New Instance Threshold

THIS is a compelling argument--the socializing aspect IS important. I agree. However, I think you are claiming that active pulling+killing hinders good conversation. I have found this to be the opposite. I find groups to be most talkative when everyone is having a good time and has to be active on the keyboard. When pulls lull, people do other things and conversation dies.

Furthermore, think of the poor puller! The longer the puller has to look for mobs, the less the puller can participate in the conversation.

I'd much rather have downtime because people are out of mana, and not because people are bored.

I can see that arguement as well. I think balance is key. I am of the opinion that it is too easy to /pick your way to loot. Others may think there is too much competition. If Daybreak left it alone I would be ok with that. My fear is if they change it the market will be flooded with items (it already seems that way to me). I am sure others fear that if there is a change, massive training and griefing would happen. If they can keep it balanced between the two, good for them and us.

Do you feel the market is too flooded with items now?

It did occur to me that the increased amount of loot could be adverse to the economy. However, this could be easily adjusted by switching up mob/item rarity. Personally, i think the increased loot should be of lesser importance in the decision as without an NPC plat sink the market is doomed to perpetual inflation anyway.

Quick aside: Charge players plat (it would have to be a crazy high amount...like 50k that adjusts based on how much plat is floating in the market) for Krono or other marketplace items to take the purchase price out of the economy. There's a fix for inflation.

Back on track: As to the amount of items..i think if items were easier to get people would theoretically create more alts, thereby maintaining a healthy balance of supply/demand.

Also, this change should actually reduce the amount of training and griefing. A huge win.

However, im not an economist...

I don't think economy is an issue here. The system works dynamically. The more players, the more loot that drops. If 10 instances of an item drop compared to one in the past, its because there's 10x more players.

Both of you are right. There needs to be a balance. Right now I think we have that. In most zones there's enough /pick's for every group to get a camp. Most times. Sometimes it caps out and you need like an extra group or two to fire off another instance. But that is rare. And even when you're in the limbo between, you do have other options available.

That's a good thing. It shouldn't be one zone is the end all be all for exp.

I would support higher ZEM's in under utilized zones.

Right. All I'm saying is that a new instance should be created at 80% capacity, instead of at 120%. We shouldn't have to bring in two extra groups to get that extra instance. Higher ZEMs would open up some (viable!) options.

If I keep bouncing picks and asking, I have ALWAYS found one with SOMETHING open. It's very rare to find /sup, frenzy, or hamlord open, but there's always been something. Even on a weekend prime time there's usually minos in half of them, and at least one pick with an open live keep, if not a king and/or a sage/exe/etc.

I have seen two glaring issues that seem to recur with everyone having a bad leveling & grouping time - either or both of an unwillingness to be forward about creating or joining groups, and an unwillingness to accept anything less than optimal. Live king is better xp than anything but hamlord or a frenzy group pulling hamlord's spawns in there. There is always space in the hole somewhere (insert joke). I am not aware that perma bear pits or kedge get any real love at all. That's just lguk side complaints - there are so many untouched alternatives to unrest it's staggering.

I sincerely do not believe that there is ever a situation where there is no possible camp... just not the desired/ideal one is all. I doubt we see a situation where there is literally nothing worthwhile to xp off until MAYBE at 65 in PoP and only if the population somehow holds.

I don't understand the argument "picks are fine you just have to be willing to settle for a camp that is suboptimal".

If you are a business and providing optimal service costs you the same as suboptimal service, why would you choose to provide suboptimal service?

What business person makes that decision?

"It costs us $1 to give you a hot-off-the-grill hamburger or for the same cost we can provide a 3 hour old hamburger that we've kept warm in our fry cook's armpit. We find it odd that you are not happy with our pit-burger option".

If the playerbase wants to camp Unrest then make more Unrest picks.

OR

Make the other options good too.

Who is hurt by giving players what they like?

And before the uphill snowwalkers chime in, I played some beta/stress test thing in Dec. 98 and Classic from launch. Walking uphill in the snow is stupid since cars were invented.

Handing everyone exactly what they think they want the moment they think they want it removes tedium but also removes interaction, friction, social dynamics, and some of the delay. Slight crowding creates interaction and mobility which is good. Overcrowding can cause problems, but not necessarily if there are alternatives - it spreads out players, causes people to try new things, slows down the influx of top tier items and the pace of getting 50 without stopping it...

Who is hurt by giving players what they like? Daybreak, for one, and maybe those players actually. Having everything handed to you without any difficulty creates a boring play environment. Since old school eq isn't technically difficult, it's the social dynamics and interactions that creates the "difficulty" or "challenge" and flooding the game with picks to be near-instanced would remove that.

If you insist on analogies - this game is a classic. It's not and never again will compete with the new cars. Trying to strap brand new features all over your classic car will ruin its classic appeal while also failing to get you something that runs as well as a new model. Much better to keep the look and feel of the original and enjoy it as a classic, and go drive a new car if you want the feel of a new car.

There's some stuff you've posted that I've disagreed with you on in other threads, but rock solid here. A+ would read again. There's a clique of folks who want to shave off everything that made EQ what it was and turn it into any other generic modern MMO... which we all pretty much admit to not liking (at least liking less than EverQuest) by nature of us playing here. It's a weird situation where I feel people are demanding the EverQuest experience with none of the EverQuest qualities.

"I would like a rainbow, but I'm not particular fond of blue or red since they hurt my eyes a bit nowadays. Please exempt them from the rainbow, but make sure that I will think it is just as beautiful as I remember. Thanks."

Now that the majority of my guild is 50, I usually only see about 15 of them on during the afternoon and it swells up to 50 in the evening for raids.

Seems clear to me that logging in to instance raid is the main draw to phinny. Slow exp was just an irritating handicap.

Its definately disappointing when the server crashes and solb goes from 6 instances to two instances. As far as im concerned two is more then enough though. Fippy was extremely popular and lasted a long time even with no instances at all. Some people like to have their own zone to maximize their xp/loot. Some people love to have active crowded zones with lots of groups either competing for any spawns or respecting eachothers boundaries. Taking competition away from people that love it is wrong I think. The current instancing was a compromise between the two sides as far as im concerned. 37ish for most zones isnt bad at all. Will it help the dozens of groups that want the best loot camp in the game (efreeti)? nah. Even when there were six instances half (or more) were solod by enc/sham/nec and possibly more. When you count box groups it was even more. Rarely did this benefit the little guy. If you want to go to the best dungeon for loot or highest zem for xp you should know its going to be crowded. There are plenty of other zones to use.

No need to reply with further logic, Dented nailed it. ;-)

Wait. If we're talking about benefiting the little guy, then isn't infinite instances the best option? Better access to high-quality camps, better access to meaningful gear upgrades and price deflation across the board all benefit non-established players. Keeping the instance system the way it is or further restricting it is generally a game integrity argument.

You present a false problem -- "it either has to stay the way it is, or it has to be solo instances." I think I made it pretty clear that I do not think "solo" instances would be appropriate. I am suggesting a tweak to the numbers. Precisely to solve problems of overcrowding (and there are problems!) which you concede exist.

The problem with this anecdotal POV is that it fails to consider that your guild only logs on to their main characters for raids, and could be on unguilded alts at other times.

Why do you insist on no middle-ground? Can't we keep things that make EQ objectively fun, and get rid of the things that make EQ objectively un-fun/frustrating?

If I wanted my own instance, I'd play on EQEMU.

I think you're right that we're talking about game integrity here. What is better for the health of the server? Keeping instance caps the way they are, thereby suffering overcrowding problems including training and griefing?

Or reducing the caps to accommodate a realistic number of players and reducing (not eliminating) said training and griefing?

There will always be trolls that will grief no matter how accommodating zone caps are. What I think we should aim for is to allow good players to remain good players, and not turn them into trolls because of the way the instance limits are set.

I do not believe that overcrowding is a problem here. I am not aware of any stage in the game in which content is unavailable. Overcrowding is a problem when no alternatives exist. Right now even on a weekend prime time during double xp nobody in my guild had any problem finding OOT goblin space, and I saw two lguk picks with king open. At the very beginning of the server when nobody, and then when very few, players were 50? There was overcrowding. Right now I do not see it. What's more, kunark I believe has slightly MORE leveling space for 50-60 than vanilla has for 40-50, and it adds plenty of additional 1-50 space besides, so any overcrowding problem I expect to go down when kunark opens, and moreso with additional content after that. I do not expect to see experience-group-based overcrowding re-emerge until pop.

Please do not shovel my statements into extremes either, though I apologize if I gave the wrong impression. I said "flooding the game with picks to be near-instanced" and that is exactly what I meant. While you may think that you want to be able to spawn picks and always have a great camp, I contest this and say that having to bump elbows for a subpar but passable camp is actually a good thing. If every unrest pick is full and new picks are not being spawned, but there is tons and tons of space in sro, mm, sk, uguk, lavastorm... what exactly is the problem? You want to do unrest, and I argue that you should not get to ALWAYS do unrest, you should sometimes have to move elsewhere, just as I've argued in other threads that you should sometimes have to use a druid or shaman healer, or a ranger tank, or not have charm, and just roll with it. It sounds crazy, I know, but having to just make do with sub-optimal conditions and make the best of it actually seems good for longevity, while silver platters lead to quitting.

The balance is making sure there is always something you can do productively without handing you everything easily and immediately without complication.

I just want to know if the thresholds are static or vary zone to zone. If they vary, what criteria are they based on and is it possible for some to be adjusted independently?

Almost every mains alts are in guild as well. During the double exp weekend about 10% of the active roster was working on alts, a number that is normally about 1/4 that on a given day. I think it's a safe assumption that there would be hundreds more alts being played and hundreds more new/retained players on the server if exp were at least left at the double rate, which is still slower than RFLJ.