Proposed QoL Epic 1.0 Changes

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Bobbybick, Mar 23, 2018.

  1. Healiez Augur

    yah cause in kunark you can legit get a ghoulbane in 5 mintues.

    I guess not that many people know about it
  2. Aneuren Tempered Steel

    Yeah, I was more in the mode of thinking how the camp was when I did it during Classic, which brings back those bad feelings about having to fight other people for the camp.
  3. Bobbybick Only Banned Twice

    I remember making this :)

    It's funny to look back and see some of the changes they DID make (shaman epic, marl, adding * locks on some turnins) and yet still seeing Verina Tomb being socked on Mangler in GoD.
    Aneuren and Duder like this.
  4. Xhartor Augur

    After the Marl fix for the SK epic Duriek Bloodpool respawn time for corrupt Ghoulbane became the main bottleneck for the SK epic. Lhranc respawn time is still an issue too.
  5. ECrack Augur


    I've proven this to be false. I actually think necroing the threads helped. =) I highly recommend it.
  6. Crackers Elder

    Most of these changes aren't quality of life, they're make the game easy mode changes. For example...

    Zordak ragefire in Sol B spawns in DZs, and picks. You mean to tell me it's so hard to put together a group to pull a pick that you need the spawn time to be changed?

    The Kedge Backbone is arguably the piece my guild has the most 's banked of out of any epic piece. Happens every TLP too.

    You're going to gripe about other things being more common, but then leave no change on things like the mage epic that requires rare drop after rare drop? Pegasus cloak might be the most glaring example of a change needed in all of the epics, and yet you're arguing over other silly drops?

    Regardless, these changes completely cheapen the epic weapons in era. This isn't "Everyone gets a reward Quest", this is Everquest. Put some effort into these quests, or don't do them. I'm all for removing some toxicity from the quests, but this is not what you're asking. You're asking to make them so simple someone who plays 2 hours a week can do them.
  7. Trevalon Augur


    I once heard that casuals shouldn't see Nagafen...

    It is funny to look back on this thread.
    Aneuren likes this.
  8. Bobbybick Only Banned Twice

    Well, I did literally address that in like the 3rd post... 2 years ago. The mage epic has multiple pieces that, while they can be rare, are actual pieces of gear that can be useful by themselves (pet focuses, free levitate click) and most of the non-item pieces are soloable.

    I don't really understand why people keep coming back to the Pegasus Cloak being the rare part of the magician epic. If I would change anything about Mag epic it'd be to do the same treatment to Undertow's blazing wand to be a random drop off any mermaid similar to the kedge backbone.

    Cleric change was pretty much for the same reason you have a problem with it. If a cleric can just pop a dz whenever they want to spawn Zordak in an instance... why does he still have a long repop timer?

    I don't believe these cheapen anything about epics. I didn't suggest removing ANY steps (in fact in some epics I suggested adding some in) merely making it more about effort vs. time. With instances already raining loot down upon everyone on top of dragon scales being basically worthless epics don't mean what they used to. Most of these are just to make the game slightly less aggravating for people that just want to enjoy some nostalgiaquest, not sitting on a spawn for days on end just to lose it to some guy 6 boxing.

    This is all moot because I'm pretty sure with Prathun gone we're not going to see any more tuning changes on TLP servers outside of maybe Ngreth deciding to nerf some more tradeskill recipes ;)
    Skuz and Captain Video like this.
  9. Captain Video Augur


    This. Plus the fact that overall server performance issues (lag) since the shared DB revamp are ongoing, and are by far the #1 priority. People can necro all the threads they want, the dev resources simply aren't there now, we make do with what we got.
  10. Branntick Augur

    Not really, no. Network engineers are not software developers. The people who would be changing things like epic spawn timers have nothing to do whatsoever with fixing the current server instability.

    The sad reality is that Daybreak/Darkpaw/whomever arbitrarily decides what they want to fix/change. The fact that Marl, for instance, was adjusted without any other changes being made shows how out of touch the devs are with their own game.

    It doesn't actually solve the problem at all, it just shifts the bottleneck elsewhere. The SK epic still has TWO multi-day bottlenecks.

    Don't make excuses for the devs. This stuff is easily fixable. It is a conscious choice not to do it.
    Skuz likes this.
  11. KermittheFroglok Augur


    I know I posted that I'm not a fan of QoL threads for Epics, but I do agree that Undertow's spawn timer & infrequency relative to placeholders made it the most frustrating bottle neck when I did do that epic. I don't know if I would change what drops it as much as changing how often Undertow & the placeholder spawn. Making it a random drop off of any mermaid or other Kedge mob would be too easy. That might be reasonable on future fast progression servers like Selo.

    I agree the Pegasus Cloak really isn't a terrible item to get like others imply. The common complaint is that it's "harder to spawn" in era because its more common to see other people killing stuff in the zone. But I noticed its actually easiest to get it to spawn when you do have a ton of people killing everything in the zone because the placeholder is more likely to be getting killed, you just need a bard to boost your speed & a tracker up near the spawn area so you get to Quillmane first, ideally + few friends to help you out DPS anyone else. *shrugs*
  12. Galaras Lorekeeper

    Most people just don't understand how Quillmane works. I researched/read all the articles on him and I went to a late xpac TLP and taught myself his spawn cycle. Once I had the spawn cycle I think I spawned 4 Quillmanes in 1.5 hours. Nothing needs to change about that.
    KermittheFroglok likes this.
  13. Galaras Lorekeeper

    The real reason for adjustments to epics is the original epics weren't designed for servers with mega high populations like current TLP's. The "challenge" of the quests isn't the current issue. The issue is can you be the first of 20-30 people sitting around a ground spawn to click it or do a turn in. If you're willing to do the work/time for the epic you shouldn't be blocked by artificial throttling of other players. AoCs were introduced for all players to experience content and it added exponentially to TLP player counts. Similar adjustments should be made for players that are willing to put in the work to do their epic.
    Aneuren likes this.
  14. Captain Video Augur


    In this case, the exact opposite is true. The cross-server character DB that went live in February is entirely developer-supported, and has absolutely nothing to do with network engineering. To put this in an enterprise context: If you're getting poor performance results out of Oracle's query optimizer because your database design isn't properly normalized, you don't call your TCP/IP guy to come and fix it, they won't know jack about Oracle. You need a database guru, which quite possibly DPG/DBG has never had. I don't know what DB product is being used here, but I do know that for years and years, when all the server-side character data was being managed as flat files, we didn't have these problems.

    TLP and Live servers share a common code base. It's not as simple as changing one spawn timer, because it's all table-driven. Creating an entirely separate code base just for TLPs is multiple person-years of work. It's not gonna happen.
  15. KermittheFroglok Augur


    Galaras, I respectfully disagree with you on the basis of fact, because the discussion is around Epic 1.0 NOT 1.5/2.0. The 1.0 epics are from the original McQuaid era content, when the game's population was steadily increasing and servers were being created because the game was booming and had high pop. I use to play when they were still current gear and they were comparatively very rare to see outside of the advanced raid game.

    The latter 1.5 & 2.0 epics were from the Omens of War (2004) when the server population was significantly lower and we consequently had multiple waves of mergers throughout 2005. I agree that the latter epics could be perceived as harder and much more competitive now by someone that completed them on a low population server in 2004 before the following year's mergers.

    However, with that in mind, I think the epic 1.0's are actually a little easier on today's high population servers because we also have dynamic and pick zones in to help in some cases. Sure, we have to out DPS bots today, but "DPS racing" is at least an option now, in the past you had to stand in line on a camp list for hours and your guild had to compete for open world raids. My point is decades ago we had bottlenecks at camps and you just had to wait for the content to be available and wait for it to be your turn to get the item you need from a raid based off however your guild worked.

    Waiting to complete an epic 1.0 isn't anything new to TLPs, heck, even later, we still had ridiculous lines to get certain fabled drops.

    If the Devs had time and resources I'd say it'd be nice to see something like a a watered down epic 0.5 or epic .75 parallel to the 1.0 that a player could do for the experience but with a slightly nerfed but cosmetically identical reward. That might be a fun compromise so people can experience the "content" and get something but still have to work for the real Epic 1.0. But, again resources really aren't available for that. :-/
  16. Galaras Lorekeeper


    This is just anecdotal but they had much lower population expectations in classic everquest. They kept launching servers because the technology for instancing or AoC's just wasn't there at the time and they knew the game needed sufficiently low(by today's standards) server populations to sustain a happy customer base.

    I understand that epics were contested in the past but it wasn't 30-40+ people waiting to try and grab a ground spawn or turn-in contested. The real bottlenecks were the raid targets that were spawning only once a week and typically dominated by one batphone/zerg guild on the server. Point in case, the developers actually made QoL changes to the epic (2004/2005ish I believe) because of issues with mobs such as Cazic never being available most people insinuating that they wanted people will to do the quest to have more access/ability to do so. Ironically those QoL changes are actually making some epics harder than the original design.
  17. Captain Video Augur


    With all due respect, you have no clue what you're talking about.

    At its peak in 2004, EQ had more than 500K active simultaneous subscribers. The exact numbers today are not known, since DPG/DBG keeps those close to the vest, but best guesstimates put it in the range of 30-50K subscribed accounts, not counting lifers. So, less than 10% of its peak, and it's doing better now than it was five years ago (per public statements by Holly). They kept launching new servers back in the day because THERE WERE SO MANY FREAKING PLAYERS. Server populations were higher than they are today, because the game world was much, much smaller and each box could accommodate more characters.

    Epics weren't being contested by 30-40 players per server, it was more like 100+ per server. There were queues, you waited your turn, and the lines were moderated by GMs and guides. Break your place in line and you got suspended. Attempt to DPS race a mob that had a line, you got suspended. There wasn't one batphone guild per server, >ALL< guilds were batphone guilds, there wasn't any Discord or Twitter or Android or iOS back then. One ruling guild per server? You couldn't possibly have been playing back then if you think that. Players who raided were only a small percentage of the population; the vast majority were content to explore group content and socialize with their in-game friends. It was a true MMO, not a half-baked multiplayer RPG designed with single-player treatment in mind.

    If you want to go through all this old content uncontested, you can; just roll on a Live server. If you want to play on a server that approximates the in-era experience, which is what a TLP is supposed to be doing, then you need to accept the fact that a lot of the playerbase isn't going to get their epics in-era, because that's how it was back in the day. Your chances are already significantly better now, since the total population per server is a lot less than it was then. The original design was that they should be ULTRA-RARE, something you and your guild could brag about. You don't get one solely for the sake of entitlement.
  18. merkmerk73 Journeyman

    You're absolutely nuts if you think live servers back then had anything like the current population of Aradune
    Go to Chardok right now and you have 6 or 7 picks of 30+ players each. There was nothing like that concentration of players on live, ever.

    Not even on Veeshan.
    Niskin and Galaras like this.
  19. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Except the devs did make some of the suggested changes to Epics since the original post.

    Sometimes the devs change perspective, sometimes a player makes a really convincing argument or a really good proposed change, sometimes it needs a change of who is working on what part of the game or for an old dev to go & a new one replace them, which has happened a lot over the game's life.

    Changes to epic quests, as with any other quests can & do happen.

    So calling players dumb & saying that changes won't happen is probably the most ignorant thing said in this thread so far.
  20. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I can't pinpoint where or or who said it but I definitely heard at least one dev say something to confirm that the TLP servers have much larger populations that the live servers experienced when they opened so I am pretty confident you are right about that.
    Niskin likes this.