Let’s Make EverQuest Better For All

TLDR: Mob scarcity on TLPs is causing toxic player behaviors & ruining the game for many people. Solve the issue by lowering spawn timers. Test it out next TLP cycle.


There is a problem on progression servers that’s creating player conflict, straining customer service, & causing players to end subscriptions prematurely. A fix would be profitable & improve customer relations.

What’s the problem we’re seeing?

When high value named like the Ancient Cyclops spawn, nothing good happens. Everyone wants jboots. So it turns into an all out dps race where most people finish irritated. Then there’s certain individuals who monopolize quest mobs in exchange for real money. Phinigel, Cazel, Bergurgle, etc. Every new server, you gotta pay ransom money to get your epic. It is THAT bad for many classes. These antisocial behaviors ruin the game for people & cause them to end subscriptions prematurely.

What makes people killsteal? And why are these krono farmers able to monopolize so hard?

1 word: Scarcity. If only 1 Phinny spawns every 24 hours & 300 players need it for their epic, player conflict is all but guaranteed.

Scarcity is a problem you've fixed before Daybreak & a problem you can fix again. For instance, Vox only spawned once a week. Vox is a bottleneck for several epics. You used to have many guilds duking it out in nasty ways to secure that raid kill. Developers fixed the scarcity problem by making instanced raids. Players weren’t forced to fight each other anymore. Scarcity no longer stopped you from killing Vox, skill did. That fix created the best feature of TLP servers.

But while many epics were made easier with instanced raids, there are still many steps you have to do in open world. And/or the 7 day instance lockouts are so long that people still try for open world.

Certain open world mobs are so scarce that farmer crews are able to effectively monopolize them for money. Every year in the forums, you get many classes complain that they can't do their epics because some botter is holding a mob hostage & won't ever leave the camp.

In the past, I suggested hiring GMs to enforce play nice rules. But I was wrong. GMs cost money that’s not in the budget and GMs don't stop people from being toxic. GMs don't solve the root problem: scarcity.

Don't hire GMs, don't ban the botters, it won't fix the problem. They always find a way around the rules & restrictions. Solve the scarcity problem by lowering the spawn timers and/or eliminating placeholders entirely. Phinny shouldn't respawn every 10 to 12 hours. It should respawn every 10-12 minutes. Exaggeration but the point stands. Same goes for every bottleneck quest mob needed for epics 1.0 to 2.0, keys, and highly done quests.

I would bet if the scarcity is lowered, it would benefit you 2 fold Daybreak. It'd reduce strain on customer service. And players would be more likely to continue their subscriptions instead of canceling them after dealing with these problems. It would benefit you financially & with customer relations.

Experiment with this. Try it out on the next TLP servers you’ll release. 1-2 months to get critical clickies, keys, & full gear is one heck of a time crunch with the old, long spawn timers we got. Scarcity & short expansions force player conflict. And, that player conflict hurts the game & hurts your income.

Worse case, If this can’t be done, please let the EverQuest community know so we feel we’re heard. Let’s work something out together.

Please help me make a list of mobs that should have their spawn timers reduced and/or placeholders removed. The developers will need help to know what mobs need tweaking.

1 Phinigel Autropos- Several Epics
2 Drolvarg Warlord- Bard Epic
3 Nagafen- Several Epics
4 Vox- Several Epics
5 an ancient cyclops - Jboots Quest
6 Pained Soul- Veeshan’s Peak (VP) Key
7 Rotting Skeleton - VP Key
8 Verix Kyloxs Remains- VP Key
9 An Ancient Jarsath- VP Key
10 Xalgoz- Howling Stones (HS) Key
11 Chancellor of Di`Zok- HS Key
12 Lord Bergurgle- Cleric Epic
13 A shady goblin- Regal Band of Bathezid Quest
14 Scout Clarisa- Leuz’s Task
15 Cazel- Enchanter Epic
16 Wraith of a Shissar- Enchanter Epic
17 Sontalak, Lendiniara, Klandicar, Yelinak, Zlandicar- Sleeper’s Tomb Key Quest

18 Ziglark Whisperwing- Key to Cobalt Scar

Here are some that I can recall from recently going through a bunch of epics and BiC on Mischief.

I also am in the camp of believing that sitting around waiting for a spawn to either DPS race or click a hand in is not a compelling game play element that respects players time. Quest NPC that despawn on turn ins with multiple steps are particularly irritating to me (Marl Kastane, Kimm McShannel, Kaiaren etc).

Cleric Epic 1.5:
Scout Leader Plavo
Scout Pirri

Monk Epic 1.5:
Wygrish
Windrush

Monk Epic 2.0:
Kaiaren (ocean of tears, required for 2 steps and is gone for hours after kill).

Bard Epic 1.5:
a dire Griffon
a dire panda
a dire kodiak
a dire leech

Breakdown in Communication
Turlini (Riwwi)

SK Epic 1.0:
Marl Kastane
Lhranc (City of Mist)

Sk Epic 1.5:
Murkglider Breeder

Shaman Epic 1.5:
Kimm McShannel (depops and is required for multiple steps)

Funny enough they already did this...its called Mischief.

Not only do mobs drop much more loot, making things less scarce, but multiple different mobs can drop that same loot, making traditionally extremely rare items even less rare (Like say Jboots) and boxers to not be able to monopolize the drops as easily

Its almost like Mischief's loot system was a huge success making it the most successful TLP to date in terms of population retention!

Mischief did help for some bottlenecks, but plenty werent randomized or made tradeable. I'm actually in favor of randomizing many of the epic 1.0 mobs. For example it made the pegasus cloak much easier to get. Begurgle crown was not randomized, and was still super toxic as a result.

Well said! I'd like to see every EQ server with the Mischief loot, at the very least get rid of the silly NO TRADE flags on loot.

I think you make good points, but you're confusing scarcity with availability or rarity. Scarcity is an economics term that refers to a resource or commodity for which decisions have to be made for its use. Something does not need to be rare to be scarce (e.g. potable water), it just refers to something that isn't freely available (e.g. the air you're breathing now).

Multi-hour and multi-day respawns were perhaps more reasonable when the game was new and there was a desire (by Verant) to slow down players in their progression through the game. But TLPs are on a time crunch, there is only a limited window where a lot of this content is relevant. So I think you're correct when you suggest that the spawn times should be greatly increased. Get rid of the bottlenecks.

I don't agree with GMs not being part of the solution. P99 manages to police their game with volunteers. You're telling me hired professionals cannot do better? In the case of farmers, the job is extremely simple, do an hourly check on the main open world epic camps and you will guaranteed find bot groups sitting on nearly every one of them. Effortless policing.

...

Darkpaw devs can easily increase the spawn times of rare creatures during bonus events by changing a few numbers in a database. So they could easily do this across the board to alleviate the stress caused by shorter expansion intervals on TLP servers.

I would like to play on a Mischief 2.0. Didnt get a chance to play on the first one.

In general, Epic quest and Key bottlenecks should be eliminated on TLPs since they are necessary for progression and forced to be done in a much compressed timeframe than intended. Other items like Jboots could be debated--the competitiveness for rare and valuable items is part of what gives EQ its charm--but it is unfortunate when these camps get dominated by a box crew for the sole purpose of extorting for RMT.

Mischief solved this problem. You could could get Golden Efreeti Boots from many different camps. You could get your Ring of the Ancients & Pegasus Feather Cloak in Unrest, Guk, Steamfont, Sol A, CT, Mistmoore, Permafrost, etc. And it was even possible to get both of those items at the same time from the same kill. A box crew could no longer monopolize any items.

Even though it was pretty popular, the majority of TLP players rejected those rules.

Competition is not just automatically bad. For many people the competition is the most enjoyable part of the game. Scarcity is necessary, and most people wouldn't really like playing the game if there was no scarcity. It's just something people like to complain about it, but if it wasn't there and everything was so super easy to get people would get really bored really fast. You would very quickly run out of anything to do.

To make up for not having anything to do, they'd have to increase the expansion unlock rate, and that would just lead to death of the server even faster than most TLPs.

...

They could just start a TLP at TSS and skip all this crap.

Why stop there let's put every player that starts a new TLP full Velious raid bis gear. Lol

Gorenaire in Dreadlands - drops the same epic items as Lady Vox.
Severilous in Emerald Jungle - drops the same epic items as Lord Nagafen.

Notrade prevents perma camp resellers

This is a waste of dev time and money. They should focus on live content and theses "expansions" they have been pre-selling.

Um, like for serious? No trade items being perma-camped is the bread and butter of afk box teams who can than sell loot rights (or MQs where appropriate). For every JEBs sold, there are phinny epic drops, PoH epic drops, cleric epic drops, etc. sold for LR or . I mean, all of the raid target loot is auctioned off usually 2 weeks into an expansion anyway. In today's EQ, no trade prevents very little.

The free-trade idea of FV and Mischief seemed to be a nice change (despite being on Mischief only for a short period before I had to take a break somewhere around Kunark, but the free trade and random loot was fun). I didn't particularly like the overflow of dropped raid gear and the excess of group gear being traded. Outside of a few special items, most people just vendered group gear because it wasn't worth the bag space, and that early game tradeskill gear was DoA.

This says you don't understand exactly what some players are doing.

Sure it doesn't prevent it but it makes it a more complicated to do. If everything was tradeable it would just be a matter of looting the item and moving it to an alt to sell off.