Presence of the mighty?

The mobs in kunark hit for double what they do on the live server already. As a decently geared raid tank every now and then sev will duo me in on round for 1250 (meaning 1250, 1250 for 2500 total damage from that round). That is double what Zam and Eq1999 say he can hit for.

then stop trying to give a 17 year old video game the same mechanics as WoW....when you do that, people will stop telling you to go play WoW...

I've given up arguing or trying to present any logical reason to Tulgin. I went at it for awhile, but I realized its pointless. Best to just ignore him. Most already do anyway. At one point I thought he was just a very dedicated troll, but at this point I am convinced his crusade of terrible ideas (Classic EQ raid scaling, and removal of anything open world) are a product of his inherent stubbornness and stupidity.

If there is anything that people from opposite ends of the EQ spectrum actually agree upon, it is that Tulgin's ideas are some of the most delusional garbage to litter these forums.

And to be clear, I actually like WoW. I've played it since 2004 and continue to play it. So I'm not trying to be some EQ elitist when I say this. I say it with a great appreciation and understanding of both games.

Yeah my idea's are terrible, because the game currently is perfect. That's why so many people carry on playing and TLP servers don't die off always, every single time. Open world mobs are a brilliant idea, they bring out the best in the community and don't create any drama and loot imbalances at all. Nice one.

Stop trolling and realise how open world mobs have no place in a modern MMO, and that raids need to scale for the survivability of the server.

Open world mobs are the most pointless and ridiculous thing I've ever seen in an MMO.

Also really, you don't think Dev's are capable to create a simple form of raid scaling depending on number of players in the DZ? I mean really the simplest version is to alter the MOTM buff depending on DZ size. Now they've added another buff to increase spell damage, they can use that to tweak depending on DZ size. Making the boss drop more loot depending on DZ size isn't that hard either. Give them some credit. A simple change that will prolong the life of a TLP? Why is that trolling? You guys are clueless.

Just face it, you zerg content down with 100+ people in open world, thinking it's gangsta. Yet none of you have any arena rating when its 3v3 balanced games. Get Gladiator then talk.

Then don't play TLP.

I'm on Phinny.

Tulgin is kinda onto something (except I take the opposite approach to "fix" open-world raiding), which is why we're going to see this in the new TLP come June/July (a wishful-thinking prediction lol):

- add raid tiering T1-T4 ( different MoTM based on DZ size, loot multipliers 0.5x-3x based on DZ size, etc). T1 is no MotM and 0.5x loot. T2 is upcoming MotM (after incoming patch fixes). T3 is hybrid MotM of current and incoming (higher regen, higher spell damage, so thougher than we've seen to date). T4 is uber MotM we have yet to see, and only the largest guilds will be able to kill after gearing up in-era.
- this isn't just multiplying the loot. It's rolling x times for the loot and accumulating it.. For T1 (not MotM), it's taking half the items rolled and eliminating them, but guaranteeing at least 1 drop.
- remove split raiding (namely add guild-wide DZ instance creation lockouts in addition to current loot lockouts to prevent exploitation of raid scaling)
- DZ can be reset but only at lower level, and only if boss has not been killed (to allow redo's at lower level after a wipe). Once boss is killed above DZ creation lockout stands firm. You can only go down, not up. So this encourages guilds to try once or twice at a higher level, then go lower if they can't. Much better than splitting IMO. MUCH MUCH MUCH.
- scaling / tiering is not based on a formula (# players, levels, etc). You start at T1 automatically. T2 is automatic once you've killed T1, and so forth. Once T2 is killed, the next DZ of that content will be T3 automatically. So the way you pop a DZ does not change. It will automatically create it at the Tier you guild is at, but you can lower it IF you have not killed the boss yet! That will kick everybody from DZ, return you to AoC, and recreate it automatically at lower level. I envision new command /dzlower. Again, can only go down. Again, you can go down at any time as long as boss hasn't been killed. So this greatly eliminates mini-boss farming concerns because you are neutering your main boss...
- increase XP rate to RF/LJ levels (ie faster XP than phinny)
- no vote unlocks based on 4 months fixed.
- open world raid mobs KEPT, and in fact added to ALL instances, but at max-tier difficulty T4 only!!
- zone caps removed (but thresholds for automatic instance creation kept)

If / when this happens, roughly 40% - 50% of players on Phinny will jump ship to this new server, and the money floweth for DBG. Phinny will still be viable, just as Ragefire is today: it will have Ragefire-like levels. Since the new server will remain box-free, I don't expect to see this new server affect RF/LJ numbers one iota.

The above fixes the biggest complaints that people currently have with Phinny, just like Phinny did before with LJ. It takes a great server and makes it even better, not only for casuals, but also for hardcores. EVERYBODY who guilds 20+ extreme casuals can now successfully raid content in era, but you get very little loot for doing so at T1 (50% loot for no MotM). Only hardcore / mega guilds can do T4 and get 3x loot, so those large guilds can now not only farm their SINGLE INSTANCE (since it can't be split), they can farm picks as well, at T4, *if they can*!!!. But make no mistake, the open-world mobs are going to be TOUGH AS NAILS!!! Furthermore, since zone caps will be lifted, even though only officially 72 can be in raid, they can field 100+ no problem FTW. The entire mega guild can zerg, which will not only be possible due to zone-cap removal, it will be necessary to take on those uber T4 bosses. In fact, large guilds may even have to....shudder...COOPERATE to have enough DPS to overcome T4 regen...

This is the server that Phinny should be, but it is not right to change Phinny now. That would be unfair.

Make it happen DBG. If you like money, make it happen. ;-)

In short, the solution to open-world raiding is you actually not only keep it, but EMBRACE it with the top-tier designed for DZ scaling. That combined with removing the zone cap limits, combined with MotM-less T1 DZ's is what addresses ALL ELEMENTS OF THE COMMUNITY!!! hardcoares get what they want. Casuals get what they want. Bragging rights to those who can manage to do a full T4 in-era, *if any*. Give them smething to shoot for, but at the same time let EVERYBODY enjoy the content, even if at MotM-less T0, even if at 0.5x rate loot.

Everybody gets what they want.

Plus, you are no longer spending / wasting 30m to 60m setting up splits which NOBODY finds any fun. Tiered / scaled raiding without splitting is a much more natural and fun solution to the problem that split-raiding is today.

Your ideas ARE terrible but let's indulge them anyway.

Let's for argument sake take 3 velious mobs. I'm going to attach hypothetical numbers to them - they are not necessarily reflecting in game values - to use as a base for argument.

Vindi - doubles for 800, 800k hps, single target rampage for 800.
Tunare - quads for 1200, 3m hps, single target flurries (for quad 1200) and nukes for 1k.
Sonta - quads for 500, 1m hps, AEs a 12s fear, 600dd, and 4 slot dispel.

What would Vindi's values be for a raid of 12, a raid of 30, a raid of 60, and a zerg of 180? Same for Tunare and Sontalak?

Would Vindi scale up at a lower starting point than the other two, such that he's almost if not AS hard as Tunare if raiding both with 72? Or would you set the same baseline number, eg 54 raiders, for all mobs and scale up and down from that?

How much loot would these drop? If Tunare typically drops 3 non-bp items currently, and said to be balanced for 54 people... how much should she drop if you bring 72 and she's now harder? What about only 40 and she scales difficulty down? How much should she drop if one grouped?

Kindly give me what kind of numbers we should be looking at for scaling here. Keep in mind that if you double multiple numbers you actually multiply the total, eg 8x8=64 but 4x4=16, so that halving vindis numbers from 800 and 800k to 400 and 400k isn't necessarily just halving his difficulty. Also keep in mind that some elements are borderline pass/fail such as Tunare flurrying is instant death if she goes up even just a small % in melee damage, while her entire challenge is basically trivialized if you halve just her damage. How would you balance just these 3?

Split raiding is a bodge for something that DBG should be doing with raid scaling anyway. The players have come up with their own solution to make raids more challenging and give themselves more loot. So we are ALREADY doing raid scaling on our own. People are disrespecting an idea that is already being implemented in game by most guilds.

I love the idea about tiers unlocking as you complete the previous one, hadn't thought of that.

40-50% of players will jump ship, yes. This isn't a big change, we, the players have already implemented it ourselves with split raiding. It's something that should have happened since day 1. It's not 'unfair' to change it now. It's a fix to a problem that exists, a problem that will only get much worse as time goes on.

Once scaled / teired raiding is in place, open world mobs really have no purpose in the game any more, they'll be unbalanced, they'll restrict all guilds getting the appropriate amount of loot because open world mobs will still be considered when DBZ balance raid drops. They create un-needed drama for no benefit at all. It's terrible game design, seriously. We'll have huge amounts of competition with tiered raiding that open world mobs will be joke and anyone that kills them will be mocked.

First, who spends 30-60m splitting raids? How hard is it to have someone in each raid count off class totals and swap? This is just an absurd number to throw out at the end of your idea and I truly hope it's exaggerating. If you actually take over a half hour to split your raids I would start either kicking the incompetent officers who can't or won't just count totals and divide in two, or kick members who can't shut up and pay attention for the literal couple minutes at most this should take so they join the correct split.

Guild-wide lockouts are a notoriously awful idea. There is a really good reason you do not see these used in other successful MMOs. They can also be bypassed by anyone willing to endure the tedium of guild-swapping for a night. Do you want to put a lockout on joining a guild once you leave an old one too? Maybe add a memory feature so you get pegged with your prior guild's lockouts for x days after disbanding? Hire some GMs to police abuse? All terrible.

This is before even getting into obsolete instances. What happens if you decide you want to make a vah shir bard when Luclin finally comes out, and decide to do a kedge instance? Is your entire guild now locked out of kedge because of you? Are you going to be stuck having to run a train on a wildly overtuned world spawn otherwise?

There is a solution to split raiding - it's making your t4 balanced so that the risk is worth the reward, rather than the loss is less than the punishment. This is how all manner of MMOs handle it. If t1 is balanced around say 30 people, and drops 3 items, then a t3 balanced for 60 people needs to drop MORE than 6 items. Your incentive to do harder raids becomes better loot per person for the difficulty, not some horrendous guildwide lockout obnoxiously punishing you into only 1. Carrot not stick.

Finally, although I probably missed something, long lockouts do not actually keep people in the game. Everquest is an old and beaten husk - there's no figuring out the new or discovering the unknown. It doesn't need numerous months to complete anymore. 4 months is too long, and 4 months with faster xp and impossible open world content restricting you to a single guild locked instance? Sounds terrible. Consider ditching your guildwide lockout entirely and maybe halving your lockout so that content can stay fresh and people aren't burning out every couple months.

yeah...i've given up at this point. I read what you posted here, then read the rest of the thread, and it just got worse. I have people at the office looking up at me while I laugh and shake my head and these ridiculous suggestions. I don't think him or anyone entertaining his ideas realize this game is 17 years old. it's the longest running highly active MMO to date (yes yes there are others that have been around longer, but not with the population) and has succeeded all this time for very specific reasons.

oh well...lol

So you're playing WoWQuest....which isn't real everquest...at least Lockjaw/Phinny are more real than WoWquest-Phinigel.

The easiest form of scaling would be to have the tiered system as mentioned above. Here's the first 2 tiers, carry on all the way to tier 4 if you want, whatever.

Tier 1:

Vindi - doubles for 600, 600k hps, single target rampage for 600.
Tunare - quads for 800, 2m hps, single target flurries (for quad 800) and nukes for 700.
Sonta - quads for 400, 800k hps, AEs a 12s fear, 300dd, and 2 slot dispel.

Loot: 4 items per boss



Tier 2

Vindi - doubles for 700, 700k hps, single target rampage for 700.
Tunare - quads for 1000, 2.5m hps, single target flurries (for quad 1000) and nukes for 850.
Sonta - quads for 450, 900k hps, AEs a 12s fear, 400dd, and 3 slot dispel.

Loot: 8 items per boss



That's just a BS example. I don't have access to thousands of hours of damage, mitigation and avoidance parses that DBZ has. I don't get paid to sit here thinking for hours about how to finely balance each raid. I don't get to watch every guild kill a boss to see how easily / hard it is. I come up with amazing ideas to popularize EQ to a broader audience and let DBZ work out the fine details. It seems they prefer to add Mitigation buffs and regen instead of increased HP, so do that, whatever.

Let tier 1 be doable by 30 people, or 72 people who want an easy kill. Give appropriate loot drops that are dependant on expansion unlock timers. Servers with 3 month unlock drop twice as much loot compared to those with 6 month unlock, it's not rocket science.

But however it's achieved, EQ needs tiered / scaled raiding and removal of open world bosses to be relevant and popular and make loads of money.

Exactly this. Split raids shouldn't happen, they should never be a benefit. It's currently a temporary solution to a problem which DBZ should be fixing with tiered raiding. Guild wide lockouts are not needed, split raiding won't be a problem when raids are balanced.

If you were in charge of designing EQ, I'd fire you instantly. 3000 people playing on a TLP isn't successful, it's scraping by and keeping the lights on with the help of micro transactions. WoW has 11 billion subscribers, that's successful. You wan't to stop me coming up with idea's that will lead to 350 versions of Phiny TLP servers being opened at once, each with 4500 players, to keep up with the demand? No? Sit down then.

TIL WoW has 3-4 Billion more subs than people on Earth.

Agreed, even if you are terrible at it, no way it should take 30 minutes. I think OGC does the most complicated split raids on the server, and it takes about 5 minutes for us to split our raid force into four or five splits. They aren't always perfectly balanced raid forces but they don't need to be usually.

Lol. The self delusion is real.

It's the aliens, you know.

Not to split hairs or anything, but WoW was at 5.5 Million subscribers last November and said they would never release those numbers again. Lol let's see what they have on their 17th bday.