A request...

[Jeido]

I was wondering if it would be possible to remove the no drop flag from items on the server. I have raided on both normal servers, as well as on Firiona Vie on live, and I must say the FV ruleset made life so much easier. Being able to trade items to new members that join gets rid of some of the redundancy in raiding. It lets new members catch up to the rest of the guild much quicker, and lessens the amount of backwards farming a guild has to do just to let new members survive in the zone that the guild is in.

Theirs a huge difficulty gap between each tier raid zone. I started noticing how difficulty it was for new members once we stopped farming ssra, but now with tier 3 it is even worse. We've been unable to re-attempt ST just because a few key members (only 1-2, mind you) have been MIA. 1-2 people on an emu guild is a lot, esp when they box and are top geared with your guild. It took evo about a month or a month and a half to gear up our members with full TOV, and im sure other guilds will have the same issue.

The reason I bring this up is because as i've said Evo has farmed ToV for months. Half of our upgraded loot is going to bots, the other half just goes to the bank. Being able to help new members gear up better with old member loot would be so great to do, and it wouldnt force guilds to refarm a zone that they've trivialized. ToV is a great zone, but I think that we've seen enough of it and don't need to farm it for another 2 weeks to gear up new members so that they can join us in ST..

Hopefully this is considered.

[Chila]

I agree with Jeido 100%.

It real is frustrating to just get the chance to do an "real" attempt in ST and face the fact that we need to back track everything we done already.

For instance today our tov run was well kinda horrible out of all the drakes in both Ntov and Wtov our "new" guild memebers that needs the gear hardly got anything becous of our unluck with drop rates (blameing Sarcon for it btw!).

Not real sure if makeing the gear dropable is the best way to go, but atm its the only way i see to speed up the regearing of new invites.

Problem i see is that if there is to much regearing new people our older members with good gear will get tierd fast, i can actualy admit that i thought about loging out becous im getting verry tierd of ToV. Even tho i love tov both here and on live.

[Lola]

I joigned recently and already got nearly everything I could have a use from ToV. By the way this place is still fun for me hehe.

From what I see about tonight's run, too many weapons dropped and espescially the 2HS.
If the option of "not removing no drop flag" is not the one, maybe you could change the loottable and up significantly % drop rate of ALL/ALL or "many classes" items and lower the special/fewer classes loots.

Not sure you can handle that with the loottable logic, but it could be at least a solution to stop equiping bots when we have mains/usefull alts to equip in order to beat the new challenge

Thanks in advance!

[Jeido]

A big concern for me is that as time goes on and tier 4, 5 come out then the lower end crowd will be even further behind. By removing no drop, you not only have a chance to create an economy but you can help players compensate better for the coming and going of new members. Let's face it, this is an emu. People don't play emu's for as long as they did on live. The turn over rate is much much higher for guilds. It isn't like a new member would join a guild, then moments later be fully geared with the best loot. At best they would have gear from lesser tiers that the main members have upgraded from in the past. This loot will make such a huge difference in helping new players get caught up though, which is my point.

[Kiowa]

I would also like to point out when the bigger guilds run through a tier like ToV to gear new members it kills the content for the smaller guild as we are stuck with a respawn timer, which halts our discovery of the content.

[Lola]

I see your point now Jeido and fully agree with this.
Mazzic has also a point there, sorry for inconvenience.

Loly

[Lillu]

You can key and so equip people skipping trier 1-2 since ST needs no tier 2 flag but a sidequest. I don't have any concerns regarding players catching up lateron to Tier 4-5 etc.

respawn time is tuned and always will be for the actual base population. just remember, we already changed respawn time when Progeny hit ToV. so if needed, we will change it, not before tho.

about droprates, yeah, Tyler can make some changes if it's really out of balance.

completly removing no-drop flags, I think thats for many reason is a no go, but sure we can remove the flag from a few items.

let's see what Tyler and Striat says.

[TheBloodmoon]

I don't know ... honestly, I feel like droppable raid quality gear will only increase the rate of farming of raid encounters just below your level. Not you, specifically, Jeido, but others in the future will certainly "exploit" this. Think about it, I can box Ssra raid mobs now, and I know you can as well, including Kael and ToV (I'm sure even NToV soon). What's stopping you, or me, from farming tons of droppable loot from these events, keeping the nameds on lockdown, and "twinking" new alts and/or friends? Not saying that you would, but you could. And you know as well as I do that there are plenty of people who would, just because they can. To me, it gives MORE incentive to actively farm these events (meaning, you'd still be hitting those events as much as you would, if not more, than before), knowing that even if the items that drop can't go to anyone on the raid, that you'll certainly be able to sell it or either give it to a guildy/friend/twink.

Secondly, it brings up the ability to just hand raid loot to newly created alts, which, honestly, I see being more of the case than giving the loot to new players.

Lastly, I think Lillu and Tyler have put a lot of effort into this server, with the intention and expectation of making people earn what they've raided for, not have it handed to them so they can "skip" content. I think it would be cheating the newer players to not see the content created on this server, as well as Lillu and Tyler' who hoped to see their work challenge this server's population.

Honestly, I see too many problems to outweight the benefit, and trust me, I see a lot of benefit. It would be fantastic to have more players for my guild AND have them fully suited up and ready to mow through tier 2. But, I just don't see it being a solution to the problem that not only most servers see, but also Live has been seeing for a very long time. I would rather see the addition of more expansive content, paralleling tier 1 and 2 (and Kael/Chardok), even tier 3 and beyond as well, perhaps 1-2 more raid zones per tier, to keep the content fun and interesting, and to keep it from being "farmed out". For example, on Live, you could farm the hell out of multiple raid zones and encounters (take TSS and PoR raids for specific examples) and still get the same quality/level of gear from each encounter, varying by specific focii and mod2s of course, but still very similar. Kept it interesting, change of scenery, new challenge in each encounter, but different, and different loot to "hope and wish" for. That, to me, would be worth a lot more on this server, than droppable raid loot.

I'm always a pessimist though. I could be completely off base here, lol. Someone's gotta be the devil's advocate, though.

[Tyler]

Removing nodrop is not an option. I see your concerns tho. We can start with reviewing drop rates on items. Currently most mobs have 6 or 7 drops and each item has the same drop rate chance (beside some rare stuff like the COH item from ToV).

Another idea is some sort of token sysem. Not sure how we would do it exactly but it goes along like this: There will be an NPC that will accept NODROP items and in exchange gives you coins,symbols etc. So you turn in 3 ntov loots and will then get a DROPPABLE coin/symbol (lets call it token).. You can then hand down the token to the new guildmate and we will offer a small pool of items from the raid zone that you can choose from when you turn it into Loot_Quest_TOV_NPC02.

That way every loot still has some sort of merit and not only new guildies but the old farts also gain something from this.

[drawnir]

I think both sides to this argument have both good points and good intentions...but seeing that this is EQMU and not live....I just see too many things going wrong if everything became tradable.

On FV...and it's been years (I played on FV when it was new and would come on later just to go into the baz to have a chuckle), but if I remember right, the number of players a person could have was limited to a main only or just one alt...I forget which. This I believe had a large part to do with things not going too out of control. But like I said, going onto FV and seeing the gear I had sell for tons and tons of plat (I was always broke for some reason) always made me laugh. Along with limiting the amount of players people could have, I also believe FV was created after the birth of instanced zones.

The turnover rate may be higher due to it being eqmu, but most numero uno guilds also had a high burnout rate regardless. In most if not all raiding guilds there was always the task of gearing up two or five players, only to see some players to move to other servers or quit the minute you hit a brick wall trying to figure out new encounters, or being bored to death with the current end content. That aspect has always been present.

I think what Evolution and Progeny are simply experiencing the growing pains of a new server. Believe me, you guys are handling it alot better than I have seen. Back in '99 or 2000 on the Rathe, our top guild got disbanded by a GM for trying to hoard the planes for themselves, training other guilds if they attempted to clear them. After a GM got fired, the guild was disbanded, and couple players were banned/unbanned, the guild reformed and the server created an agreement and a rotation system that later players on the legends server were familiar with.

That said, I think the Devs are pumping out raid content at a fantastic rate. I had friends that had to farm the end zone, every day, over and over for months until either there was no more gear needed and they took a break, or the next expansion came out.

I think the fix for everything is instances...more or less. I think instances were the great equalizer as far as guilds competing for raid targets. Until then, even with our rotation calendar, there were some real feuds between some guilds. Lilu mentioned LDON coming soon...maybe that will include instances? I know there has been talk about trying to get them going, though I have no idea how far away that is.

Until instances come around, if they can, how about creating an agreement and a schedule on raid targets? I mean...if you guys start butting heads on current content.

Edit: ok ok, Tyler posted a pretty cool compromise while I was writing this up, still tossing this out though.