Oakwynd Feedback

Oh its at 100 pages, we did it! Good effort everyone.
Officially too long for a dev to be expected to ever read it!

Shoutout to the mod merging threads into this one to help us get here.

I mean, look at the staff post tracker, and you'll see that they really don't give a damn.

ALL the recent replies are "Wallpaper, mount and familiar, and national pet day threads"

What exactly is your point on continuing to bring this up over and over again? I am not saying that is how WoW currently operates. I just said that is how I remember it when I was playing last year. If you didn't want to keep arguing about my memory it would have been dropped a while ago.

I do believe that FTE is intended to help curb Power Leveling & DPS racing. I can understand why those that benefit from these aspects of the game don't want things changed but I think it will make the game better over all. The question is "will it work?". I am curious to find out.

I agree. It will be funny when the people that breach the T&C's whine on the forums when all their s**t is stolen. I look forward to it.

I forgot to respond to this portion of the post. I would be happy with this type of loot system also. It wouldn't stop PLing at all but it would help a lot with cutting out the monopolization of certain camps by DPS groups. Yes, the loot would be more plentiful on the server but I don't see how that's a bad thing.

FTE makes automation easier , right? I mean nothing stops a player report , but at least the bots wont need to worry about players interacting with them by taunting their mobs away and leading them into dangerous areas or training them. As we've seen plenty in the past to try to get solid proof the guy ignoring you is actually botting.

FTE has some benefits. We can all agree on that from other games like WoW. I'll not get into the added layer of removing external interactions for now.

My concern with FTE in EQ is that WoW was designed around FTE and all the dungeon based content is instanced where FTE cant be exploited the same. Everquest is not built that way. Using FTE to bi-pass content deep in the dungeon would make dungeon runs trivial. In order to get to a camp spot simply train down with an out of group player while other players follow with zero effort and simply rez up the dead trainer in the end. Ill not get into all the drama this will lead to in Open world raid zones, which WoW also has very few.

Is this the end of the world? Certainly not, but eliminating more risk makes rewards a lot less interesting. The obstacles in the way of your goals make the reward so much sweater. A skilled group may be able to achieve the same results without FTE to get to that camp spot but THAT makes it feel good. As you used your SKILL and diverse player abilities and spells to reach your goals. One thing that makes Everquest so interesting to me, is how high the risk is in order to achieve your goals and that feeling of overcoming challenges along the way.

I'm not sure any risk is removed by FTE. Depending on how FTE actually works, some may use the tactic of an outside party member to train mobs away, clearing a path to whatever camp. However, as you mentioned, the group could get to the camp if they wanted to anyway.

FTE will also remove the risk of being intentionally trained which is what I am most pleased about.

Not being trained seems nice and for that to work than FTE would have to trigger on aggro. I've been accidently trained more than intentionally trained and not often enough to merit these changes imo

I will admit that it especially hurts when you are intentionally trained while engaged in a raid that a rival wants to steal

hey now, there are around 12 of us with too much leisure time at work going back and forth about fte.

These are the new types of emergent gameplay that will occur for those who used to be busy plvling groups. Every named spawn will be contested. A Monk will clear the way for a character to park itself at the camp. They can tag a named and, if need be, wait for backup to arrive in the next few minutes and burn the named down. Or, just a nice slow burn as your group watches your failed FTE encounter. It will be very annoying and will occur more and more. You may also see multiple characters ungrouped to all enter the FTE raffle if they decide to put a somewhat randomizer on the first milliseconds of aggro (who gets the aggro gets the FTE. As floated earlier, they could randomize so that the first flurry of aggro that hits all in the near second, they could randomly pick who wins and gets the mob, so multiple boxes ungrouped = more chances in the randomizer). There's little that can be done to prevent named mob spawns from becoming gutters and accumulating toxic players and gameplay. They will turn players off more than getting trained, since its all now got the big OK from management to play this way.

I disagree with this - most of the AoC haters were those that thought the newbians and plebians didn't deserve raid kills if they didn't have the force/dps. The FTE haters are the same - they don't like the fact that their box/friend crew can't just take whatever. 100% my opinion. the "hardcore" (if we want to call them that) have meta'd the game for dps races for all the encounters that matter and all those same encounters are where toxicity occurs.

FTE will cause a new set of problems - there isn't a doubt in my mind. I am curious to see how things go though.

pretty fair opinion - i think it will be years before any decision is made on pushing fte to other servers - at least oakwynd is there to see what kind of issues do arise.

this already happens, but with dps racing.

playing a ranger with a monk friend - we're camping raster - another monk shows up with an sk friend - raster spawns - we lose the dps race

your scenario is a normality on every tlp.

Exactly. Now they wont need a friend. In fact, the SK and the monk can just sit in 2 different picks and compete that way. They will cause more damage with FTE than without.

Nah, he'll keep the monk/sk in the same pick. People like that can't stand a fair fight. DPS or FTE the result would be the same. The way it is now, after they won the dps race, they'd go train the group at frenzy a few times til' they leave then take over that camp. All in a toxic day's work, amirite

Nah, they wont. People like that maximize their ability to steal. They dont think like a Forum Warrior, they think like someone collecting the most pixels in the shortest amount of time.

that also already happens with multiple dps classes sitting in picks.

all the toxic behavior you describe is already a thing - all you have to do to 100% win is bring the meta dps class(or classes).

fte wont cause more damage. fte will mean those meta dpsers aren't 100% guaranteed to win. fte will just change how the ksers go about ksing - whatever the new "meta" will be.

finally, a server for rogues!

and warriors, paladins, rangers, clerics, druids and any other classes that weren't able to compete with full groups of necros or mages.

I do believe that FTE is intended to help curb Power Leveling & DPS racing. I can understand why those that benefit from these aspects of the game don't want things changed but I think it will make the game better over all. The question is "will it work?". I am curious to find out.

Ah, see, as a "Fte hater" , beyond not wanting to see encounter locking on my server that's gotten along for a couple years just fine without it, It's not a matter "can't take whatever" It's a matter of, if i get bored I can't take my rogue main and go stab stuff for my friends, while I'm out of group.

Or I can't hitch up my SK and shaman and bard and go powerlevel up yet another mage onto my fourth account, (and I don't have a problem, stop looking at me like that. It's entirely normal to have 6 mages between level 40 and level 65 on one account.)

And as to the "Hardcore" meta-ing the game for DPS races.

What?! What encounters?! What expansions? I mean, I feel like the answer to this will end up with me suggesting that people try really hard to play past Planes of Power, so I'm just going to say it again.

99% of the problems that Encounter locking is intended to fix, Do not exist past Planes of power.
Powerleveling doesn't disrupt zones, because there are better zones to level lowbies in.

There are no big DPS races on camps, because there are SO VERY MANY. Admittedly plane of fire does tend to be a bit of a crapfest because the XP is decent and people are just super into it, but It's nothing Encounter locking will solve, because the only drama I saw there was people pulling mobs out of other peoples "camps".

In short. Play past PoP, or do like the sane people do, skip classic and Kunark. Hell, skip Velious the game is way better in the later expansions. Secrets of Faydwer is an amazing expansion, Underfoot is pretty okay, but House of Thule? Best expansion in the game.