Red99 Stimulus Plan (some constructive feedback)

[Dullah]

You know, I don't like exp being tampered with, because i love the classic feel... but, the first few levels could be sped up without ruining the experience. I remember thinking when i was level 3, oh fuk this is going to be hard.

Anyone whos trying to get into the game may be slightly encouraged if you reach that first spell and new skills level a bit faster to where you character comes into his own.

Drawback is, if you mess with exp, where do you draw the line. Once you change anything, then its not "classic". In the end I just say leave it. People will play or they wont, server will die or it wont, but it wont come from the exp rate. If anything the classic feel will generate more people than otherwise...

[Butthead]

Originally Posted by Dullah [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You know, I don't like exp being tampered with, because i love the classic feel... but, the first few levels could be sped up without ruining the experience. I remember thinking when i was level 3, oh fuk this is going to be hard.

Anyone whos trying to get into the game may be slightly encouraged if you reach that first spell and new skills level a bit faster to where you character comes into his own.

Drawback is, if you mess with exp, where do you draw the line. Once you change anything, then its not "classic". In the end I just say leave it. People will play or they wont, server will die or it wont, but it wont come from the exp rate. If anything the classic feel will generate more people than otherwise...

maybe consider adding (parts?) of luclin? i know its risky business but maybe a FEW aa's would help? maybe make aa exp harder to get? idk.
Classic eq is bomb but not every1 will fully agree on that. we shud look into adding more content maybe to lure in more players?

if every1 recruited 1 person it could makea huugh difference...


we need to get onto eq1 / 2 and promote the server!
really any game that might have eq players needs to hear about this server.

how could we deww it?

il b uber disapointed ifi finally get 50 and jus quit cause theres no reason to play

[Steaks]

will take care of itself with increased xp , its the investment , people arent going to do it this day in age

its just the way it is

if it isnt increased things will work themselves out

if it is , things will also work themselves out , who knows how?

i sure do

[Dullah]

Obviously some will, and those who won't are most likely too flaky to hang around long anyway.

The main appeal of EQ is not the pvp, though its fun. Its the sum of its parts, a large one being that sense of accomplishment derived from leveling up. Then, acquiring rare items, and making friends and allies required to progress in both the pvp and pve facets of the game. All the parts making it the greatest MMO ever, are undermined by trivializing experience.

There may be those who feel that getting easy levels and, therefore, gear is enjoyable, but the player who is thus minded will be more likely playing a shiny new game thats built from the ground up on this principle.

[Shrubwise]

Originally Posted by Steaks [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

if it is , things will also work themselves out , who knows how?

i sure do

banned

[stormlord]

Why does no one mention how disabling sof/uf client support might have hurt population too?

As a recap, here're some things I'd do to "stimulate" this server:
1) Remove both exp loss on pvp death and pvp item loot and instead add a pvp-points system that you can view on a website just like they did on live - can view pvp kills/death/points for players/guilds/etc
2) Add global chat (blue had it until population was about 600 or more)
3) Advertise in MMORPG forums (legally, you have to buy titanium, so advertising on free MMORPG forums is not what should be done in this case)
4) Move default bind points to guards so people cannot be bind camped by default
5) Remind people that classic EQ isn't about being level 50+; it's about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .. 50! You can pvp at any point in your level progression. Don't worry about 50. 50 is 1/50th of the fun.

A point I want to make about the nature of EQ...

The major problem is that EQ is a group-based game and it statically associates itself with population. This means that, given a low population, players will find it very difficult to get good experience rates and smooth progression. This, of course, leads to frustration and high attrition.

The fact that this is a pvp server makes it all worse.

You can increase the experience rate, but, if everytying else is equal, this will not solve the problem of players not being able to form groups (let alone balanced groups). Nor will it reduce corpse runs. Nor will it make the game feel more populated. Nor will it help you to get a bind or find someone to sow you or find someone to help you get your corpse. Nor will it stop you from being pvp'd. Nor will it help you to find a tracker or a porter.

Essentially, increasing experience rates is not the universal answer. Take someone doing a quest on a low population server, for example. You might increase the experience rates, but since EQ is still group-based then the player still must out-level the quest in order to do it. They do this because there're not enough people to group with. This changes how the quest will feel when you do it. Instead of hiding/sneaking/invising/mezzing/tracking/etc and working with others to attain the goal, you just slaughter most everything to get your prize. That's what happens when a group-based game is reduced to a solo-based game. It's very difficult to change hte nature of a game without starting fresh with a new slate. It's like trying to make an 80 year old 20 again. It's futile. It ends up being something that's not like a group-based adventure. Bottom line, increasing experience rates as the be-all/end-all answer is like hooking up a bad heart to a machine. While it works when the heart is bad, it might actually get in the way when the heart is good. (In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the warrior class. No matter how much you increase experience rates on emulated solo-based servers, if you don't fundamentally change warriors then a warrior is still a warrior. They can't hide/sneak. They can't invis. They can't backstab. No mezzing. They can't teleport. They can't gate. They can't root or snare. They can't sow. They can't heal. They can't track. The warrior has got to be the most boring class ever created. To fix a warrior, you got to do a hell of a lot more than increase the experience rate.)

Now, it's possible that players might stick around if they see their experience meter go up. If this is the case and the game actually gains population then my argument is that as the population goes up the experience rate should be lowered. In fact, a script or piece of code should be written to automatically increase or decrease experience rate dependent on the overall population. The reason it's important to do this is because if experience is too slow then progression is too grindy and if experience is too fast then progression is skipped altogether. You have to find a middle-ground for your audience wherein progression is stable and balanced with everything else. That requires a good grasp of everything. It should be automatic or easily applied.

There're a lot of things I could bring. There're very many useful posts in this thread. The problem is that separating the good posts from the background noise is too hard now. It's not consolidated. This thread is like a big pile of hay now and there's a needle in it somewhere. It's like walking up to a crowd of people and asking them how to save the country. Then they all shout at once. It's quickly forgotten.

[Slave]

Originally Posted by stormlord [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Why does no one mention how disabling sof/uf client support might have hurt population too?

As a recap, here're some things I'd do to "stimulate" this server:
1) Remove both exp loss on pvp death and pvp item loot and instead add a pvp-points system that you can view on a website just like they did on live - can view pvp kills/death/points for players/guilds/etc
2) Add global chat (blue had it until population was about 600 or more)
3) Advertise in MMORPG forums (legally, you have to buy titanium, so advertising on free MMORPG forums is not what should be done in this case)
4) Move default bind points to guards so people cannot be bind camped by default
5) Remind people that classic EQ isn't about being level 50+; it's about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .. 50! You can pvp at any point in your level progression. Don't worry about 50. 50 is 1/50th of the fun.

A point I want to make about the nature of EQ...

The major problem is that EQ is a group-based game and it statically associates itself with population. This means that, given a low population, players will find it very difficult to get good experience rates and smooth progression. This, of course, leads to frustration and high attrition.

The fact that this is a pvp server makes it all worse.

You can increase the experience rate, but, if everytying else is equal, this will not solve the problem of players not being able to form groups (let alone balanced groups). Nor will it reduce corpse runs. Nor will it make the game feel more populated. Nor will it help you to get a bind or find someone to sow you or find someone to help you get your corpse. Nor will it stop you from being pvp'd. Nor will it help you to find a tracker or a porter.

Essentially, increasing experience rates is not the universal answer. Take someone doing a quest on a low population server, for example. You might increase the experience rates, but since EQ is still group-based then the player still must out-level the quest in order to do it. They do this because there're not enough people to group with. This changes how the quest will feel when you do it. Instead of hiding/sneaking/invising/mezzing/tracking/etc and working with others to attain the goal, you just slaughter most everything to get your prize. That's what happens when a group-based game is reduced to a solo-based game. It's very difficult to change hte nature of a game without starting fresh with a new slate. It's like trying to make an 80 year old 20 again. It's futile. It ends up being something that's notlike a group-based adventure. Bottom line, increasing experience rates as the be-all/end-all answer is like hooking up a bad heart to a machine. While it works when the heart is bad, it might actually get in the way when the heart is good. (In a lot of ways, this reminds me of the warrior class. No matter how much you increase experience rates on emulated solo-based servers, if you don't fundamentally change warriors then a warrior is still a warrior. They can't hide/sneak. They can't invis. They can't backstab. No mezzing. They can't teleport. They can't gate. They can't root or snare. They can't sow. They can't heal. They can't track. The warrior has got to be the most boring class ever created. To fix a warrior, you got to do a hell of a lot more than increase the experience rate.)

Now, it's possible that players might stick around if they see their experience meter go up. If this is the case and the game actually gains population then my argument is that as the population goes up the experience rate should be lowered. In fact, a script or piece of code should be written to automatically increase or decrease experience rate dependent on the overall population. The reason it's important to do this is because if experience is too slow then progression is too grindy and if experience is too fast then progression is skipped altogether. You have to find a middle-ground for your audience wherein progression is stable and balanced with everything else. That requires a good grasp of everything. It should be automatic or easily applied.

There're a lot of things I could bring. There're very many useful posts in this thread. The problem is that separating the good posts from the background noise is too hard now. It's not consolidated. This thread is like a big pile of hay now and there's a needle in it somewhere. It's like walking up to a crowd of people and asking them how to save the country. Then they all shout at once. It's quickly forgotten.

I bolded the part up near the top of your post where I said, "what the hell?" and stopped reading. It's almost as much as I can take to devote time and energy just towards people who have played on the server, let alone armchair geeks who have never once even logged in and at least attempted to see what it was all about.

[Nirgon]

From your sig: just fyi pok books f'd up pvp too.

[stormlord]

Originally Posted by Nirgon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

From your sig: just fyi pok books f'd up pvp too.

You're right that instances and pok books and "safe" zones f'd up pvp - so to speak.

For your information, EQ was never a pvp-focused MMORPG. In fact, if I recall right, they never intended on adding pvp servers. They added em late in the cycle to cover all their bases. I think at first things were going ok, despite the obvious shortcomings. The pvp servers even had their own website section and pvp stats (that were updated daily). But as the population dwindled, which is a common trait amongst pvp-servers almost universally (except Eve-Online?), all of that hard work faded and they just decayed into the background.

It's hard to have a pvp-server. But it's not hard to have PvP content on a PvE server. Lessons learned. But, unfortunately, some people don't learn. This red p1999 is one example of how people are stubborn.

My comment in my sig meant to say that if population wasn't high enough then global chat and pok books make sense (to solve conversation and travel bottlenecks). Back when I added that to my sig, people would compare global chat to pok books and make the argument that they were bad because it made the game easier. They would say that since pok books were bad and global chat was similar, then global chat was bad too. That's in their own words (mostly). But it didn't make the game easier if the population wasn't sufficient. Rather, it made it bearable. That was what people were missing back then. That was why we saw so much mudflation on live. The Company was compensating for declining inputs of new players (in effect: a lower population). Sidenote: Mudflation is more complicated than I am making it out to be here. It might be a permanent "feature".

In review, they would say:
"Global chat is to conversation what pok books are to travel (easy!), therefore, global chat is bad!"
My reply:
"Your argument is void if population is too low."

[SamwiseRed]

pok destroyed eq. at least nexus had wait times.