The effects of relaxed true box on Mischief and the next TLP

Mischief has been an awesome TLP since launch. It's maintained a healthy population with a communicative community. I've been in the same guild since launch and have always found groups with guild mates pretty easily. When guild groups weren't available, finding pick-up groups has been fairly easy too.

Ever since the boxing rules were relaxed, this has all changed. Not only has the guild gotten much more quiet, so has general chat. Finding groups has become a real challenge. And it's not because fewer players are on. You can look at the guild window and see plenty of people out and about but so many more of them are now boxing. For whatever reason, they just become hermits. Probably because they no longer require the community to accomplish their goals.

People could box before, but the relaxing of true box means it's a lot easier and so more and more people start doing it. Unfortunately, this leads us to be the same as live servers which feel like busy ghosts towns. Lots of people, but nobody talks.

It's sad. Mischief has been the most fun TLP I've ever experienced. But now, it's becoming something else. Something less. And it's because the community has become too self-sufficient.

The Next TLP:
I'd love to see a TLP where boxing was not allowed at all. A server where /follow was disabled and where DBG agreed to be specifically attentive to issuing suspensions/bans for violations.

Of course, there would be complaints about a server where boxing wasn't allowed. People will say "but I play with my family". And to that, I say there has already been dozens of TLP's for you. Give the 98%+ of us who don't play with our families a server that doesn't die off due to boxing.

Agreed.

Vaniki server died because of relaxed truebox too.

This is where AGILE comes into play.
Is the server doing ok as is?
Do you really... reallly..... really? need to do relax truebox.

Be AGILE,
server is doing as is. Don't need to ok without looking at data, our schedule says it's time to do relaxed truebox.

Server goes kaput afterwards.

They say they AGILE.
They are on a schedule.

Waterfall is a schedule.

EQ is not AGILE.
just because you do some daily scrum, that doesn't mean your AGILE. Just means you do meetings. pretend your AGILE.

I would like a more AGILE EQ.
Communicate with the playerbase.
Go onto the server that is about the change and see the vibes. Is it ok? Is it struggling, truebox is going to save it?

Truebox has been oppposite, not saving the server, destroying it.

Because they on a schedule, and schedules = WATERFALL.

This is not only a deeply unpopular opinion, it is also almost certainly never going to happen. If I had to wager, I would guess that people paying subscriptions for boxes on TLP servers accounts for a not insignificant portion of revenue for the company.

TLP servers are slowly dying from the moment they are launched. Its inevitable. Mischief has enjoyed a much healthier population for longer because of the wildly popular ruleset, but it too will suffer from attrition eventually, just like any other TLP. You could either be seeing the beginning of this, or people are just antisocial and would rather have their box in the group than you.

I will say this though, if you have people in your guild who would rather have their box in the group than invite you, then you need a new guild. Most people I have been in guilds with over my time on TLP servers will gladly drop a box in favor of a guild-mate playing a main. Those that do not are not worth playing with anyhow.

Vaniki died because of relaxed true box is one of the worst takes I’ve seen on here.

There’s too much to do with the 8/12 release cycles in later expansions to make it practical to have 6 individual player groups be the norm. You’ll just end up spending all your time camping the next set of AC augs for the tank in that group after which they’ll play less until the next unlock

I've played on several TLPs that never relaxed truebox, grouping became rare as the server population declined. This happened on every single one I have ever played. Relaxed Truebox is a new concept, the concept that people lose the ability to randomly find groups is one as old as TLPs are.

Simple reality is the early days of a TLP you need to find a core group of people you become friends with and play with regularly. You should be in either a guild with them, or even better a small Discord server. You need to maintain that relationship and you'll have a crew throughout the time you play on a TLP.

EQ is not WoW or other games that do matchmaking, and the server populations will never support "casual" pugging and finding groups forever. When they die off has varied on each server on which I have played--Mischief has a very, very popular ruleset that had been clamored for on TLP for over 10 years. Unsurprisingly Mischief's population decline has been slower than other TLPs. But it is unsurprising the same things we have seen on every other TLP (including ones that never removed Truebox) happened on Mischief.

Also as someone who plays live, live servers aren't a graveyard. You just don't know how they work. People on live don't do communication and content the way they do on TLPs. There are server alliances with chat channels or Discord channels, live is even more guild-focused etc. The communication tools built into EQ are fairly poor for organizing much of anything, TLPs have "busy" comms because a lot of nostalgia noobs are constantly spamming chat on them. The larger live servers are very active, just not in a way someone coming from TLP would recognize.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess based on this opinion that Mischief's current level 85 era is the farthest you've ever played into expansion eras on a TLP. Boxing restrictions are absolutely terrible for longterm server health.

-signed, longterm Mangler player

As someone who went all the way to the end on Phinny I found after TSS (the last "all level" expansion) you loose all the casual people, the only ones left are raiders.

After HOT even they only log into the server to do to progression till they unlock the raids and after that just log into do raids. The casual grouping game is totally dead the second half of EQ on TLPs no matter what the rules are.

On the other side of the coin, I've never seen a TLP this populated in Underfoot. The economy is huge and there are tons of active raiding guilds. Everyone in my guild is having a blast. People chill in discord or chat in guild channels - we don't have to be sitting in a group with each other to be social.

I would have probably quit if there was a strict truebox or no-boxing rule in this era of EQ (post TSS). It really gets to a point where you need reliable group mates to get anything of value done, and even among my friends/guildies our schedules vary too much to be consistently reliable for each other.

Not to say there shouldn't be a TLP with a strict no-boxing policy for those who want to play that, but all that doom and gloom about Mischief is definitely not true for anyone I personally know who is playing on this TLP.

When was the last poll you took, of random players, to know this? Simply stating something you feel doesn't make it true.

How many times has "never going to happen" happened in EQ? (*Hint: lots of times).

Yes, Mischief is not the same as other TLPs. Which is why the drastic change in group availability is so pronounced. There are just as many people on as ever. The player base is just becoming self-sufficient and people take the path of least resistance when its offered. The least resistance is to do things by yourself because the game allows it.

It seems like my point is lost on you. Like I said, there will be people who don't like the idea. Krono farmers and power levelers are among the people that wouldn't like the idea too. I'm happy to have a server without that type of person around.

Yes, the 8/12 release schedule could use some adjustment. They tried it once with the Selos server but they probably went a bit too far with that one.

Are they? How do you know? When was the last time there was a server where boxing was not allowed, follow was disabled, and DBG committed to aggressively suspending rule breakers? Since that's never happened, you don't know. You can't know. So, like me, you're guessing. People who believe their own assumptions to be facts are not thinking clearly.

One of the complaints I see most, from people on live servers, is that you must box to get anything done. That tells us that there is an issue with the live game. What's so bad about a server that tests out a potential remedy for one of the biggest complaints? I'm interested in the long term health of the EQ game as a whole. Doing the exact same thing over and over again will yield the same result. I'm unhappy with the current result. So, I'm here making suggestions.

Are you happy with the current result? Do you want to have to box to play the game? If so, great, there are already 20+ servers for you. Go have your fun alone. But why cast dispersions on a different idea?

Before Mischief's ruleset, you could have said that after Omens, every TLP slowly dies until TSS when basically everybody quits except for a few guilds that just raid-log. You can't say that now. Mischief is 4 expansions past TSS and still has a great population. So, unique rulesets can impact a TLP's longevity in a positive way.

Consider this, Mischief's ruleset has proven that the old style of TLP isn't the best for longevity. Mischief remained a social MMO beyond TSS. Then as soon as boxing was relaxed, the server changed and is now less social and as a result of being less social, it will suffer the same way every other server suffers.

So, why not purpose another new rule set? One that looks to remedy the next big issue with the game - isolation and forced boxing.

Honestly, it sounds like there are just a bunch of people who WANT to box. They know they get an advantage over other people by doing it. So they want to do it. Notice that none of the naysayers mentioned anything about enjoying, liking, or even thinking forced boxing was a good thing. They do it because they have to (or because it gives them an advantage) not because it makes the game fun.

Stating that a social MMO will do better by catering to anti-social behaviors is simply silly. I'm suggesting that EQ lean in to one of it's only differential advantages and test out a truly social-promoting server.

If you can't see the value in this, even just as a thought experiment, it's because you don't want it to work.

IDK, I'm not noticing the server being any different from normal. I will say that an expansion just launched, so people are more concerned with progression (which is pretty long this time around especially if you want to do the pre-tasks so you can request the actual required tasks for others), rather than running MG for the 289347293482th time. Speaking of which, I'm grateful to see all these AAs come from doing progression. Basically if you want to grind AA's in Underfoot, just join groups and help people with their progression.

I really haven't noticed the amount of boxing increase much since truebox was relaxed. Almost everyone who wanted to box was already doing it. I've had plenty of 6 human being prog groups so far, and I've also had just me and 1 other person with a couple healer mercs.

I also think that some people have either been casual / recently returned, are going to Underfoot and are getting their faces smashed due to the large increase in incoming damage vs. their not so great gear and AAs. It turns people off from both pugging and playing period.

One final important note is that as the server gets older and older, less people are experiencing nostalgia - they are entering new territory. Some people aren't LFG because they... don't know how to. They don't know where to go and what to do. Most people in that situation aren't going to risk playing with strangers who are likely to flip their lids over small stuff rather than the people they've been playing with that are less likely to get upset at them, because they are friends.

It seems like your point is even lost on you. If you had spent a little time on these forums, you would know how unpopular Truebox was. People begged for years to have it removed. Preventing boxing entirely would be even less popular. It doesn't take a Mathematics degree or a poll to figure this out.

And for the record, anything that would have a negative impact on revenue and profits isn't going to happen. I would like you to give me just ONE example of something someone suggested on these forums that would negatively impact the bottom-line that ended up actually happening.

If you are unable to get groups even within your own guild, and you feel that boxing is to blame, perhaps you need a new guild. I cant think of anyone in my guild who would deny me a spot in the group because it was filled with one of their boxes. Maybe you need to be a little more proactive and ask for a spot in the group rather than just expecting it to fall into your lap. Make some friends.

There is a point in every TLP servers lifespan where asking for a group in general just doesn't work anymore. Its a sad reality of the TLP cycle. I suspect this will be true even for Mischief at some point.

And just so we are clear, I have no dog in this race. I plan to never play on any other TLP than the one I am currently on. So it doesn't matter to me if they were to make a server that disallowed boxing, since I would never play there regardless of the ruleset.

I think a server without boxing would be a ghost town from the very beginning. Not to mention, a lot of the things that give a TLP quality of life, like being able to find spells for sale, exist only because of boxers.

Also, disabling /follow would hurt real groups more than boxers. A boxer can simply take the mage first, then coth everybody, and you're only annoying one person. On the other hand, a real group could have multiple people that are auto following while you get to camp to grab a snack, feed a baby, use the restroom, or simply because you're accident-prone. Why punish these non-boxers?

Boxers are already using a VPN per client to prevent getting kicked by spamming keys. This ruleset would be barely an inconvenience to them.

But lastly, I don't see DBG going "let's start a new TLP where nobody can pay us monthly for more than 1 account." It's like let's start a bar where people are only allowed to buy one beer a day. That doesn't sound like a good business decision.

It is CLEARLY an observable fact.

The sheer volume of players that box is how people KNOW...lol

How do I know? I'll gladly tell you! I've been playing on the Mangler TLP since the beginning. We had fully enforced truebox all the way through RING OF SCALE content. That's one character per PC/device with keystroke detection (poorly) enforced all the way through level one hundred and freaking 10. It was ridiculous.

We've finally had the restrictions removed, and grouping opportunities have noticeably improved. Players can box as many characters as they want to get things done while still pulling other players into their groups as needed. It's measurably and objectively better for server health on a server that drastically restricted boxing for years longer than it should have.

Oh, and I don't box at all myself. I'm a single account player. So while the boxing restrictions didn't directly affect my personal gameplay, removing them has created more opportunities to continue to successfully group and raid in what is just a few expansions away from current/live content.

The community is becoming lazy with the personal attacks on page one. We used to get at least one full page of:
But I'm a single dad with 4 kids who play from the same house. They're paraplegic and can't respond to tells, but they're totally real. And the only reason we can play is that the Make a Wish Foundation bought them computers to fulfill their wish of paying on every new TLP.

Edit* adding, "and the software they use to control their characters is an accommodation based on their disability and not cheating at all!"

FWIW I never really boxed on Truebox servers, just not interested in boxing that way. So I am certainly not one of the "wants to box people." I have played on live for 2 years and also don't box--just too lazy to do so, on live I'm primarily a raid only player, and I get into a group for the once-a-year group progression when an expansion launches.

My perception from doing multiple Truebox TLPs is simply that OP, like many before him, simply misunderstands the nature of TLP populations and grouping. Getting or not getting a group just has very little to do with other people having the ability to box.

In fact, near the end of Selo (which had very low population after Underfoot era), the few people who did box (again, on a truebox server), were the only reason grouping happened at all, because a good portion of people just wanted to raid, so if you wanted to do group content the population of players interested, and who were playing at the same time as you was very small. The ones who could box a couple characters in a group were a godsend because otherwise groups wouldn't have been built at all.

If anything Truebox strangles and snuffs out the population on later era servers--Mischief is lucky that they have relaxed Truebox and doesn't have to live through what I've lived through--which is a server that was kept Truebox til the end.