EverQuest Producer’s Letter April 2023

These are my problems with FTE from other posts. They do not include anything outrageous. They just account for real things that will be lost with this change. Even more of the already little social interaction will die. No more helping lowbies, guildies, or friends catch up. No helping randoms near in dungeons when they're near you and need assistance. A cleric or someone running a dead cleric to your group so you can Rez them agro'd a mob on the way. Sucks to be them. Full wipe and ignore.

All of the above goes without mentioning that DBG will have to deal with all the exploiters, the cheaters, the griefers which WILL happen and WON'T be dealt with switfly because they never do. You think they going to instantly ban these folks when it happens? They do not have the man power to do that. They do not want to supply the man power to do that. They had specialized hired GMs on Aradune (it was one of the main selling points) yet they did NOTHING for months and months to the obvious cheaters and botters.

The issues which DBG won't cover won't get patched until the next monthly patch so we'll have over a month to deal with whatever things they overlook - and they will overlook things. You expect them to actually manage this huge overhaul of game mechanics in a 24 year old spaghetti mess? They couldn't even fix pickzones to what they wanted the three times they tried and have reverted most of the changes yet abuse still exists, there are still broken mechanics due to the body changes of all mobs that has caused problems with stealthing and invising, they broke many many encounters when they removed magical weapons and body types, and many more, the broke several hunter achievements that grant bag rewards because they don't understand how named mobs in instances work. They refused to listen to player feedback on how broken Vaniki was going to be at the core because they didnt understand some of the mechanics of the raids they were expecting people to deal with. What do you know? The players were right and come 3 months later they put in some crappy fixes after the population has moved on because they were left unhelped. These are JUST the things that happened in the last year that I can recall off the top of my head. These are just those mistakes.

Now all of these new problems and new exploits and new issues that will arise all to stem the percieved slight a few people have in a few early expansions of being KS'd or maybe maybe fix AoE leveling which again does not effect anyone except their chat windows.

Why even bother with this? It makes zero sense. I don't even need to list the HUGE list of potential exploits or griefs to realize this is a stupid change.

I played EQ2 from day 1 until about 2 months later. FTE had ZERO to do with why I quit. I didn't like the buffing system, I didn't like the dozens of "different" abilities and I felt like the combat was far less strategic than in EQ relating to spells, didn't like the lack of real kiting mechanics, didn't like the racials, etc, etc. Also, it feels more action oriented vs a more slow and deliberate approach. I also wasn't a fan of the graphics. I've gone back a few times, including last year for a bit, but in the end it comes down to those same reasons.

Um first of all there aren't ANY CAMPS in EQ. So whether its FTE or not. a 6 mage group moving in on your "camp" isn't getting you banned. More likely people saying it will lead to griefing are correct even in small ways. For instance when someone pulls a mob that is in someone else's "camp" the group can DPS the mob and get the taunt back. But what happens when you have a group camping Ghoul Lord for example and someone does a drive by and snags your lord and runs it all the way to executioner. Well you just lost your Lord. So now we got respawn timer but the group in exe knows when Lord will pop and they'll be back to try to snag it again. That is what will happen with ALL the groups though. You've always been able to KS or try to but this makes it to where you just gotta be first. That's a problem when you have people using cheat software.

I would just like to see the evolution of thought that led to this. Maybe it is all ready somewhere, but It would be nice to know the why. Saying something is experimental doesn’t really help me understand. If they had data that supports this rule set it would be nice to know.

Will quest named be tied the group that spawned them? Currently there are more than just epic mobs which get spawned away from where hand ins happen. At the moment if one agros on someone else you can take it back off them, with this system they will need to either die or zone.

Are the team adjusting all quests that spawn mobs? So they don't bug out.

Another reason why FTE isn't good is because even if you are extremely fast of the draw and can target and tag the mob as soon as it renders (pretending here that DPG actually was able to stop the use of third party auto-targeting software) you will still lose the mob if someone lives closer to the server. Your real life physical location shouldn't be the determining factor on if you can complete your epic (or getting the rare drop) or not.

With the current system the person who pays for more box accounts wins. Is that really better?

Considering it's been the name of the game for 24 years and the level of entry for them to pull that off is much higher, yes it's better.

Groups I've been in best out boxers all the time when they tried to move into a spawn area; granted there are times we also lost, but most times we won and the boxer would move on. So yes that is a better system since you at least have a chance to win. With FTE if they live near the server you have no chance; the server will register their hit before yours so they win every time. Seen the same thing play out in other games with a first to ping wins; in Archeage had a guildie that literally lived right down the street from the server farm, so everytime a housing plot would open up he was able to snag it even before people that used chest programs because his ping was next to nothing.

All I can say is that whenever you lose the aggro race to someone who has a better ping rate you can thank all the morons who gleefully went "choo choo train!" whenever they accused a group of being "boxers" on past TLP.

Deliberately training was an exploit of the existing game mechanics that disrupted game play and no, getting trained whether accidentally or deliberately was never a positive for the social aspects of the game

Pays for more box accounts? Most use F2P for boxes and those that pay are bringing in revenue.

If you read what they said carefully, this may be still be a problem, a worse one infact.

F2P on tlp's early eras??? What???

I don't know; I have personally had a lot of great social encounters that came about because of trains; including a train in Blackburrow that ended up introducing me to my first guild back in 2000 when I wasn't sure if I was going to stay with the game or not ( looking back at how much I've spent on the game not sure if that is a plus or negative....lol).

Also if the changes to on the test server to /yell is to give a way for an encounter to unlock (similar to EQ2), and not just for RP purposes then FTE doesn't fix the trainingn issue; may actually may intentional training worse since it stops mobs from being peeled off until the conductor wants them opened up.

sigh - posts that are listed under News etc as this one is - will encompass all servers and player's opinions - not just TLP.

If you want posts to only pertain to TLP and this specific issue then you can post in the TLP forums on this same subject, in fact there is a special overall post just for it https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?forums/time-locked-progression-servers.21/

But... the whole discussion is about FTE locking which is exclusive to the Oakwynd TLP server?

Lmao. You can't be serious here...

You are adorable, thinking these people are getting banned

A lot of casual players have no clue as to what actually goes on in this game. It's kinda shocking how many of them don't even know about ShowEQ and in reality its VERY hard to get banned for anything and yes iv seen multiple guilds use exploits and none of them ever received a ban.

Ignorance is bliss tho.

Which will get pushed to Live if DPG decides that is was a success, so Live players that are also against it is advised to speak up against it; same as those that are for it.