Tribute / Luck are Bad for EQ

Tribute and Luck should be removed from the game they are a bad thing. Instead of asking general if anyone are in need of drops they just take them and use it for extra luck or tribute. You should really remove all tribute value from no drop items so people try to let others who need it have it.

Luck has the same issue with people taking them instead of giving them to others for that 1 extra luck merging. At least for luck it will cap out so they have no use for it other than tribute.

I personality always ask general if anyone needs the drops we get from named before I will take them for tribute.

Why should people be expected to give away drops to random people just because they don't need them? It is great that you do it but others shouldn't be expected to.

Good...bad...I'm the one with[out] the power to change it. .

On a more serious note, it's about impossible to take them out of the game at this point without massive protests.

Like most things in EQ, all thought about whether something is good or bad for the game needs to be done before it is added. Players get very upset about "nerfs". Far too many times, we got things nerfed that were added without enough thought to the consequences.

One example is how everyone has a bunch of swarm pets. On a raid, the huge number of them causes lag. This example is actually one of the obvious things that SOE missed, had they asked players beforehand almost all would have said it was a bad idea.

Multiple swarm pets, however, can be fixed. Just reduce the number from four or five per player at a time to one with four or five lives. You get one swarm pet per usage but as soon as it "dies", it comes back again, for three or four times. Or some similar process.

Other things were "fixed" by either massively reducing their usefulness or removing them, causing people to get upset. It's much worse to have something taken away than never getting it in the first place.

While changing Tribute is an undertaking I have no idea how to go about, "fixing" Luck can be done.

Change Luck from requiring the same item be merged to increase it, to another method. Mobs and raid and mission chests could instead have a chance to drop an additional piece of loot, a "Luck Booster". Combine the Luck Booster with your item, and if it is not at maximum, it will increase the luck by one.

It has bothered me from the beginning that you had to "destroy" an item to increase luck. Someone else could use that item you just destroyed and it creates bad feelings if you take an item instead of someone else who doesn't have one getting it because you want to increase your luck.

How about a one slot "luck extractor" Place an item with luck inside and activate.
The item is reduced to 1 luck, but produces units of liquid luck (stackable).
Liquid luck and an item with luck are placed inside a two slot "luck injector". Activation
consumes the liquid luck adding it to the item. Of course, there would be some limit and
any excess luck would be returned.

This would manipulate only luck, which is already supported by other means. It probably
should also impact the tribute value, but I have not paid enough attention to notice if luck
impacts tribute value. My guess would be that tribute is just another constant common to
all items of the same item number.

Of course, there are probably a lot of things in this game that they would omit on a rewrite.
Probably even more they would implement differently knowing what they know now.

I disagree with the premise that luck/tribute have a major effect on people asking in /general if others want the drops.

What I suspect happens is people get tried of announcing drops and having them rot , so they just stop announcing the drops.

For the sake of the argument lets consider the impact of luck/tribute.

Luck is a PITA to upgrade and costs a significant amount of time and resources in addition to the base items. I personally don't know of anyone who maxes out their luck with group gear.

Tribute on the other hand takes a lot more drops to max out, but you can fill up tribute really fast if you run through the older heroic missions. I see this as the "its going to rot anyway" might as well loot it.

The last factor is where the items are dropping.

Most of the item drops in game come from doing missions. You can't add people after the chest is opened so everything is loot or rot.

The few items that drop from named tend to rot. This weekend I went back and did some XP grinds for the evolving cloak and no one wanted any of the common drops. Even the rarish gems were rotting.

The same is for me - I don't know anybody who actually fuses items. Price/reward is too high, nobody bothers to do it.

Presently, with tribute value inflation, most of my characters have current tribute amount at maximum, with multiple valuable tribute-able items in the bags for when it gets used up.
And only in current expansion I bother to announce in /ooc in case a valuable (in my opinion and experience) item is going to rot, such as augs or rare weapon etc. I mostly let the rest rot.

So, in my personal experience - not Luck nor Tribute has any effect on my decisions about an unused loot being left on a corpse. I think the OP's premise is misplaced.

Not "almost all", quite not.
Have you played a mage in a group setting?
The valuable and important "of Many" spell line truly shines with a number of pets on mob's aggro list getting close to 20 or more.
That is not a limitation on raids, there is always a couple dozens of pets loitering around on a raid. But in a group it is actually a challenge.
Enter the swarm pet horde spells from various classes! A mage + a bard can call up over 20 swarm pets on a named. Or a mage + a beastlord + a ranger. Or two mages. Or many other combinations.
And all those swarm pets get affected by a variety of auras too. Truly a heaven's gift for magicians!

And a lag scourge on rads. Pick your poison - improve lag raid and degrade magicians' group game, or let the raid lag stand and keep many group magicians happy.

Imho, the best way would be to actually resolve raid lag issues, as swarm pets is not the only cause of it.

Nothing wrong with luck or tribute keep as is! I fuse items in the begining but not now (group item im on fv) 25 max luck are good sellers.

If someone wants to advert in /general that they have rotting no trade items, that's fine for them, but in my experience, it's usually a waste of time. Many swords from Bi'faak rotted with zero interest. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to do that. Nor would I advocate remove things from the game to try to force it. And it only works for rare spawn named. All that tribute loot in mission chests can't be passed out to someone who didn't participate in the mission. Tribute and luck fusing serves a purpose of having something to do with low level items. The whole NO TRADE thing was to encourage each individual to go out and experience the content to get the item, not sit around in PoK waiting for a handout. This isn't charityquest.

Just last night I was camping in firefall at Firefallizard. I was after 2 belt buckles so of course when the mob spawns it drops just a regular belt item. I always call my rots out in general and OOC. one person asked for it 5 mins later says no thanks. So after about 10 more mins I get tired of this giant corpse laying on my fire blocking the view. (not sure which hidecorpse command to use just for mobs ive just killed) So i loot it for trib rather than let it rot. Sure enough 5 mins after that i get 3 diff people asking me if item is still available. Ill still ask because I love it when people help me out so just trying to give some pay back.
I have never once looted something for the luck merge. I say offer it up first and if no takers within a certain time loot it for trib. There are way better ways to get tribute than loot you get from mobs.

So you want to restrict how others play the game and force them to play the way you do because? Your way is the only way?

Even though I am one of the ones that would benefit tremendously from items that others offer, this just strikes me as silly. To remove a feature that has been in the game since 2008 because you feel other players are selfish when they keep them.

Set loot rules at the start and make sure everyone is aware.
edit: oh wait. You want loot from groups you arent even in?

Need for stuff you'll use and for vendor trash. Greed for tribute/selling.

Perhaps you could break down exactly why 20 pets at a time is good.

• Aggro: That can be set per pet. If you have one swarm pet up with the aggro modifier of x5, you can reduce the number by four.
• DPS: The DPS of a single pet can be adjusted.
• Auras: The 5X swarm pets procing auras is exactly the problem. That's one of the major causes of lag. Change pets so auras do not cause them to proc and increase pet dps to compensate.
• Similar changes could be made.

I'm not saying it is easy to fix. I'm also not saying to fix it now (although that would be nice). I'm saying if you go back in time before they were given out and think about whether it is a good idea to have so many swarm pets, I think the best answer is no, instead find another way to get a similar outcome.

To resolve raid lag issues the number of "actions" has to be reduced, in various ways (so many pets are likely one of the largest causes). It appears there is no other practical way (disclaimer: I do not have exact knowledge of whether it can't be worked around).

You are probably aware that pet dps on raids is terrible compared to their dps outside of raids because of lag.

I don't play a mage and am not a spreadsheet maven, so there are likely other things involved if reducing the number of swarm pets.

Sepcifically mages' "of Many" spell line:
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=63707

Slot 1: Decrease Current Hit Points by 9500 if Between 1 and 2 Pets on Hatelist
Slot 2: Decrease Current Hit Points by 20474 if Between 3 and 5 Pets on Hatelist
Slot 3: Decrease Current Hit Points by 34518 if Between 6 and 9 Pets on Hatelist
Slot 4: Decrease Current Hit Points by 56502 if Between 10 and 14 Pets on Hatelist
Slot 5: Decrease Current Hit Points by 89106 if More Than 14 Pets on Hatelist

Comparing to "Spear"
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=63707
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 76665.

Those spells are casted after swarm pet "Servant" , which triggers Synergy with +90% to follow-up spell damage
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=54199

Also, "of Many" triggers "Theft of Essence" effect healing the group.
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=53548
So, it is in mage's best interest to cast "of Many" every swarm pet cycle.

The math works this way: if there is less than 15 pets on mobs Hatelist, then the Spear shoud be casted after Swarm servant. If 15+ pets are on the Hatelist - "of Many" should be casted instead.

its 89106/76665 = 16% dps increase for that cast. And since a mage does about 40% to 50% of dps with that "first DD spell cast" it equates to (very roughly) 7-8% of overall dps increase for the mage once the number of pets on the Hatelist exceeds 15.

And that does not include actual pets' dps.

It does not make a notable "dent" on a raid, but noticable in a group setting.
After all, a raid leader can restrict swarm pets useage on raids if it gets too laggy.

This line of spells could be updated to work based on something else besides the number of pets currently in use.

It's frustrating when people present strawman arguments against positive changes. It would not be hard for them to change the of many line when they change swarm pets. Simply adjust it from 6-9 to 4-7 and viola.

People also focus too much attention on the power of this 1 single spell as if the cumulative DPS loss due to lag isn't larger than the perks of OfMany. I have a fair degree of confidence in saying that the net raid DPS would be higher if OfMany was impacted and mages would minimally notice the impacts to a single spell.

Completely 100% this. This is the case with the luck aug and people spend hours upon hours farming to max out their luck, while leveling luck on raid armor is almost completely ignored.

Simply using the same charm luck item for leveling luck on other slots is a great solution.

It's frustrating when people argue for the sake of argument and make nonsense statements. Please, stop doing that.

Original argument by Fanra was:
"Multiple swarm pets, however, can be fixed. Just reduce the number from four or five per player at a time to one with four or five lives. You get one swarm pet per usage but as soon as it "dies", it comes back again, for three or four times. Or some similar process."

That is a net loss change for a mage in a group and not a "positive change" as you claim it is.
Meanwhile your suggestion "Simply adjust it from 6-9 to 4-7 and viola." is a win-win, because it makes for group mages even easier to maintain dps and reduces raid lag at the same time. You got my vote on that. Although, it is different from what Fanra stated.

And your statement "People also focus too much attention on the power of this 1 single spell as if the cumulative DPS loss due to lag isn't larger than the perks of OfMany." is simply false for ... a mage in a group game. There is no "DPS loss due to lag" in a group caused by swarm pets. It only manifests such on raids. And from a group mage "the power of this 1 single spell" is a high-priority subject.

People, including yourself, tend to view situations from a limited prospective of their own intends. Raiders worry about raid lag (in this case) and group players worry about their group dps and do not even notice lag. Perhaps suggestions should be evaluated from a more balanced prospective as a rule.