If there were no lockouts, most people would neck beard the missions and raids over the course of a few days and be done for the next 362. Then for the few people that didn't or couldn't do that would have no one to help them over time to get theirs done.
My suggestion is to add an aura or something to at least one 'safeish' place in each expansion, like where the spell/raid vendors are where you can switch personas. Inside Laurion's inn, Shadowhaven banker, Maiden's Eye spell vendors, etc.
I didn't ask for anything. Again, why do you constantly assume things? I'm stating lockouts are pointless. Nothing more nothing less. And if you want to be pedantic, APs shouldn't share lockouts because you are further artificially extending timesinks for people who need multiple sets of gear on their APs.
Who is most people? Most people don't have days on end to neckbeard. That's why you constantly hear about reducing timers, timesinks, etc. People play less now because they are older and have families/jobs. And if people only helped for their personal gain, they probably didn't want to help in the first place.
The big difference is that those games understand it takes a large pool of people to keep group content thriving. EQ is small, niche and overly restrictive. Your post also highlights the typical EQ player confusion, accessibility is not the same as instant gratification. Again, how can these "instant gratification" games survive and thrive without no lockout timers on their dungeons? Surely, as "instant gratification" they'd burn up like gasoline.
Missed my point, make it so I cant loot from persona dz but let me re run them. Been done with augs and coin for a quite a bit. Still enjoying doing them for fun but I have to wait every what 5 hours to run it again. booooring. And in the last 40% of neck evolve waiting on Conqueror to be done. This persona was never what I had hoped for so its no worries if its not changed. Id rather have my main rogue, with 9 persona rogues I could use to run missions and raids again (sans loot if needed, its not about loot) Course this could all be fixed without personas if got no coin/rewards from subsequent mission/raid runs other than the first initial win/lockout. I wanted to be able to help sherpa others through missions for fun, not just a standard group every 5 hours. Once again this is what I had hoped for not what we got, or were intended to get.
Most PoP zone ins were also graveyards. Could use areas like that. Although not all zone lines are safe.
Most games have lockouts on certain aspects of things. I cant get rewards from running most content more than once a day in GW2 (and raid rewards are capped at once a week per boss), Wow has daily limits on the token stuff (or did when I played) and weekly raid lockouts, 14 caps you on the currency you're doing dungeons to get (and if you join a raid you already did, you keep everyone else from getting loot), and so on.
Because they're built completely different. They got stuff like season passes, gear and lvls are structured completely different, people that actually constantly release content instead of copy and paste expacs every year, etc. You can't really compare eq to modern mmos, because it's not a modern MMO. Don't misunderstand, I'm not blaming you for wanting no lockouts, I just don't think eq is the kind of game where it works out for the better for the overall community. There are other games where that works and is built for such things, and those people can stop playing eq and play those games whenever they want.
You can run WoW dungeons infinitely, FF14 dungeons and Trials infinitely, etc. You’re pointing out reward caps but not restricting people from running the content. It’s completely counterproductive to have a game based on grouping, further restrict grouping.
It is not a multi class during battle. And yes, I think it would be super awesome if I could AP to an enchanter to clarity me, then AP to a druid to port to some zone and then succor, then AP to a rogue/bard and sneak past all this content to get to the spot I want, then AP to my main magician. Now I got clarity and I can do what I want, bypassing all that content all on my own as a magician. But no, that is not the intent of Alternate Personas. I agree with some of your points, I think it would be awesome. But those points are referring to a different Alternate Persona vision than what the devs want. I would LOVE to take my alt monk on the magician count and make it the persona of my magician and get all the slayers and hero fortitude and vitality and resolution that my alt monk of 20+ years doesn't have. It would be great! But that is not the current intent of what the devs want. I am not anti the current vision of Alternate Persona. I know several people that have already started making personas. It is not for me because I still have stuff to do on my main character (halfling halfling halfling neck drop rate) in addition to stuff on the alt monk. So I won't be partaking in personas for a long time, if ever. Doesn't mean I am anti, just means I recognize the feature is not for me.
How is EQ not a modern MMO? It released new content this year, one character system, quest based progression, instanced raids and missions, lots of fast travel options, character skips, advanced looting, auto-combine tradeskills, mercenaries, limited death penalties, Overseer. The only thing not modern is the art. WoW releases the same structure of expansions the last decade. EQ isn’t some unicorn. It’s already proven the games survive without lockouts, because the real lockout is finding people to play with.
Would you be OK to not get any mission currency on all your personas? Because I would think the ability for someone to do the same two LS missions 10 times every five hours and continually collect currency for their main toon is not really the intent of what devs want. Someone could get enough currency for their main over the course of the first day or two, and then not worry about missions the rest of the year.
Exactly this. Whether you run 50 missions every...what is it, 5 or 6 hours?...or you run 50 missions back to back, one right after the other...you're STILL going to have the same crappy drop rate for stuff from the chest. Which means it's very likely you're not going to see a necklace drop either way, which is the exact opposite of "instant gratification". Overly lengthy lockouts are lazy design put in place to cover up the lack of content. They serve no actual purpose. I could see maybe having a mission cooldown of 30 min, just to save the load on the servers, but having them be 5 or 6 hours is just pointless. Same with the raids...if people want to run a full slate of raids every night, they should be able to. If the devs don't like people consuming content that fast, then perhaps they need to come up with a better expansion design that keeps people playing in a meaningful way more more than a month or two.
So, this hypothetical person put in the time or money to level up 10 different Personas to feed currency to their main? How is that not a win for the devs? Either this person grouped with others to level or bought Krono/Heroic to use for leveling. Now, you have someone that invested themselves even further into the game, and played a part in engaging 5 other players during those mission runs. How is your scenario any different than having 10 alts to use?
Yup 100% like I said for me its not about the loot but the enjoyment of raids and missions. Im fine with getting loot and coin 1 once as is designed now per lockout. That was all ready easy enough and coin is fast enough that both seperate toons are max augs with bag and extra coin building up, but change it to a loot lockout for just me and not a task lockout so my personas can run a gain to help others.
I think no lockouts makes finding people to play with harder. Instead of there being a stronger guarantee of people looking to do raids and missions for the first 3 to 6 months of the expansion, no lockouts would mean a huge population would just power through things in a few weeks and not be back until next year, making it a ghost town for longer than it already is. The thing we seem to disagree on at its core is, you think artificially prolonging content is bad, and I think it's a necessary evil in eq. And that's fine, I respect your views entirely.
How do those "instant gratification" games survive? Surely, every would run through all the content the first day and the game would die, right? Following your logic, why don't we cap experience per day, or AAs, or tradeskill combines, or Bazaar sales, or just cap the amount of hours each day? Otherwise, people will power through the game and EQ will be a ghost town.
You can't buff yourself, switch personas, and still have the buff. It doesn't work that way. Your scenario would not be possible because you do not keep buffs between swapping personas. You would know that if you had ever used an alternate persona. The only thing you could do is be able to get past certain areas in a zone by swapping to a persona that makes it easier. This is precisely why I said it should be restricted from raid zones, so it does not trivialize those raids. Also, you can do this today with out alternate personas by using a box character. Get your mage killed, drag your mage's corpse with a rogue to your desired camp, pop out the rogue's healer merc and get rezzed.
