—let's call it the "Amulet of Expeditious Adventuring"—that can track how many max level characters you have on a particular account. Upon hitting Max Level for that expansion the player can purchase this item from a vendor. Each subsequent Max Level character can then purchase a "Expeditious Adventuring Charge" from the same vendor. Both the Amulet and the Charges would be Heirloom so they could be freely moved around your account. Each Charge would give the Amulet the flat 10% boost of Experience and the Amulet would have to be re-charged after each expansion with a new level cap. Whichever character is wearing the amulet when the new expansion is dropped is who it's attuned to until the new level cap is released, so as to avoid trading it around to apply the semi-permanent buff to every character.
    • Additional Considerations: With the information that Legacy Characters as a mechanic could move to other servers, I think that there's some consideration to be made with my suggestion of giving your "primary" character the EXP buff until the next leveling window given that it might be three years before the next level cap increase instead of 6-8 months. I don't believe that giving your main character a 10% "head start" buff each level cap demonstrably changes the game that much, but it's worth noting. I would also say that it would again reinforce this idea that having all of these alts is also creating a positive feedback loop for your "main" character as well as secondary characters. As it stands, I still think that players who only play 1-2 characters aren't incentivized enough to create alts, which doesn't let Legacy Characters fully address some of the qualms I believe they are trying to address (ie: group leveling in somewhat outdated content, solo boxing more community engagement, etc.)
    2) Reduce the amount of characters to hit 100% from 10 to 8 and change the scaling from a flat percentage increase to front-end stacked with gradual deterioration.
    • Reasoning: From my understanding, even with All Access you are only allotted six additional character slots. Meaning that someone who wanted to get the 100% buff would have to purchase an additional two slots to accomplish this. (I believe 3 slots are purchasable via Loyalty Coins, but from what I can tell that's not available at launch?) I'm also hard pressed to believe that that many people actually would want to level 10 characters. Plus, 8 is half of 16! :D I also think by front loading the experience some it would nudge the aforementioned players that wouldn't normally create alts.
    • Example: New EXP Bonus Percentages would be something like 20%, 20%, 15%, 15%, 10%, 10%, 5%, 5%.
    • Potential Issues: There's a certain cost/benefit fall-off here where I'm sure players would really be hard pressed to be that 7th and 8th character at only 5% EXP bonus; however, I like that it moves at a more static pace and still remains front-ended.
    • Solution A: Raise the cap of bonus EXP from 100% to 110% and change the percentages to 20%, 20%, 15%, 15%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%. This still gives a 70/40 EXP buff split to the front-half of your account, but means that your back half is effectively the same stepping stone. Furthermore, is 110% really that different than 100%?
    • Solution B: Front-end the percentages even more and have a steeper fall-off. 25%, 15%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%. This changes the front half of your account to 60/40, but heavily emphasizes the first two characters rather than the entire front half.
    • Additional Considerations: I'm still of the opinion that this is a net good change if this were to come to live, although with the purchase of the three additional slots via Loyalty coins you wouldn't be locked out of a full bonus like you would be at the beginning of a TLP. That being said, right now, someone without All-Access would only be allowed a maximum of 50% buff without paying anything (not a considering with TLP since All-Access is required for TLP), in my examples they would be allotted a 80% (A) or 70% (B) buff without paying. I think there's some reasonable discussion to be had around the mechanics of incentivizing pay for buffs—and there's obviously already historical precedent here with things like the Adventure's Perk—but I'd just like to call out that personally I would be on the side of giving F2P players a little more than 50% edge since they're investing significant time into all of those characters.
    And finally, I will note I'm a little sad at combining two expansions, I know why it's being done, but still. D:
  12. Baulkin Augur

    I like the changes and will hold my FTE reservations until I can see it on test. Outside of the people who absolutely will not play FTE I've heard some good feedback. It will make it possible to have an "Alt" raid nights which should be fun. It will also make main changing much easier when gear becomes more "All/All".

    All that being said. 3 Things I would like to know more about.

    Quest Items, Heirloom or No Drop?
    1.) Epic quest items. (IE Phinny drops). Heirloom? Or no drop.
    2.) Key pieces (IE Trak teeth). Heirloom Or no drop.
    3.) Yelinak's Talismen. 41% haste...BUT is also an ST key quest item.
    Zrender and Magneress like this.
  13. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    That would be a violation of zone disruption rules that already exist.
  14. Strife Lorekeeper

    Enforced by whom?
    WeCameWeConquered likes this.
  15. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    All it would take is a petition with the information showing what is happening. They are not going to do anything unless it is properly reported.
    code-zero likes this.
  16. Rasper Helpdesk The Original Helpdesk


    Simplest approach would be to make the threshold "cap - 5". During Luclin you get 4 characters to 60 and have a 40% bonus. PoP launches and you still have a 40% bonus still going. If you level your main to 65 but ignore the others then when OoW drops you only have 10%. No need for special tracking or items.
    Magneress and Koniku like this.
  17. coltongrundy Augur

    Please, stop this madness. You guys just actually don't know how many problems you are creating with this.

    How are you going to stop 1 bard from keeping Bergurgle's place holder permanently mezzed preventing all clerics from getting their Epics?

    This is just 1 tiny example. There are going to be hundreds of issues created by this.

    Don't forget about that time when you guys did a sweep of body types trying to make them more consistent. A great idea on paper, but you didn't consider the ramifications that level 1 melee characters, lacking a magic weapon, would never be able to defend themselves against a level 1 decaying skeleton. After that was brought to your attention, your fix was to remove the magic classification from all weapons. But you guys didn't consider the ramifications of that, either. Then players were able to disarm previously "magic" weapons from NPCs that would just drop on the floor so someone could see a guild fighting Avatar of War and just disarm him, drop his blade of carnage on the floor, and pick up free loot. So then you had to change how disarm works.

    Encounter Locking is a MUCH bigger change in scope and other game systems are not designed for it! EverQuest was not built for encounter locking. This will absolutely beyond any doubt create more, new, and "creative" ways for people to troll, grief, and exploit game mechanics in ways you've all never even thought of.

    First, since when have you ever considered "kill-stealing" a problem in EQ? Sure, it's a thing that some people complain about, but your stance is always there are no camps, there is no first to engage rule, and DPS is king. Why are you trying to "solve" a non-problem by creating massive new problems?
    Second, if someone just /yell's to unlock the encounter, how will this ever stop trains? Even if they don't /yell, they can drag a pile of mobs on top of someone's group and feign, the mobs automatically become unlocked after a short duration of not being in combat even if they haven't returned to their spawn, so if the group is in the middle of a dungeon and cannot safely escape in any direction and someone drops a group of mobs on them.... oh look, you actually didn't accomplish removing training from the game. You just created new problems without actullay "fixing" anything.
  18. ArtificialSoul New Member

    If FTE is so great give us a second serve with Mischief rules so there will be a large enough population to successfully beta test. This would give a VERY wide range of the types of testers to make it more representative. The major of players that will be on this current version will just be a small subset of players. Still crickets in discord about wanting to play on this server. This FAQ response seems to Say "We saw you talking..... anyways we are doing this."
  19. Komodon Augur

    Pretty sure he was just making an honest effort to point out that being able to add people to the encounter was most certainly a W over the pre-follow up announcement speculation that such wouldn't be the case. Unlike the guy he was replying to, who likely latter deleted that post himself after realizing his attempt to troll was clearly crossing over the obvious disingenuous arguing line.

    Pure and simple in the fact that it boiled down to almost no actual "competition" or actual "racing" involved, and just zerg trumping all payouts to be had? Absolutely. Again, that is why it's a W here for the one guild on the server putting forth that level of effort.

    I mean no doubt it's not the perfect world scenario for them of having the always present threat that you can just call in 200+ people to mindlessly outdps anybody trying to get that slice of the OW raid pie. But this at least gives them more upside probability incentive to that tracker sitting near the spawn. Tag and keep is WAY more appealing as a whole then Tag and surrender or waiting to tag with another raid force potentially wandering around nearby.
    Magneress likes this.
  20. Magician9001 Augur

    Allowing /Yell for help is a terrible idea. It basically ruins 2 of the only good things about FTE.

    1. Not having to deal with AOE PL squads making zones unplayable, while CS ignores the fact they're breaking like 5 different rules 12+ hours a day, 5-7 days a week.
    2. It enables training.

    Server ruined.
    Zrender likes this.