The_Black_Log Foler
Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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EQ TLP - Oakwynd (Evolving Ruleset Progression Server)
- Thread starter Zaide
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The_Black_Log Foler
Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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Bro hold up. Are you telling me that we can’t capture the market that EverQuest 2 doesn’t appeal to by implementing EverQuest 2 mechanics?
The_Black_Log Foler
Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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No comprising keybro. All or nothing. It’s a dumb rule set. Call it how it is brother.
The_Black_Log Foler
Stock Pals Senior Vice President
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Elderan
Blackwing Lair Raider
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Not sure the encounter locking will be nearly as big of a deal as people think.
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Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Long term, probably not.
Short term I'm sure people are going to play on the server just to fuck around with it before getting bored and moving on
There is actually quite a bit of data on this that MMORPG's have collected over the last couple decades. Many MMORPG developers have discussed this in interviews/faq's and there is even interviews with former EQ devs who have talked about this. Their data has always shown that both plvl'ing and the ability to buy max lvl accounts leads to lower player retention and a number of other in game issues. There is a correlation between how long an account stays sub'd and people who hand level their characters themselves through the standard way in which the game wants you to. This is why most mmorpg's post WoW have tried to come up with different ways to mitigate plvl'ing in their games.
There's actually an interview on youtube with one of the original EQ dev's that was still around when account selling started to become a big thing in EQ and he said that originally they saw no issue with it, but the two main reasons why they ultimately made it against the rules was not only the increased CS nightmare (he stated that account/item selling scams cost them millions in CS in just the first year that it became popular) but also because the data showed that people who didn't hand level their accounts themselves only stayed sub'd on average 3-6 months and people who did hand level their accounts stayed sub for well over a year on average (i could be wrong on the exact numbers, but thats what i recall).
I do wonder how much of this data is relevant to TLP's though. I've always seen plvl'ing as a good thing due to the style and cycles of TLP's but I guess it's entirely possible that maybe DBG has a lot of backend data on this and sees it as a major issue. I mean it's also possible too that plvl'ing wasn't even on their mind when they decided to go with this FTE thing, it's just something we are assuming has to be one of the causes. That's always been the biggest problem with DBG and my biggest complaint against them, they never explain why they do things. For such an old game with a relatively small dedicated community, you would think that DBG would be far more transparent on what they do, but it's always been the exact opposite. They need to take a page out of Riot's playbook and start being transparent on why they do what they do. Riot dev's will make 1-3 hour long youtube videos explaining why they do every single change they do, and give you the backend data to prove why it was a needed change.
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This is terrible logic. Why compare people who plvl to people who hand level to max? It is just as reasonable to compare them to people who just quit at level 5 or whatever. Why assume without PLing those people who got PLs would otherwise stick around and level on their own?
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Zaide
TLP Idealist
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You guys have battered wife syndrome or something thinking they're saving the really good ideas for next year lmao.
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yerm
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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This is true for a primary account. So this works great when applied to a game like wow where most people play exactly one account.
This goes out the window when you talk about a boxed alt. I do not need the sense of investment if I decide in god to swap my 3 rangers for 3 berserkers. In this case, having to meticulously grind the new alts instead of plvl will do nothing to make me, lets say maining a knight, stay or quit.
It also misses the point I was making about pugs and people who hate on boxers. If I am not in the mood to group, I am not going to, whether I six box or solo on a cleric. If I want to group with people, I am going to welcome people, whether there is an open spot or a box needs to be dropped. The anti-boxing crowd has this idea that if only there weren't boxes that people would somehow group with them. It's wrong; if you are unreliable or bad or whatever you won't get groups regardless and people will form cliques without you in them. They'll sit lfg on for hours and send no tells to strangers or take any initiative. And so, they'll cheer an anti boxing and anti plvling setup and imagine their problems solved but by the 70s at the latest have nobody to group with.
Again, not disagreeing that a purchased main is likely to quit and investment into your char keeps people playing, but, I disagree that it has fuckall to do with either poor skill or poor attitude people who can't pug after a while. They're fucked regardless of server rules.
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Yeah that's why I said i wonder how much of the data behind plvl'ing/buying accounts that MMORPG dev's talk about is even relevant to EQ TLP's and the way the cycles work. Like I said, I've always thought that plvl'ing was a good thing on the TLP's, but also this FTE thing might have absolutely nothing to do with plvl'ing at all from DBG perspective, who knows.
I guess I would say from my own anecdotal experience, generally when I play on TLP's I'll have my main, and eventually anywhere between 5-20 different max level alt accounts that I will cycle through my 6 box depending on the situation/expansion. Those 5-20 alt accounts are usually a mix between characters I actually grinded to max lvl, characters I plvl'd, and a lot of accounts that I buy (sad to admit I usually buy anywhere between 5-10 box accounts per TLP I play on lol). If I had to think about it though, usually the box accounts that I leveled myself without plvl/buying are the ones I stick with long term and keep sub'd for the entire time I play on the TLP, while the rest go in and out between being sub'd and not.
Don't ask me lol. I was just presenting an alternative perspective from game dev's who have talked about it that I can see being relevant in most games and might be getting applied to EQ TLP's, but I'm not convinced is even relevant to EQ TLP's. Again, it's a situation where DBG needs to be more transparent.
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yerm
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I strongly believe fte and plvling being nerfed are linked in the devs mind. This is why the server tied in same account alt leveling stuff that's so poorly thought out. They know they are nerfing plvling. It's the same mindset for them behind putting random amd free trade together, the random is to fix the problem that monopolized free trade content might suffer, and the alt bonus are to mitigate the plvl stuff.
The problem then is that mischief was well thought out and this IMO is not. Fte is just awful regardless and there's reason nearly every other mmo without a pvp focus has ditched it including wow. The 10% per alt being lost on cap raise is just pure unbridled dumb; it should just be a 10% bonus per 50+ alt up to that alt's level, so you don't lose it every few months.
I'm a TLP guy. I don't know anything about how new expansions work since the last time I played live was FV like 6-7 years ago. They said this new server was to test stuff that could be implemented to live. So far, we don't know exactly which part of this server ruleset is what they are referring to when it comes to live implementation. However, if it is the FTE thing, what about current live would benefit from FTE? Isn't the way people plvl on TLP's not even used on live? I know when I played FV, the primary method for plvl was just swarm kiting on SK although that eventually got nerfed. I guess that's why I think if the FTE mechanic is the part they are testing for live, that it is possible it might not have anything to do with plvl'ing. I don't have enough knowledge of current live expansions though to even be able to start to guess what FTE could fix on live.
No. All it does is show how little they understand the game and in Leagues case how biased the Devs are.
Rajaah
Honorable Member
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I mean me getting beat up by a Navy chick isn't as impressive as you getting beaten off by African tribesmen, so I defer to you.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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They're probably not holding back any great ideas, yeah. Thing is though, what players want is so readily obvious that it defies belief that they aren't going that route, unless they're saving things for an occasion and want it to be a big deal at that point, doing experimentation in the meantime.
More likely scenario is that they're just full-on oblivious and throwing things at the wall every April to see what sticks.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Definitely correlation and not causation.
Comparing the average person who levels the "intended way" to max vs someone powerleveled only makes sense if 100% of your players make it to max level.
Otherwise, you have to compare those being powerleveled as their only char vs every player not power leveled who quit at any level. Guarantee you those numbers are far different
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I would assume the first data point only takes in to consideration people who are max level, ie how long your average max lvl player stays sub'd who leveled their own char vs how long a max lvl player stays sub'd who bought their account/got plvl'd. Now how they would even track that would be up to debate but apparently games have ways. I would also assume there would be a second subset data point of how long people stayed sub'd that were leveling but never reached max lvl vs how long people stay sub'd who bought their account/got plvl'd. Also most likely a third data point on an estimate of how many more characters/accounts would be created if you had easy ways to plvl vs not having a way to plvl. There's probably even more separate data points than this, but any person trying to test a hypothesis is going to need multiple data points in order to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Games are in the business of making money, so it would be naive to think that a company wouldn't collect enough data to come to a conclusion as best as they could, especially when multiple game companies have come to the same conclusion.