Zone Experience Modifiers - Please consider adjusting

Boogles mine too. Boogles I tell you!

Do you really think "Now with more balanced experience!" will be the convincing selling point for someone who hasn't played in a long while and didn't come back for the previous/current progression servers?

Good question. What is the main reason why people quit, and what is the main reason why people play? (let's be honest, the majority of the player base and paying customers are filthy casuals who more than likely never visit the forums unless the servers are down.) I don't claim to have that information, and I don't think anyone, even daybreak, can really accurately answer that question outside of the questionnaire that they have people fill out, which can be complete B.S anyway.

I could easily bash the current status and say "Welcome back to Everquest, where the game has been turned into a theme park for leveling like every other MMO, but happens to be an older, shittier version of any new MMO game that has been/could be released." Marketing is not just what you do, but how you word it. You could easily word it like "Explore the world the way you want to!. Don't feel penalized, gimped, or stupid for exploring the many amazing dungeons and environments our world offers."

Everquest only really stands out from other games in the sheer amount of zones and paths to level, which right now isn't emphasized.

With that being said, I would be interested in what changes you Machen think should be made/invested in to bring the most players back/recruit new ones. If either of us had hard numbers it would make for a more interesting conversation besides preference/opinion alone

This only works if at one time people did, in fact, feel penalized, gimped or stupid. I don't think most old school players ever felt that way, despite basically similar zems to what we have now. Most of us weren't about min maxing xp rates back then. The reason I don't feel this would be very successful as a marketing ploy is I really don't think it was an issue that led to anyone quitting. I could be wrong, but I don't really remember anyone even bringing it up as a complaint until Phinigel. (And I played a light toon on Tallon Zek, we were locked out of pretty much all the good xp zones during classic and kunark, so if anyone was going to complain it would have been there...)

Would be nice to see the actual ZEMs of zones posted somewhere. I know the 160 listed as crushbone zem is way off. Im sure there are a lot of high Zem underused zones people just dont know about.

It wasn't a complaint or something that became an issue until instances for zones became a thing. People had to adventure into less desired zones/camps in order to group. Now that isn't the case with instances, which let you basically pick which camps you want, which is awesome.

The problem is, lower ZEM zones no longer have any reason to be visited. I know when I try to get groups or friends or pugs together for certain levels, it's really hard to get people interested in leveling at say, the aviak village in South Karana for fun, since they THINK it won't be worth their time. This lack of transparency for how fast exp can be gained in a given zone leads to basically following the crowd.

When Lockjaw started I wanted to level in less desired zones to explore new areas with my brother and a RL friend. After about 2 days, even with the same amount of played time, we were at least 8 levels behind because we weren't in unrest/guk and then lguk on classic. People play games for fun, but at the same time they will almost always go down the easiest path, even if it means that the game becomes less fun for them. Like grinding in a particular camp, even if they don't really like the camp.

An easy example of this would be when Age of Conan came out, and they hadn't put a lockout timer on raid content. Besides being horribly optimized, raiding guilds would burn out entirely within the first two months of the game because they would raid the same over and over and over (content that was supposed to last about a year) and be done and geared within a week.

I should probably shut up though, since this obviously isn't a big enough of an issue to pick up steam on the forums, since the only thing that tends to do so involves the raiding environment...so i guess a similar example would be. If you could chose between raid x that drops 50 pieces of gear but is boring as , versus raid zone "y" that is challenging and hard and drops 35 pieces, which raid would a raiding guild pick?

At the same time, the more I think about it, if you don't like repetitive gaming, everquest might not be the best game in the first place haha.

Gear is a big lure as well. I know when I make a fresh toon on a new server, I always hit L guk for a chance at an fbss, deceivers mask, smr, etc. Oh yeah and the exp is T_i_t_s

I understand the concept though, if exp was equal in every zone people would be more willing to explore. The issue is the exp rate on phinny is trash and people are on phinny to do instanced raids. The longer it takes to hit max level, the longer it takes to raid.

Add in with truebox, players are in a position of do I sit lfg and try to form a group to hit up a less popular zone, or do I go where I know other players are?

Would it be easier to form that group for SK if it had L guk exp? Nah, birds don't drop the phat lewts.

WTB Test Server exp

If they are here to raid then loot on the way to max level to assist a raid becomes a moot point when they can be guaranteed x amounts of loot per week from instanced raids.

Eh, in the not too distant past, there were certainly a lot of players who dropped Phinny shortly after launch citing the garbage XP as their reason to quit. I kept playing, but I didn't disagree with them.

One beef I have with the low XP rates is that this is wasted time I could be spending on quests, tradeskills, or other "fart around" things in-game, but instead I spend it sitting on my casting slow every 6 seconds, avatar every 3 minutes, and a new xp pot every 4 hours. You feel like you are wasting time if you spend it otherwise.

I don't agree, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume most players who want to raid are pretty conscious of their gear.

The point of this thread is ZEM being changed or adjusted. If zone A and zone B now have equal exp rates, but zone A still has better loot for my toon I'm going to zone A.

That's a different issue than wanting all zems flattened so that you get the same (crappy) xp everywhere, though.

When you can have a bunch of OOG guildies level you to 60 and start raiding in less then a week, I highly doubt gear is on their mind at any level until they are raiding and even then, Bazaar gear is more then likely suffice for them. How does this fit in with the ZEM issues? Easily, especially if said guild is hogging said top 5 level zones for any 20 level tier bracket at the time, thus reviewing and adjusting ZEM's does everyone a favor in this instance.

Ah, true. I think I misread what you were saying.

Still, I'll take any opportunity to remind Daybreak that the XP rate has hurt subscriptions.

It might help convince people who think, "ugh I'm not doing another grind through zones X, Y, and Z again".

I'm not sure about balanced XP though. That will still create winners due to certain places having the best loot, or least danger of runners, lowest hp mobs, etc. They should shuffle them so the horde is always directed to a new group of favored zones, which is what they kinda already do I guess.

You are not understanding. The promise of loot is enough of an offset to the dangers of certain dungeon groups. There is no need to add extra XP on top. Just average all the zone ZEM's and be done with it. That way, for example, if someone wants to run all the way out to splitpaw and exp, they would atleast get roughly the same exp that they would in Uguk. Uguk would have better loot, but there would be other options for those that just want exp and are not worried about loot.

Heck I personally think that if I kill an outdoor mob that is of the same level as an indoor mob, that I should get the same XP for the kill. In outdoor zones, I have a lot more roamers to contend with and the mobs are less dense so I would have a harder time keeping up the same kill count as an indoor zone, thereby further justifying the need to average out ZEMs.

Having it spread out is fine if you have premade groups or whatever, but I think for random people that go lfg on average it's probably better for them that most xp groups congregate to certain zones.

Considering how easy it will be to travel throughout the world in the near future, is this really a decent argument for basically having a large portions of the game be worthless in terms of experiencing in? Why should I kill things in Shadeweavers thicket, when I can go into PC at level 2 and get a LOT more experience per kill?

On regular servers they even acknowledge that this is a huge problem, and therefore put in Hot zones to let people try new content in zones where it would be otherwise unwise to level in. I think that this is a band-aid, but at the same time I don't know the amount of dev time it would take to change the ZEMs of zones, and alternatively if you can only change them for individual servers. And no, I don't think we should make all experience everywhere completely garbage on Phinny, but more so make it viable to level and group in all areas and zones. Having ZEMs in the first place was to reward people going into more "dangerous" areas, but now that everything is mapped and there are no corpse runs in a game that is nearing it's 2nd decade, do these dangers really exist anymore to justify the significantly higher experience rates?

While I doubt they will change the ZEMs on any existing servers, they can really be a nice marketing ploy for the new TLP.

Why should Lguk have all the phat loot AND the best ZEM? In theory, Lguk should have crap exp, and Gorge of King Xorbb should be gangster. I also think adjusting outdoor ZEMs to be a bit more palatable would be nice...might actually encourage people to play druids again (other than using them as port / plvl bots)!

What the OP is basically complaining about is slow exp. rates.
I am baffled why anyone would come to an old-school server and complain about exp. rates. Firiona Vie and all the live servers have much faster exp. rates but you come to Phinny and complain about exp. rates. Why?

If anything Daybreak should flatten zone exp. rates and make them all the same. That is all zones should have the same exp. rate as the Karanas for example. So that folks who come to an old-school server can play and linger in multiple zones without being drawn into the min/max debacle that is PC etc.

Anyway, I like the empty zones myself. It doesn't take that much longer to level up and there are lots of new places to explore and things to discover that I passed by back in 2000 or whenever. The whole point of this server, I thought.