Look everyone knows exping in the early eras is very tedious and has a very high burn out factor! We know the problems from charm petting to AOE killing so what can we do? We know we only have a limited amount of camps in each era I Dont think Dark Paw is going to instance every dungeon in the game per ERA which would be an overall a QOL... Having a private farmable LowerGuk instance on repeat is a good idea but it only addresses the issue of bot Farmers or people complaining they can not get a specific camp! I mean if you can have any dungeon with an instance where mobs respawn you should be able to get any item. Removing raid targets from SOLB / Permafrost / Velks etc so players can just farm the camps / exp would solve that issue. Should exp just have flat rates going forward? Light blue = 1 blue exp at any level | Blue mob = 2 blues of exp at any level | Even mob = 3 blues of exp at any level | Yellow mob = 4 blues of exp at any level | Red mobs = 1 yellow of exp at any level | Triple that for AA That might be a little extreme but we can at least try and tweak those numbers above. I Suggested turn raid exp into group so guilds and people can just plow through mobs. I heard a ton of Bot armies will love this?? 3 years of Phinny i honestly never had an issue with them and i dont care about them. I for one hate having to roll an enchanter every TLP! Guild leveling groups could spice things up and you wouldnt have to worry about being the right class or being able to get a decent camp or group.... Just kill stuff and add to the fun??? Anyone have any better ideas?
So you suggest that, killing 5 red mobs at 49 should make you level 50? Flat rate exp at those numbers would be terribly dumb, I don't exaggerate when I say you may as well just have everyone start at max level.
Since you are asking for honesty if the EXP rate that has been on the last few TLPs that started in classic, the Xp is really good and you can max level to 50 easily in a casual few weeks time without effort. If you made XP easier, people will get bored fast, not group as much and more importantly, Darkpaw would lose out on some important pot revenues that help keep this game going. If you are having a problem with XP then maybe Selos is perfect for you with its boosted XP.
Never had issues with leveling on any recent TLP, being level 50 in the first week without even trying is not slow...sorry this isn't WoW where you can be doing Molten Core day 2 on their TLP
I am all for auto leveling / AA every expansion! At this point i loath leveling / AAing i will 100% Admit that. I am here to raid 3-5 Nights a week and farm gear with friends. Nothing drives me more insane then having to level and AA! I put the flat exp rates so high to start somewhere and work our way back! Heres the problem though how long should it take to level from 1-50? Well you can not give me an honest to god answer can you? because based on your group it could take very different amounts of time! So what is an honest fair number per kill? I think flat rates are the only way to go even if it scales down based on blocks like my numbers could be great levels 1-5! But i can agree it should take a little bit more after 40+ in classic but how much more. The point of this thread is finding a way to balance out charm pets and AOE Killing in early eras to where this isn't the mandatory way to level! Yes it might make getting to max level a lot faster it might only take 15-25 hours to hit level 50 in Classic! 12-20 hours in Kunark! etc Whats wow? never heard of it. Not everyone can go super hardcore and take all the time off in the world. Im just trying to find a balance vs charm pets | AOE! I guess i dont like being forced to roll an enchanter every tlp! Oh and dont tell me that you dont because your wasting your time if your leveling with out enchanters classic-pop. i Personally feel time spent farming gear and raiding is why were playing this game.
I play the game for fun and figured others did too. Repeating the same raids starts to feel like a chore so I split my playtime doing many things.
This might suit you personally, but I don't think this idea will have wide appeal, the classic era needs to last so long because it's an era so many players enjoy the most due to nostalgia, mess with that far too much and it loses that charm that makes it what it is, and would really wreck that classic feel which generates so much nostalgia - it really doesn't have much else left to cling onto. If you want a faster more involved EverQuest that focuses on progression & raiding a lot more you need to play into the later expansions where the game does exactly that, I even think of EverQuest has having multiple raiding "Epochs" just my personal take on the game as it evolved. Classic to Velious - Early EQ - very primitive & basic raids some mangeable trash pulling & spank & tank raid bosses Luclin to PoP - Late Early EQ - expanded on crowd control & offtanking effectively. GoD to SoF - Middle EQ - this was when "Raid Mechanics" became a thing, with even more Crowd Control & offtanking/kiting, the group game was developed extensively so that factioning & gear were more "progressive". SoD onwards - Modern EQ - not only are raids more complex in general than middle EQ they have a deeper dependency on every player to be involved active & performing well, also the group game is now fully centred around Progression through the content for gear but also you can also increase your character's power & survival through Augments & AA that only come from the group progression side of the game yet benefit raiders a lot. Maybe Selo's or Firiona Vie have the XP rate that you are looking for, but I think your idea would fit into the bracket of "extreme niche" by just about everyone's definition, you even allude to it yourself in your original post so you already seem to be at least partially self-aware that this is a very "out there" idea. I simply cannot see a "no need to XP" server gaining much traction except amongst a tiny minority of players. True, some have called for faster, or very fast XP servers but you are, I think, only the second poster I have seen in recent memory to espouse the idea of a "raiding only" type of server, this I think doesn't really grasp that the foundations of EverQuest are in the grouping experience not just experience points for the sake of experience points but an experience as in memories shared together while adventuring through the game. Removing the need & benefit of grouping really removes what made EverQuest the game it is to begin with, the Raiding game is an extension of it & I think it would suffer without those underpinnings, the very things that built the social engine of EverQuest to begin with, reducing EverQuest to "just" a raiding game, as rich & engaging and as fun as the raiding is, and that would leave you with a much less enjoyable game overall which is not going to have a way to nuture those friendships outside of raiding, oh sure you could still do group content but it would next to be meaningless in your version of it, outside of a few achievements, experience gain in groups has a deeper meaning that you are ignoring or personally don't care about here. Autogranting AA serves the purpose of bridging an overly large gap between a new player and a long time player in a vertical Progression game like EQ, auto levelling already exists it's called buy a Heroic Character once your server has call of the Forsaken open, or roll up on Miragul. Neither Autogrant AA or Level gain via Heroics get you to end game preparedness & for very good reasons, the character could be end game ready, the player probably is not or at best may be rusty, exceptions would be a currently live raider who wanted a secondary character on a server elsewhere but such players know how to gain levels & AA efficiently enough already. All told I think your idea falls into such a niche bracket it has too little a chance of being something the devs would ever realistically think about, far too many drawbacks & detracts too much from what EverQuest is about as a whole, I would even go so far as to say your idea may actually be destructive to what makes the game so enjoyable. I know some players only play to raid, but building a game around that detracts from what EverQuest really is & tries to be.... ...a world. Building worlds that brought people together was what the original developers of EverQuest were all about & thankfully that has carried through most of the game.
My suspicion is that roughly three weeks after they start autogranting levels and AA, a few players will start complaining about going entire raids without winning something, and demanding a minimum of two pieces of gear per toon per raid.
Just because one or a few players only play a very limited portion of the game is not a good reason or justification to negate anything outside of what they personally choose to restrict themselves to. "I like Spaghetti but I hate Tomato sauce" is a good reason for you to eat yours without sauce, it isn't a good reason to take the sauce away from everyone else, unless you want to open a no-sauce spaghetti restaurant of your own, or you have 1500 friends who also hate the sauce & can guarantee a good cashflow for any business that opens a no-sauce spaghetti restaurant because a LOT of people will be eating there.
