Encounter Locking in 2024

I liked a post that someone was saying accidental trains are part of the game. He specifically said when the group near him was wiping and he had to run. So, got me good

i'll summarize the full context since it is relevant:
- player vs player competition is important
- bards griefing your mobs is special
- trains are part of the "charm" and player death isn't a big deal anyways
- negative player interactions are part of what sets the game apart

personally I think you'd help your case if you distance yourself from it because its a far cry from more reasonable things like allowing dps racing on specific ow raid mobs and perhaps something like a fellowship that is exempt from encounter locking

I do not think it will be left to player preference as to whether or not they stick with FTE...I do not think it was designed because players wanted it...it was designed to reduce CS tickets every year when a server launches.

I would not be surprised if they eventually push it to all servers.

I can't say I dont agree with all you said, however if there is a small chance I will continue to make noise about it.

If you're looking for improvements to be made to the FTE system, I think you'll find a lot of agreement and compromise.

We are all here to have fun.

The only difference is that most of us want everyone to have fun, while some will only have fun if they are ruining the experience for someone else.

Don't be a ruiner, be an improver!

Trains aren't part of the game, they haven't been since DPG adopted a zero tolerance policy for them. Record someone training you, even on accident and report it, they get an easy 7 day Vaca.

Noone cares about trains except the people who want to train lol.

Training so you don't die in an Era of the game whete.you don't even have to corpse runs is like not returning your cart in the grocery store parking lot. It just makes you a bad person.

FTE exists because DPG got tired of all the petitions for training. It prevents not just training but also the weaponizing of petitions.

I'm in the camp it wasn't awful, there were some nice pros. Given that the bot crews (both OW named farmers and PL groups) learned to exploit it really didn't actually help on contested named mobs and they refused to ban those people for circumventing the rules / botting 30 toons on a truebox server. A dedicated GM server and tweaks to fix those loopholes would make it more viable.

The fix for that is random loot. Rarely had anyone bother to steal my mobs on Mischief, and if they did I didn't care. Random loot and increased rare spawns. Best way to combat RMT and monopolies is to let the loot rain down. Cheaper than a GM. Just make it not worth the RMTers time because the casuals don't need em.

I agree that random loot would do a lot to fix it, another reason that FTE is not needed on both the 2024 servers. I imagine if you brainstormed with 20 long time EQ players they could find a fix for everything.

This would be my preferred solution. Merged Mischief and Oakwynd rulesets would be a dream server.

I would play on it

Random solves people squabbling over named

FTE stops people from training each other

They server different purposes.

They are never going to ditch a system that reduces the need for CSR hours the way that FTE has. I would be shocked if it wasn't on every TLP going forward. Despite what people have posted, I find on Oakwynd that the issues with encounter locking preventing you from being able to hit/defend yourself against mobs that have aggro on you are very few and far between.

I'd personally be fine with them removing FTE from motm flagged mobs just to keep dps racing as an option for open world raid guilds if this is a thing people still care about.

Oak is still hitting 2-3 General channels when I check on it, which isn't awful for midday on weekdays (I work weekends) in mid-PoP. Behind Mischief, but ahead of many others.

but but... the plat dupe killed oakwynd! Like 6 months ago!
At least, if you listen to half the people in this thread....

Speaking anecdotally, the catastrophe is what made me cancel my last account. I was already stepping back from the game though due to RL but when i logged in after not being online for a week and saw that krono were selling for like 700k I logged out and canceled.

Pre Dupe though Oakwynd was every bit as populated as any other TLP I've played on outside of Mischief.

I'm sure it was a combination of all the things posted before, we cant really know for sure. All I know is I have played a lot of TLP's, and Oakwynd "feels" very empty. You can also follow the stats they post and it appears to have always been lagging behind.

DPG did not implement FTE because of CS tickets (they just ignore those) - they did it because they saw other games do it, plain and simple.

As far as playerbase goes, Oakwynd only has the numbers it does because it is a newer, non-free trade server, ie. the server that makes krono farmers the most.

What stats? Do you have a link?