Sense Heading - Progression Server Changes

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Roshen, Apr 29, 2016.

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  1. malaki Augur

    Pretty much this. There's a ton of posts even in this thread already about how GoD is all for the raiders, when in fact there's more to do in GoD for a non raider than in a number of the previous expansions. It's more non raider friendly than PoP or Velious for sure, and because there's no level cap increase you can still do plenty of stuff in PoP or LDoN as well.
    Finchy and Grisvok like this.
  2. Starklen Journeyman

    Could anyone from the team comment on why PoP and LDoN are not being bundled like they were on Fippy? As an expansion, PoP is cleared very quickly and most of the raid content prior to PoT is trivialized once you reach it. You effectively get into a situation where you are doing your time raid every week + a few EP gods here and there when you get bored. It really isn't much by the time you're fully flagged, probably actually very similar to how kunark feels right now with VP/VS/Trak.

    The LDoN raids provided some ways to kill time and improve your character a bit between PoT lockouts on Fippy. I can't imagine what life on the server is going to be like where we have 3 months without it, and then additional 3 months with it on top of that. Even with LDoN and PoP together, 3 months would feel like a very full amount of time for any competent guild to clear and farm the end game content. I'd like to see someone like Machen comment but I think that most anyone that played that TLP and during that era would agree that 6 months is excessive.

    Each vote failure on Fippy caused haircuts to its population before the server even reached GoD and the total duration of PoP + LDoN was nowhere near 6 months there. This is troubling to me.
    Qelyn, Finchy, malaki and 1 other person like this.
  3. Thrash New Member

    ^ this.

    Remember dbg, we are your clients. It'd be different if phinny was F2P and you guys were relying on dbgstore revenues. I wouldn't expect you to answer to us in those regards. But since we are subscribing clients, there is a two way street in decision making. Don't bite the hands that feed you and pay your bills.

    Or you guys can choose to be arrogant and assume the power of addiction will overcome the power of our tastes. That worked in 1999. Not anymore.
  4. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro

    The "players spreading out" thing is the weirdest part of this thread.

    We're already have a very healthy level of spreading out in group content via pick zones. We already have a very healthy level of spreading out in raid content via expeditions.

    Bundling GoD+OoW uhh doesn't really have any effect on player concentration, except to shift people out of GoD content.
  5. Kiani Augur

    I was in a raiding guild that stuttered and nearly folded in GoD first time around. I liked the expansion personally, but bits of it were tough on raiders, and planes was easier for groups.

    I liked the group expeditions for flagging and spell drops.

    I would like to see GoD and OoW released separately to experience GoD again, as it is retuned, and with my current guild. I would think that if they were both released together, lots of people would skip GoD altogether without giving it a fair shot.
    Finchy likes this.
  6. Weverley Augur

    I think raiders see things very differently in regard to Planes of Power.Go ask how long a casual who group mostly and don't raid much if at all how long he can stay on that expansion even without ldon and you gonna get a totally different answer then what i hear raiders are saying about it. After all the majority of Phinny never gonna end up in time period.So it's very self-serving to say i'm gonna be bored in PoP after 3 months.When i was on combine i remember grouping in a lot of elemental planes like the vast majority of the server.
  7. TheTick Journeyman

    The fact is that Fippy and Vulak lost a bigger % of active players during GoD than almost any other expansion release.

    I feel like that might be where this is coming from, but by all mean roshen correct me if I'm wrong.

    Maybe we should be giving examples of why exactly opening Omens and GoD together will make them lose a higher %...because maybe it won't? I'm not so sure anymore.

    but my stance is, fine if they open together then they get twice the time on Phinny, not just 12 weeks.
  8. yerm Augur

    You can't get into the elemental planes without flagging for it, which requires raids. MM and RZTW were not pushovers on Combine and won't be on here either if they MOTM buff them. When I say POP is boring (as a raider) it's even more so for non raiders! They can't even access many of the zones. A casual enough player to not find POJ trials doable may only see 5 of the zones in total for a long, long time. Ever wonder why POP is followed by 2 expansion so thoroughly non-raid focused they just get bundled on every previous TLP? It's because it's the casuals, smaller and/or family guilds, and especially the non raiders, who felt so completely disenfranchised by POP's design focus that the devs a decade and a half ago decided to put out back to back expansions with the bulk of content clearly intended for them, rather than people like me.
  9. TheTick Journeyman

    They added many group alt access quests to pop flagging zones.
  10. Queena_Brokenhearts Augur

    And that's exactly the way this bundling should take place, if they are going to be bundled at all. Release PoP and LDoN together, then release LoY and GoD together.
  11. Machen New Member


    This is not accurate, at least on the raiding side of things (impossible to measure the casual non-raider side.) We lost some players during the failed votes BEFORE GoD launched, but very few actually quit during GoD. The # of guilds doing content was virtually identical between PoP and GoD (although the # finishing content was much lower due to the difficulty.) In fact there was hardly any decrease in # of guilds doing content anywhere between Kunark and OoW--bkfippy.com lists 10 guilds doing content in Kunark, and fippykills.com has effectively 9 guilds doing content in OoW (Rosengard/Obscure are effectively the same guild), and for the most part they are the same guilds or the same people moved around into slightly different configurations. If people were leaving the server in droves during GoD, multiple guilds would have collapsed/merged from lack of players, and that just didn't happen.

    Now from DODH to PoR, we had a ton of guild mergers, guild collapses, etc. That's where the massive population loss happened. We went from 10 active raid guilds at the start of DoDH to 6 at the end of PoR, to 3 in TBS. Far more attrition during that stretch than anything that happened from Kunark to OoW.
    Xars likes this.
  12. Realitycheck Elder

    They didn't open the elemental planes up with no flagging requirements until after PoP so that begs the question, how were you getting to the Elemental Planes without raiding?

    If you're in the elemental planes in era on a TLP you're either in a raiding guild that will probably be farming Time sooner rather than later and thus bored or you're being 85/15%'d in, in which case you're directly benefiting from a raiding guild that will probably be farming Time sooner rather than later and thus bored.

    If you're solely doing group content your access to higher level planes is, I'm not kidding here, limited to BoT and PoV. MAYBE there will be PUG raids after a month or so that can kill MB and AD that will get you access to HoH and PoTactics. And then nothing. HoH and Tactics aren't exciting enough nor do they have enough content to last even the most rose-colored glasses group content player two months.



    Fippy didn't lose a bigger % of active players during GoD than almost any other expansion release. They lost a bigger % active players leading up to the GoD release due to the voting mechanic and PoP failing twice (or more?) and no clarity on when GoD would actually release. People quit (and then never came back) because split raiding Time for the hundredth time for a hope at 1 of like 4 items (like a TA) became mind numbing.

    And EQ is just like any addiction, once you actually stop the habit, it becomes much easier to not pick it back up in the first place.
  13. Machen New Member


    Those aren't active on progression servers in era iirc.
  14. yerm Augur

    The only one of these additions that will make a difference is the one for Sol Ro. That does provide a BIT of farming and sideways momentum for a non raider, but is in no way good and suitable for the 65 grind - even for well geared raiders it's not. Meanwhile, the actual far and away best zones for XP are the elemental planes, and these require a considerable raid effort. POP locks casuals out of the good stuff; it's boring for raiders but it's even harsher for those who don't.
    Finchy likes this.
  15. Gumby Augur

    I guess what you all don't get is that A LOT of people would rather just quit now if you are going to do stupid things like link expansions together and change things on a whim like this.

    Or perhaps you do and would just rather string people along in hopes that they stick around for it.

    Either way it's pretty awful.
  16. Raytheon Augur

    If Daybreak wants to keep riding the TLP train and the sub dollars it brings in, they need to stop putting out new TLP servers with different voting/expansion unlock schemes to try to capture the needs and wants of a particular sect of vocal forum TLPers, and instead put into place a go-forward infrastructure that allows individuals or guilds to decide for themselves how to progress through the content, yet still keep the guild vs. guild competitive aspect. The way forward for that involves separating the competitive guild vs. guild vs. guild "racing" aspect from the expansion to expansion "unlocking" of content. One way to do that would be to spin up a number of new servers (call them simply "Locked Progression Servers", removing the "time" aspect). Each of these servers would start out representing all of the content through the end of a level cap increase (except classic).:

    LP Server 1 - All content through Luclin (lvl 60)
    LP Server 2 - All content through GoD (lvl 65)
    LP Server 3 - All content through PoR (lvl 70)
    LP Server 4 - All content through TBS (lvl 75)
    LP Server 5 - All content through SoF (lvl 80)
    LP Server 6 - All content through UF (lvl 85)
    LP Server 7 - All content through HoT (lvl 90)
    LP Server 8 - All content through VoA (lvl 95)
    LP Server 9 - All content through CoTF (lvl 100)
    Optional LP Server 10 - All content through current exp. (lvl 105)

    The secret sauce here is to allow people free one-way transfers from one server to the next. People who want to move to the next tier of content as guilds can move as guilds, people who want to move as groups can move as groups, and people who want to solo/molo the whole thing can do that too. As DBG adds new expansions with level caps increases, they just have to spin up a new LP server that adds expansions as they are released on Live, until the next level cap increase. This would allow anyone to experience the “locked progression” experience at whatever pace they wanted.

    The competitive aspect is this: Using EQ’s current Achievements system, you create competitive “leagues” or “races” with specific achievements like “Season 1 Classic Completed” “Season 1 Kunark Completed” etc…. These should be trackable ladder-style as guilds move move from server to server though the progression by season. The guilds that want to race through content competitively with other guilds can do so at their own pace (which brings an element of strategy among guilds as they decide how long in the current levels they need to farm gear to be successful in the next.) People who want to stick around in their favorite expansion era or altaholics are the developers of the economy/tradeskills/etc… that are used by the guilds or groups that are “racing” through their server’s content.

    Some specific “leagues” or “seasons” could start at specific times on each server (instead of always starting on Server 1 and moving forward). That would allow guilds/groups that were “left in the dust” in a previous race through their current server join a new race starting at the next server and moving forward. When or if a “Season” dies out, spin up another one by just creating new achievements for them and let people go again.

    If one guild decides to jump to the next server ahead of their competitors, the competitors left behind always have the option to bust their rears to catch up in the overall progression of the “season”.

    This scheme should alleviate most of the on the forums about when/if to move to the next tier of content as it would be totally in the player’s control, and those guilds that want to wave their e-peens at other guilds can do that too. I suspect the truly highly competitive guilds would readily take up the challenge of “speedracing” through the progression content as fast as they possibly can, for just the lulz of breaking any previously-set records.

    Yes this would be a bit more server infrastructure for DBG to set up and manage, but once it’s in place, they would never have to migrate new content to the server. All that would be required are bug fixes and Achievements creation/management (which with a little work could be completely automated).
    Xars likes this.
  17. Machen New Member


    No. There is not enough population on progression to spread it across 10+ different servers. Most of them would be a ghost town.
  18. Raytheon Augur

    Maybe much of the time, but not when one or more seasons is ripping through.
  19. Weverley Augur

    From what i recall on combine we did poj trials but that was mostly it but i went to bot, valor, HoH quite often.Never went into time.Another few planes also like plane of disease, innovation and a few more.
  20. Chanaluss Can spell Doljonijiarnimorinar, Iqthinxa Karnkvi


    Its appreciated that you came to give us an update.

    obviously i think the word is out on how folks feel about Gates/Omens.

    But i wanted to get some insight on the situation with LDoN.
    As far as i can recall, LDoN was never a stand-alone expansion for any progression cycle, in that its completion was never a rule to unlock Gates. Whats more, this goes contrary to the original Ragefire FAQ, where it is stated that Gates unlocks X weeks/months after PoP, and that LDoN was considered to be part of the PoP cycle. What changed on your end to decide to make LDoN a full 3 months like the other expansions?
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