Economy Suggestion

[Wongman]

I agree with Lillu. My guild and I have only been on the server since a little after January, but progressing with friends through raiding has been relatively fast. LDoN farming is by a far margin, much more of a pain in the ass than raiding. I don't think it eliminates raiding at all just because LDoN gear is better. I'm not sure about you, but having the best gear is when the game gets boring. The progression is the fun part, and LDoN over and over and over again is not fun at all. Raiding is fun, and for that reason, will always be the reason the majority of the people will choose to progress.

I do agree that removing NO DROP tag is a bad idea though. It's not hard to progress at all, and making it any easier would just be like having another EZ server. It's only taken us a month to go from level 1 to ST keyed.


Lakor and the Wongs

[Jeido]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=773&p=3083&hilit=remove+no+drop#p3083

[khaliss]

I totally agree with Lillu's last post. Not all people can raid, you have to provide these folks an alternative way of progressing and getting the best gear in game. Let's take for example people like me, I'm a full-time working dad, I can only play perhaps 2 hours max every night (except maybe holidays or weekends). This is also not a straight 2-hours, cuz my wife constantly interrupts me to take care of things (ie. minor chores, attend to our baby daughter, etc.), so it is highly unlikely I can focus on raids, and I don't want to be the one to cause a wipe or have to ninja-AFK.

I raided for 2+ years of end-game content with a server's top guild (on live) back when I was still single... played 3-4 hours straight daily with no interruptions. Been there, done all that. Now, after 4 years of EQ absence... I rediscovered this game via emu (with THF being the best version I tried) just a couple weeks back... but things have changed, and I can only play casually.

LDoN gear should be on par (or very close) to topend raid gear, but instead of taking 6 weeks to gear up, it'll have to take 2 or 3 times as long to accumulate ldon points to equally gear up vs. raiding.

Although, I totally disagree with removing the nodrop flags, it will be too different with Live and could possibly upset the balance of things. THF crew/devs have done a great job on customizing the EQ experience, and the only thing I could suggest is keep it up... if you release a new raid tier, should follow that LDoN be upgraded also.... perhaps make LDoN items refundable (maybe 75% of their value) so it wouldn't be such a pain to purchase newer/upgraded gear. Of course the newer gear will have to also be a bit more expensive than older gear.

[khaliss]

If I remember correctly, this was one of the reasons why a lot of people (before LDoN was introduced on EQ-Live) retired after PoP came out for over a year because progression was too hard... Only high-end raiding guilds could acquire the best gear in game and on average (in a mid-high populated server), there were only a couple of PoTime guilds. Some of these guilds would intentionally "cockblock" other progressing guilds by killing bosses that are part of flagging just so they could retain this "elite" status, caused a lot of drama, etc. A majority of people who didn't even belong to a raiding guild just quit since they couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

When LDoN was released, it brought in an alternative way to progress, but the gear was nowhere near raid quality (except the augs). It was a good idea and had the potential to keep EQ's casual playerbase playing. Still, SOE should have taken the extra mile and made LDoN items a bit more competitive to raiding as it would have kept more customers, but by this time, WoW came out and a huge migration was already taking place.

[Dammur]

If you remove the no drop flag on ldon items to make it possible to "trade ldon points" myself, and every other tov or better geared player out there will exploit (not technically an exploit) the system. I am currently trying to wind down to 3 boxing, already went from 5 to 4. I can solo, not box, ldon. I (and everyone like me) will group up 6 characters, solo the ldon, and sell the points to my 1 or 2 characters that I really care about. You just made my 25point ldon mission into a 65 to 125 point ldon mission (depending on if I am gearing up 1 or 2 characters), Thanks. Also, you just killed any chance of me inviting others (which I am generally willing to do) into my ldon.

This server is not a good one for tradeable ldon points.

Dammur

[khaliss]

^ I agree... there is no way LDoN points be made tradeable, else it would totally defeat the purpose of LDoN (which is an alternative way to gear up without having to raid)... but still a result of your own personal effort.

However, allowing a player to get a partial refund of LDoN-bought items for points is a good idea as new & more expensive LDoN gear are introduced.

[Lillu]

I guess we can close this topic for a while. it really splits the community, so we wont mass remove no-drop flags but will keep thinking of possible ways to improve the economy.