Alts are not a player made invention as they have been in the game from the start with the ability to create multiple characters on each server. Also not sure why you don't think that the devs want each character to earn things themselves when all raid items that have been made for most of the game are no drop and are not heirloom and the same can be said for most group drops as well. While there is a period early on in the game that those drops are tradeable for most of the game they are not outside of a free trade or legacy character server.
Err what flagging are you talking about the only flags I can think of which are still needed is Sol Ro chamber in Sol RoTower and TDS. Maybe Sky and TOFS, I've not been to either recently. Also not sure on TBL.
Alt = Alternative character. Main = Main character. It is a fictive hierarchy that only the players invented, because they were focused on a single character most of the time. From a dev perspective that does not matter. Without that hierarchy, it are multiple characters per account. Therefore nobody paid much attention to alts and QoL features regarding them. The term "QoL" came up much later. The first time that I did read about it was in 2017 here in the forums, and the oldest dictionary entry that I found is from 2005 and not related to gaming. For sure the devs want that the players do achieve some stuff on an active character because of the NO TRADE restrictions that you mentioned. There was a change in the loot/achievement concept with TSoV. That concept never worked well for alts tho, and not well at all. All it did was/is preventing that items can be traded as in the bazaar. It is punishing those players that do not have friends or a guild to help them to acquire stuff and is rewarding those that do socialize. It never was a fair concept and has not helped much to further the social aspects of the game. Instead it motivated the players to become manipulative, selfish, and greedy, and only joining a guild and making friends for loot and other achievements. So it does reward those people that are manipulative which is conditioning programming (Be manipulative -> Reward). The so called socializing concept turned out being an antisocial concept in reality. There is a huge gap between dev theories, intentions, their concepts, and the ingame reality.
As already mentioned in older posts, the complete PoP flagging is needed for the Artisan's Wares quest. For PoS and ToFS there are keys required that do get turned into flags by using them. I am sure that there are many other flags around. Most of them are called progression and achievements today.
PoP flagging is the easy part of Artisan's Prize, I'd do that 10 times if it ment I didn't have to do Erons Jewellry. Especailly as you don't have to go past Ele Planes to do it, though with AoCs it is even easier now.
Alt/Main are still multiple characters across the account which was how the game was designed. It doesn't matter who decided to call what characters an alt and which one mains. And it is highly likely that all game makers who allow for the creation of multiple characters on an account to consider them as such. Regardless that isn't relevant to the idea that the devs want you to earn stuff on each charcter. Are you really suggesting when all raid loot is no drop and most group loot is no drop that they only want some things to be earned by the character? They have rejected ideas such as making raid currency heirloom in the past because it needs to be earned by the character or allowing you to exchange raid currency for an older version because you need to actually earn that currency and not just buy it. Yes, I in understand that you might not like it but that is the design philosophy that the devs have been following for a long time. And the truth it that outside of a few flags/keys most everything unlocks after a few expansions removing the need for them.
Going as extreme as the Firiona Vie server where most or all raid loot is tradeable would not be a good idea for the live servers. For some stuff it is better if it does get earned only by the players who defeated a mob. My lvl ~10 wiz on FV got gifted with raid loot from Aaryonar and other raid mobs, and it was just not fun, so I did put that gear into my bank instead, for later levels. What the players do need is better support for alts, where HEIRLOOM items including raid currency, and clickable flags, are perfect. About nobody is playing a single toon per account anymore, instead it is about multi-tooning and multi-boxing today. Why should my ranger not be able to use the item that I earned with my rogue on a raid mob ? It is the same player behind them in most situations, and only very few players do share their accounts with other players today. It would be a great QoL addition, if most or even all NO TRADE tags would be converted into HEIRLOOM tags. We now have access to APs, but that is not going far enough. We do need similar mechanics for conventional alts too.
Personas aren't a single char. Nearly everything that makes a character isn't shared between personas. They are alts with a new title who share a name, inventory, and achievements. Those don't equate to being a character. A character consists of its avatar (different for each persona), level, AAs, abilities, flags, faction, etc. Furthermore, if they were considered the same character, why did you endlessly fight on the other thread how people would be upset if they were bid as mains rather than alts? If they are the same char, they are still your main. You're a walking contradiction. And if they didn't want flagging items to be shared, why can keys be shared on FT/heirloom servers? Why are keys shared among personas?
If you want free trade, play on a free trade server. If you want heirloom loot make a persona. Leave loot as it is so we have options. Leaving loot as it is should keep everyone happy as there are options to have it other ways.
The design of them by Daybreak is for a single character that shares most everything with the exception of needing to level them up from scratch. Personas where designed in order to share most things in order for the player not to have to do them again. As for the free trade/heirloom servers those are exceptions to the rule and shouldn't be used as examples of how the other servers should work. Not sure why you are trying to convince me that the system is wrong and should be changed when I am not defending it but instead pointing out that the devs have stated over the years that they want characters to earn things and not just pass them around on alts.
Free trade and heirloom servers (FV, Mischief, Oakwynd) are the most successfull ones. It does indicate that the players are not happy with NO TRADE loot. It is to grotesque to demand that veteran players with many PCs should start fresh on time limited and already nearly full servers, which does mean to leave up to 24 years of achievements behind. TLP servers are not interesting to me and FV is also not my taste. The only interesting TLP server is Agnarr because of its stability, but why should I run a sub for such old content, when I can get that for free on live servers ? It would be a nice server to play on every now and then, but not constantly, as it is very limited in content. Instead some of the features that do make those TLP servers that successfull, should be added to the live servers to keep them going. Maybe you have not noticed yet, but most of the live servers are bleeding to death. They are in need of a restoration. Darkbreak has focused way to much and way to long on TLP servers.
Are you basing this off the server population that keeps the player base on a single server versus the non free trade/heirloom servers that spread that population across many different servers? Those 4 servers are not the only ones that hit a high population on a regular basis and there are non free trade/heirloom servers that also hit a high population. Not sure why you keep pointing to free trade/heirloom as a better way to do things in regards to progression but then state that you don't want to play on those servers because it isn't to your taste.
I compared the live servers with the two successfull TLP servers, Mischief and Oakwynd. See here ! The only live servers than can compete with them outside the expansion release phase (Nov-Feb ?), are Bristlebane and Firiona Vie. However FV has a special beneficial ruleset that is partially similar to Mischief and Oakwynd. Bert, CT, E Marr and Xegony are already far behind with an mostly average, and rarely high population. I do need to collect more future data tho, but I am watching the server populations since about seven years and do remember that all the live servers were more populated some years ago. Bristlebane is the only exception. There seems to be a steady player transfer from other live, and TLP, servers to Bristlebane. The TLP server rulesets are one thing and the TLP systematic (short living, phases, very quick unlocks) is another one. I do not take short living TLP servers serious as they are not sustainable and a disposable toy for Nintendo and Steam gamers that do use games like a can of energy drink. Drink fast -> Throw away. It is just another target group than the original EQ gamers. TLP players will hate me now. In sum: Some parts of the TLP rulesets are appealing to me, and some are not. The TLP systematic is not appealing to me at all.
There are several live servers that hit a high population regularly even outside of expansion launches but you still seem to be ignoring the fact that there is 1 live free trade server, 2 tlp free trade servers (one of which doesn't hit high a lot) and 1 tlp heirloom server compared to 12 normal live servers (13 if you count pvp). It shouldn't be surprising that the population is more concentrated and looks higher on single server rulesets (2 for the tlp free trade but the second one has a low population) It shouldn't be expected that every live server is going to be able to compete with the special ruleset servers.
And yet Thornblade the other Random Tradeable Loot server is not high pop at all, in fact for the last couple of years they have been calling for a merge to Mischief. Brekt was merged into FV with very few players at the end of its cycle. Oakwynd is it high pop due to heirloom? Is it high pop due to legacy chars? Or just because it is the latest? This server isn't the best example to argue for heirloom loot. If you took the total number of players on all the NO Trade/No Heirloom servers they would far out number the players on the 3 servers you mention, Especially if traders are included in the numbers for Tradeable loot.
I'm a huge critic of NO DROP loot in the group game, where the loot is only equippable by a few classes. I understand it in raids, where you have all classes represented. But for a group to get a nice drop which can only be used by 2, 3, 4 classes? The odds are good that class is not present, and the drop goes to waste. Of course, it's bothered me a lot less since the increase in tribute values PS - can we have the thread go back to talking about PoP flagging?
What would really be helpful is the entire quest.. every hail, every NPC at every step listed in the achievement window as sub steps. That way players don't have to use the rather vague seer. Also, if Daybreak did that, they'd actually be forced to do the entire quest, which is very buggy. I did the quest and at least once, maybe twice, I had to contact Daybreak to fix flagging. But I also figured out that there are some very minor npc hails in Plane of Tranquility that (not sure), are either not needed to finish PoP flagging, or if you don't hail them before the Planer Projection in Tactics (The Warlord Rallos Zek event), will prevent you from getting proper flagging: You'll be credited with flagging by that Planer Projection, but the Librarian will not credit you with hailing that Planer Projection. So your caught in a loop: The Librarian will keep telling you your missing that step, and the actual planer projection tells you that it's been hailed already. In any event, I spent 4 solid days backtracking the entire PoP flagging of that Tier (3?) level to be absolutely sure I had my ducks in a row.. and due to the complexity of PoP flagging, I actually took screenshots of every hail to the various Planer Projections as I was doing the Flagging from the start of my flagging quest. Then contacted Daybreak, who fixed the flag in short order.
it's not that hard! Planar projections... the persistent myth that some "timer" begins after the first hail... start immediately
