Long Term Server Health Improvement

So, I've gone back and forth over the past few weeks about whether it was worth posting this and I ultimately believe it is. I'll preemptively say that I expect this to be a hot topic, but I also think it's an important one and I plan to take it seriously, I am not trying to make this thread end up in rants and flames.

I think it is a necessity for the longevity of this server to consider looking at implementing the 85/15 "piggy back" rule for raids, in addition to the dropping of time phased quintessences in p3.

For new players joining this server, the time investment in order to play collaboratively with others is just so high. Nearly every active player on this server is at or near the end game raiding, with all 6 active guilds in EPs or higher. If you want to join this server and have other people to play with, you need to be at least EP flagged, otherwise you cannot even participate in your guild's raids for 4/6 of the rotations. Even if the new player has a lot of time to put in, they are looking at a months of playing mostly alone or with few options of people to collaborate with. 2-3 months to join in EPs and potentially double that to join in Time.

I believe that for the long term health of the server and player base, it would be beneficial to allow 85/15 into PoP raid zones. We as a server want to be inclusive and see new people coming in and I believe this is the best way to continue doing that in the comings months/years. The player base here does a great job about helping each other backflag, and that is wonderful, but as more guilds get into Time and there is less interest in older content it will continue to be a major blocker for new people wanting to join the server.

I struggle to see reasons against implementing this from a balance perspective as I think it helps everyone, but I would like to hear them as I am sure there are things I haven't thought of.

I admittedly have no idea what level of effort this would require from the developers and I understand if it's not technically feasible. If it is not, then I understand, but I think it is worth talking about.

 

I personally don't think anyone should ever be able to 85 into potime.

A̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶P̶o̶P̶ ̶z̶o̶n̶e̶s̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶8̶5̶ ̶r̶u̶l̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶b̶e̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶E̶P̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶.̶

As far as EPs themselves. There's a certain rewarding feeling when you get flagged for the first time, and get to zone in. I'd hate to take that away from newer players here.

Just one person's opinion though!

Edit: After reading other people's thoughts on the matter, I think I lean more toward no 85 rule for any zones whatsoever.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing the 85/15 implemented, if for nothing else, to allow flags for that zone to achieved, while still needing the previous flags anyway afterwards. Its a timing thing, just to not force people to need to miss out on the guild's rotation because they don't have required flags to access that zone.

Getting flagged in a timely manner today requires you to get those flags with other guilds with how the rotation is set. I don't really see the current situation as a problem until guilds stop allowing that entirely.

The problem with the quintessences dropping in P3 is that combined with the 85/15 rule is setting people up for a disappointment. New people simply aren't geared for Time. If your resists aren't at a certain level, lets be honest, you are a crutch and not helping in most events in P4+. Even if they get flagged for Time, they won't be there except to run in their toon to loot some rots here and there. The rots offered in P1-3 likely won't get them to a decent range on their own. If they were forced to go to EP and other raids, there is a better chance they will hit those marks.

 

I can see that. It would certainly help a lot for newer people and still make back flagging necessary while not giving people a "free pass" directly to end game content. I can support that.

That's fair, and that's how it worked on live (unless I'm misremembering). It let you in temporarily, but you still wanted to eventually get the actual flag so you weren't always in need of an anchor to get in.

Yeah that's fair. Overall I can get behind exempting Time from this mechanic.

 

Upvote 1000%
The way the raid rotation is created makes it keeps guild extremely busy constantly because if you pass up on your given cycle you lose those mobs for 12 weeks. Giving up a cycle to spend it backflaging is never an easy choice to make.
On top of that, recruits trickle in. You get 1 new person here and there. So you are endlessly backflagging with minimal result, or you force them to wait and do all the backflags on a specific cycle once every 12 weeks.
The raid rotation is a brilliant thing and it’s working really well. But it leaves little time for guilds to effectively get new players through the flagging system without forcing them to sit around and do nothing while everyone else has fun.

The 85/15 rule would be a great addition to the server and it’s longevity. It would be inclusive to newcomers and it would help them feel like they are part of a team quicker which would lead to less attrition on players who may get tired of waiting for end game content.

85/15 for potime is debatable but I think if you 85/15 into elementals and acquire the 4 god flags, you should be able to enter potime without qualification into elementals.


This is a great post and I think the conversation should occur. Ty for putting these thoughts on the board.

 

In addition, the 2-3 months to get flagged for EPs is assuming you are a pretty hardcore player who never misses a backflag raid. If you want to be more casual it's way more difficult.

 

Let's just charge 40$ for a level 100 toon and be done with it. Would hate for anyone to have to play EverQuest for a bit to access end game.

 

I don't think hyperbolic scenarios are fair here. What I am asking for is for people who already put in the time to reach level 65 to be able to join the existing guilds on this server once they do so, even if only understand certain circumstances and not instantly be caught up.

 

So, this gets to the heart of the problem here in my opinion. The people who **want** to do all of these things are already here, but there are other people who would like to experience certain things again that aren't here because of the incredibly high barrier to entry and those people are the ones who benefit. The influx of new players to this server has dropped dramatically lately and I find it hard to believe it isn't because because of the need for so much flagging to catch up. If people wanted to do it all on their own, they still could do so. I do think you are right that less people would choose to if given the option, but I also think a lot more people would be attracted to play here if they had the option.

 

Sure, but if you come and join friends then you can be 65 in a weekend, and with 85/15 be raiding through end game the same week you joined the server, no problem. This isn't hyperbole.

The current raiding guilds have worked long and hard to be where they are, maybe other people can do that too!

 

In my opinion, New players jumping straight to the end would only weaken the server dynamic, community, economy and atmosphere.

 

As I understand it (please let me know if I have it wrong), there are currently two ways up and coming raiders can get flagged. Either (1) their own guild does the needed raid when their turn comes up in the rotation or (2) they check the rotation spreadsheet and ask to tag along with whatever other guild is doing the raid they need.

Seems like (2) takes a bit of individual initiative and commitment, but then again so does joining a raiding guild. Is it that much more cumbersome, on an individual level, than working on a VT key, for example? From what I’ve seen from the sidelines, most guilds are pretty easygoing about letting non-members pick up spare flags. Are there a lot of people who can’t get their flagging needs met under this system?

RL keeps me strictly casual these days, so I don’t really have a horse in this race. Just trying to understand how it all works and wondering how much of a problem it really is.

 

It's a much bigger commitment than a VT key, for a few reasons, but the biggest being that you can't do it by yourself or even with 1 other human. It's also way more time consuming. Best case scenario it's probably 2-3 months to go from 0 flags to EP flagged. I have a data point on this of a recent BG member who is VERY active, his first raid was 9/20/22 and he recently finished his elemental flags last cycle. Guilds are very easygoing about sharing flags, and I thank all the other guilds on the server for that. It's been great to see guilds work together on this. In that time you are waiting for flags though, you cannot join on most guild raids (4 out of 6 rotation cycles, more depending on if you wanna count EarthB), and are often limited in finding groups (guild or otherwise) because many people prefer to exp in fire or water (although that are decent alternatives). It's definitely a climbable hurdle for those that are dedicate, but in the end it works out to be a significant gatekeeping effect that IMHO prevents new players from joining this wonderful server.

 

Separating "player" from "toon" is sometimes difficult. I would lean away from letting "players" in on an 85/15 rule, but I don't think I'm too far off to think that a significant part of the support for a change like this would come from Rimidal players with lots of toons. As a "player" I've already pushed 6 "toons" through flagging up to EP. The thought of playing other characters is fun, but it comes with the weight of back flagging some more, which does get tedious.

I am not arguing *for* the 85/15 rule, this argument or observation of mine isn't convincing to me, but I do think it's worth calling attention to.

<edit>
I suppose I should say, I'm in favor of the benefits (new player inclusion, more enjoyment from alts, ect), but I don't think it would outweigh the costs (too-fast progression, trivializing effort by long term players, ect).

 

With all the flag sharing and constant back-flag runs, I've gotten alts 3EP flagged in less than a month without even trying. At the moment it appears to be trivial to get EP flagged. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 3-6 months for PoTime flags. It took guilds 7 years to do this on EQMac...

New chars need gear from all the Tier1-3 drops anyway, and a lot of AAs to be useful.

Here's a suggestion and this is what NAG does: you already have EP / Time flagged characters in the guild, in the form of people's alts, I'm sure.
For new recruits to check out the server and the raid scene, you can just allow these new humans to box existing flagged chars on raids and earn DKP, while they work on their own levels, AAs and flags.

This gives you multiple benefits as follows:
1. New players still get to raid with the guild
2. You get more humans on raids, bolstering your numbers, and making content easier
3. New players still get to enjoy the progression aspect, instead of "oh look I'm im PoTime in the first week of creating my char, this game is so easy" which then just sets them up for disappointment, making it far more likely to get bored and leave (I've seen this happen many times)
4. As you do back-flags over the weeks/months, new members get to pick up cheap/rotting loots
5. New players accrue DKP to spend later when their chars are ready, giving them a head-start on the BiS loots.

Playing the game, having goals and progressing is what is actually fun, not skipping to end-zone.
Imo

 

Good riddance to anyone who wants the most profitable experience spots in the game with as little input as possible. Get outta town.

 

I understand the mentality of people working for what they get. It’s a great reason why EQ is so fun and keeps people playing.
There really are two options if you want to see end game raids.
1) join an end game established guild
2) field 25-50 new humans that have 75% or higher raid attendance, trio box, play well together, are hardcore into progression and have the same goals. Form a guild, progress content, join the rotation sheet, eventually reach end game and beat eq.

For blood guard, we chose option 2. But we were lucky enough to have a team move here together from p99 so our success is greatly attributed to our team having already being tested and successful on one of the most time consuming servers of EQ currently available.

Every player has their own reasons and motives to play. The 85/15 rule does not disallow someone from progressing in an incremental fashion. Blood guard had luclin available to them, but we decided to wait at 52, gear up and kill vox and naggy before moving forward. Adding the option to 85/15 rule helps those who want to use it. It doesn’t hurt those who don’t because you can opt out.

This not only helps new players catch up. It also helps already established guilds not have to redo everything forever and ever. The backflag process is currently, very literally, an endless process. Whilst on top of attempting to enjoy the very best end game content (loot wise, and challenge).

killing all these flag mobs endlessly doesn’t seem like a sustainable process over the long term (years)

 

With all due respect, I have always disliked this general argument. "Make the game easier / more convenient, and those that want to play a certain way can always choose to make things harder on themselves".

You could use the same argument for introducing 1000% Exp potions, and say "no one is forcing you to use them". When you do that though, the fallacious nature of the argument becomes apparent.

 

I agree with your suggestion and it's something I (we) already do. I never play my poopy beastlord on raids anymore, but I often let others play him (as long as they keep human illusion on at all times).

I think the idea that people can "skip" to end-game content here is a bit misleading. Sure, they *can* get there in this proposal, but as you all mention, they are going to be dead weight for the most part. Maybe I am being naive, but I think most people would be heavily motivated to actually get strong enough to be useful on these raids quickly, but this 1) gives them the option to participate vs sitting on the sidelines and 2) gives them a **major** source of loot farm where they can start gearing up. As mentioned, most backflag raids aren't run by the guild of the person attending them, so they have little chance to get gear from them. To me personally it's a way to include new people sooner, rather than gatekeeping them. I think the amount of new players on the server is a clear indicator that the barrier of entry is quite high.

In contrast, a year ago on this server this barrier was much lower, and as a result you saw a lot more new people joining. I think this is my biggest point I'm trying to make here, that the rate of new players joining is much much slower than last year and to me the reason is obviously flagging.

 

heh nice. If you wanted to use me as a benchmark, I can tell you I have more PoTime and EP flagged characters than I know what to do with

so I'd say it's pretty easy to get flagged as it currently stands and I am enjoying the open backflag raids, it's actually been a surprisingly cool part of the community that I've never experienced before

tagging along other people's guilds has been pretty fun and interesting thus far! I hope it continues

 

What's wrong with gatekeepers though? That's the fundamental issue here. Why do we need a world free of gates? There are plenty of other servers around for that. Why can't we keep our gates and their keepers?

The experience you describe is available all over the place. Go find it.

 

Not to derail the thread, but I think opening up the AK-style PoP level access would go further in making the server more approachable to new and casual players.

But even though I say that: as someone who has been here less than a year and plays pretty casually, I would also be saddened if that did happen. Despite it giving my main trio newfound access to Storms, Valor, Bastion of Thunder, and Halls of Honor. I'm looking forward to completing a Justice Trial with friends I've made here and exploring these zones for the first time, doing the Askr Quest for access etc. They're all goals I'm looking forward to and part of what keeps me logging in to grind AAs and chase upgrades.

PoP hasn't even been released for a full year here so I don't see the rush. That's just my personal (unguilded) perspective, of course, and I can understand how it may be different than someone leading a guild. I have seen a good number of players race to 65 and get EP flagged in anywhere from half to a quarter of the time I've been playing here though. Heck, I ran over to the FoB spiderling crypt a few months ago and threw a new player some cheap starting gear + gems to vendor for spell money on my Paladin alt (then 56 - now 59) and they are already EP flagged and selling GRW turn-ins etc. It certainly seems obtainable if you know the game and want to put the time in.

 

Just thinking about this further:
We've had far more active raiders quit the server after getting PoTime flagged, than we've had quit becasue they had to get flags.
Our attendance is always higher during back-flag raids, than it is during PoTime raids.

I don't know what is going on, but it seems a lot of people quit shortly after getting PoTime flagged. It really sucks. We've got so many characters that can be played and boxed from all the MIA people that leave after getting all their flags.

So you should probably keep people out of PoTime as long as you can...

No more new content coming is a very important thing to remember. This isn't a progression speedrun server by any means. Content was made harder here by design, I believe.

 

I agree with your first paragraph here and I should emphasize, I want this to be a productive conversation. My only goals for this entire thread is to have a conversation (already achieved IMO) and keep it out of rants and flames (so far so good).

 

Dang, I thought I was ranting.

 

Burnout from flagging is real. 85/15 would help with burnout and people feeling left behind.

How else would we get to start seeing <Temerity> selling time loots in /alliance?

 

If we wanted to make it harder on purpose then why would we make the Rathe Council fleck. It's true that when there are situations where AK's behavior or data is unknown we will tend to lean into more difficult when making educated guesses, but that is countered by unknown unknowns not being implemented making the game easier. Thousands of hours were spent parsing thousands of NPCs to ensure that their damages, AC and ATK were as close as I could get them. If we were bent on making the game harder I could have saved myself a whole lot of time and just made up numbers.

The 3 boxing with all the account and third party tools make this server way easier than any old Sony server regardless

 

I'd be for 85/15 piggy backing, whether it's all the way to Time or just to EPs.

As someone who recently came back from a break, I had flags almost up to EP except Bertoxx and following, but because of how little Carprin/Bertoxx is done I had to wait almost a month just to get into Torment. Then another week to get Saryrn done. Two of my chars will get Sol Ro done today/tomorrow, but one of my chars missed a flag, so it means he will have to wait even longer to get Sol Ro done. It's great if guilds are doing a lot of back flagging raids, but over time they will likely be done less and less. Sometimes back flag raids seem to line up, but if they don't you're just SOL. My guild is mostly flagged for Time already, so I've kind of been waiting about a month to most anything with them (just happened to have fire this rotation, which I am not flagged for til tomorrow). This is from someone who looks at the backflag raid sheet daily, but a person who is not that focused it could take way longer. Looking at all the backflagging from when I was coming back from a break, I considered just quitting again as it would take so long to catch up.

The only other viable options I can imagine to not feel like it's so hard to get back flagged at this point is if backflag raids were mandatory to do on the standard raid rotation, something like you must choose at least one backflag raid per cycle, which some people might not be very happy about.