Is EQ small potatoes and not worth developing?

That's the most trivial problem to fix. Don't publish losses, only wins.

I was literally just about to type this.

I never said it wasn't solvable my point was and still is that just adding leaderboards isn't going to be a solution. You need to make sure the leaderboards won't discourage grouping (players want to avoid losses) and encourage it instead. Personally I am not sure if a leaderboard to track the number of wins you have is worth much as that can also be measured as number of times you have run it if you never lose.

You are getting hung up on trivial details, the point is to make a scaling system that we can sink nearly unlimited hours into in between expansions. Make it the rewards compelling, like the ability to turn our old school weapons into ornaments, and people will spend lots and lots of time on them. The leaderboard is just an added bonus.

ie Don't fuss about the peas when you got steak on the table.

Nah, stuff like that isn't good for the health of the game. Encouraging people to take a break is much better for the health of long term games.

And I don't think a leaderboard is something that will work for everyone and can be problematic depending on how it is implemented. You seem to think I am getting stuck on something when you seem to be getting stuck on a leaderboard as the solution. In the end a leaderboard isn't content and people will still get board of doing it regardless of having a leaderboard or not.

This post explains sooooo much. I see now why you oppose these kinds of things.

Do you also feel like people staying out of the game during the Mar - Nov lull period is "healthy" for the game long term?

Did I say anything about people not playing the game? All I have said is leaderboards can be problematic and are not content.

I think that lockouts are part of the problem, if I do mission X with my friends I then can’t actually go do it with randoms I see LFG. The same thing happens where I see randoms needing a tank or healer for a mission and I again can’t join them because of a lockout. I’d be fine with 0 currency or what ever for the lockout I have but for some reason I can’t go do the mission again… I can’t go play content with other players because I’ve completed it recently. But we can flip the instances for monster exp I just can’t actually help other players when I also want to play with my friends.

The way lockouts work on group content need to change if they want to improve random grouping. The group missions are things everyone needs, this is why a LDON style expansion without lockouts would do well because everyone needs the same currency.

Easily repeatable content is where the randoms and the bad players get love and get groups.

I liked players I met during the deadhills days, after using deadhills to form an initial group I’d go drag them into other stuff, it was a great place to meet people new to me.

You got to build a more complete experience than just perpetual combat grinds.

That's fine, but are you on board for grindable instanced content with long term rewards?

Also where do you stand on de-leveling our toons to go back and enjoy old expansions?

It depends on what you mean by long term rewards but if your goal is the make the content last longer grinding the same thing over and over again isn't a good solution and leads to burnout.

As for delevling that is a horrible idea that would cause problems for a lot of players as it would require them to have lower level gear and would cause issues with AA's. Even dismissing those concerns I don't think many people would consider that a possibility as it prevents them from playing in current content. Not to mention the fact that you don't need to be in the same level range as the content to enjoy it. Maybe if EQ had a system setup to modify your level temporally to enjoy content but we don't and that sounds like a lot of work.

OK assuming the develing system was a modernized Shroud system would u like that?

Why would I delevel in the first place? It sounds like you are talking about older content which I have already experienced? Why would I want to do that instead of playing modern content? Also why would I ever need to delevel to experience old content when I could play it with my current level character?

Deleveling and leaderboards don't make for new content for players to enjoy.

Finding new ways to get value out of content you have already produced makes good sense to me. We clearly need some kind of system to sustain us BEYOND what they are able to churn out on a yearly basis content wise. Do you have any suggestions to this end? You just sound like a white knight bot at this point to me honestly.

Deleveling to experience old content which many have already experienced is not a solution. Why do you think people would want to replay content that they have already experienced before? If they haven't experienced it before why do you think they would feel the need to delevel to experience it?

Old content and leaderboards is not content that will keep existing players engaged in the game.

Agreed.

The TLP servers would seem to indicate that a fair number of players enjoy repetition of content. I am not one of them, but that doesn't change the fact that TLPers line up to do it all over again, and again, and again, and...

TLPs offer, something Live servers can't...a vibrant, and lively community.

True, with deeply repetitive content.