Server Round Table (Community)

[Denizen]

I think THF is really on track with evolving EQ in new ways. I like the server as it is but, of course, things could always get better. Many thanks to all for giving an old player something fun to do in the early morning and late evenings.

The "feel" of the server is so much more human and hospitable than I experienced over many years playing on Live. Somehow I was always left with the impression that Sony just wanted my money but secretly despised and disrespected anyone who would play their game.

Probably the recent changes I like best are getting HoH more playable again. It went through some tough times there when if more than 20 people showed up constant lag was very very annoying. For a while there, whenever I zoned in I'd just immediately camp my alts just to try and get them less laggy. It still could be better.

On Halls of Honor, I still would advocate turning the whole thing into a guild instance like, for example PoA. Might decrease lag issues etc.

Spawn rate in Guild Instances really does limit guild size: If you have one team that can box and clear Nadox, for example, the next team shows up and Nadox is not available. This leads to rational acknowledgement that once a boxed team can clear Nadox it should split off from the guild (What Xorp and I did).

Why add more people to a guild when it means LESS rather than MORE? Guild fractionization, so they can do bosses more frequently, doesn't have to occur. So I'd advocate quicker re-spawns, say once every 8 hours. This is one reason why new players are stuck saying "Looking for Guild" : there is not a motive to add them and in fact there is a strong motive NOT to add them. I feel for these peeps and I'm afraid the server loses lots of new players because they show up and nobody wants them and nobody wants to play with them.

Tactics is still nasty in terms of lag.

So probably the one thing I'd most like to see is ways to make the current content sharper, faster, less laggy more playable. Undoubtedly this would require fine tuning more of the events, making scripts more efficient, and possible upgrades to server components, connections and the like. Growth of the server, with more folks on it , will of course put greater demands on it and hence more efficiency and better connectivity would go hand in hand with this.

I agree with some comments on the epic 3.0s. Repetitive boring kills and drops are, well boring.

The idea of donor items is they help the server and they help those who run the server. The server needs money to run and money to help costs to developers. In that line it makes some sense that some items, such as distillers, might somehow be earned by helping the server. For instance doing "community" service as guides to new players. Not sure if that would be worth the while to the developers or not but the idea is there: there may be other ways of helping the server than donating money, if you help, then you can get some server rewards for doing so. Possibly some trusted community member could run guides and help the server grow in that way and also make the development of guides etc not a PITA for developers. One useful job for a guide might be help new players form up guilds etc.

[Sian]

Spawn rate in Guild Instances really does limit guild size: If you have one team that can box and clear Nadox, for example, the next team shows up and Nadox is not available. This leads to rational acknowledgement that once a boxed team can clear Nadox it should split off from the guild (What Xorp and I did).

Why add more people to a guild when it means LESS rather than MORE? Guild fractionization, so they can do bosses more frequently, doesn't have to occur. So I'd advocate quicker re-spawns, say once every 8 hours. This is one reason why new players are stuck saying "Looking for Guild" : there is not a motive to add them and in fact there is a strong motive NOT to add them. I feel for these peeps and I'm afraid the server loses lots of new players because they show up and nobody wants them and nobody wants to play with them.

I agree with this. Very true.

Concerning helping the community and getting officially rewarded, yes and no...
To unofficially get some reward because you have been helping people around for quite some time and act as a ressourceful person, yeah. To make it official and as a kind of "job", I don't like it. Helping others, especially in a game, have to remain free. I love helping people, but I do it freely. To get something in return for my help by the Gms, yeah that would be very cool.
But I would not like to help someone with that the idea that I am doing it to get something back and that's it's kinda "automatic". When you start helping to get something, it starts to be less disinterested...

[Nizzy]

Spawn rate in Guild Instances really does limit guild size: If you have one team that can box and clear Nadox, for example, the next team shows up and Nadox is not available. This leads to rational acknowledgement that once a boxed team can clear Nadox it should split off from the guild (What Xorp and I did).

Why add more people to a guild when it means LESS rather than MORE? Guild fractionization, so they can do bosses more frequently, doesn't have to occur. So I'd advocate quicker re-spawns, say once every 8 hours. This is one reason why new players are stuck saying "Looking for Guild" : there is not a motive to add them and in fact there is a strong motive NOT to add them. I feel for these peeps and I'm afraid the server loses lots of new players because they show up and nobody wants them and nobody wants to play with them.

Tactics is still nasty in terms of lag.

Fully agree on the guild instances and Tactics.

With my sporadic once a week play times I have now if I do happen to log in someone has already downed everything. Usually I catch one other person on and it was all down when they logged in. So I don't bother doing anything except logging out.

Tactics yeah the lag is still extremely nasty. I still feel the trash mobs are OP for their published Tier, especially in VZ and TZ instances. I will give an example.. I can hit my donor weapon and BP on Nizzy can smack things in HOH or Nadox in one or two back stabs. Tactics they just laugh at me and stay alive.
One suggestion if the trash mobs are to stay at the level they are upgrade the loot on TZ and VZ to make it actually worthwhile to kill them right now they are just a 2+ hour obstacle to get to RZ. The only loot they drop that any of us even remotely care about are their pieces to make the Rallos Final Word aug. At the same time with all those trash mobs maybe add some kind of rare aug they drop as well?

Non instanced part of Tactics, possibly reduce aggro range on all the trash in there? Not so much thinking of me on this one I actually prefer to pull everything at once and kill it to find what I am looking for. I am thinking for the new player that has broken into T6 and says let's go to Tactics.. They zone in and get owned by the first 4 mobs at the top of the stairs.
Also maybe expand on the content / loot in that portion. Besides farming for spell components, Blood Raven Feather and Most Angry for his type 2 augs the zone offers nothing. With RZ dropping completed spells now there is really no reason to do anything there.


Sol Ro tower - Not sure if anyone has offered up any feedback on this zone yet or not. I discovered all the type 4 augs that drop here and wanted them for some of my donor weapons.
I was playing when this zone went live in THF but didn't want to bother doing all the LDON's in order to gain access. While I do enjoy going through there with my crew and just destroying mobs I feel it too could use some tweaking.

[Denizen]

Another idea came to me today.... why not a donor lottery? Folks with only a buck or two to spend could buy lottery tickets even if they aren't able to donor up. When say enough people had put in money to pay for a BP, THF could random on the tickets and announce a winner- somebody then gets a BP. More donor items might be thus sold and some people might get stuff they wouldn't normally be able to afford.

Say $1 a ticket. Peeps can buy as many tickets as they want. THF collects the cash and then randoms it.

Now what to name it...

Power Up Lotto?

Donor Power Level

Lillu's Lotto?

[Blarion]

I haven't seen this posted yet (forgive me if it has).

One thing I would really like to see and would help me alot on fights where I tend to loose dps toons.

On live when you die, you would "hover" for about 3 minutes and if you got a rez in that time you just popped back up alive with rez effects. What it does save is the zoning when you die then having to zone back when you get a rez.

For me it means I can get them back into the fight faster and have a much higher chance to win the fights vs the zone times a death causes and many times means I will loose the fight.

[Clerdon]

Spawn rate in Guild Instances really does limit guild size: If you have one team that can box and clear Nadox, for example, the next team shows up and Nadox is not available. This leads to rational acknowledgement that once a boxed team can clear Nadox it should split off from the guild (What Xorp and I did).

Why add more people to a guild when it means LESS rather than MORE? Guild fractionization, so they can do bosses more frequently, doesn't have to occur. So I'd advocate quicker re-spawns, say once every 8 hours. This is one reason why new players are stuck saying "Looking for Guild" : there is not a motive to add them and in fact there is a strong motive NOT to add them. I feel for these peeps and I'm afraid the server loses lots of new players because they show up and nobody wants them and nobody wants to play with them.

As a relatively new player on THF who just recently reached level 70 it is a little disheartening to hear that this issue exists. I personally do not like to bot but I have had to do it out of necessity as there isn't really a lower level population on this server. The thought of trying to solo the tiered content with an army of bots just does not appeal to me. I'd much rather find a group of people who have the same goals and whose play times match with mine. However, it seems that most of the guilds are mostly made a few people with an armies of bots. I enjoy this server but I am starting to yearn for a more social experience. Hopefully my search for a guild will end eventually and if it doesn't then I guess I'll have to learn how run an army of bots or just move on (which I really don't want to do).

[jsre]

As a relatively new player on THF who just recently reached level 70 it is a little disheartening to hear that this issue exists. I personally do not like to bot but I have had to do it out of necessity as there isn't really a lower level population on this server. The thought of trying to solo the tiered content with an army of bots just does not appeal to me. I'd much rather find a group of people who have the same goals and whose play times match with mine. However, it seems that most of the guilds are mostly made a few people with an armies of bots. I enjoy this server but I am starting to yearn for a more social experience. Hopefully my search for a guild will end eventually and if it doesn't then I guess I'll have to learn how run an army of bots or just move on (which I really don't want to do).

As a new player you shouldn't be too disheartened ny this thread, you're seeing issues raised which affect players who have either been playing for a long time or who have been rushed through earlier content. I was able to play with a group of people who ran 1 character apiece up till T6. Problems with ~1 group start after that, but there is a lot of content up to that stage. Also all of that content can be patiently completed with a single group, so if you do start boxing more than 1 you don't need an army to progress.. just a group.

Generally THF remains a very high quality content server as long as you don't try to rush through content (and it will be easy, and tempting, to do that).

[Enrikk]

Hail all you cool contributors!

I was sitting killing all kinds of stuff, chatting every now and then with someone about anything, enjoying my days reconnecting with a server I love, and I began thinking of MY challenges, and what I thought would be fun;

With the ability to buy the higher level tokens to get into HoH, or higher, I realized that with a lower server population of people moving up I might have to save forever, even though I can farm Xeg tokens and below without any issue. I don't know why people need to sell the other tokens at a high price, since plat isn't all that special here, but maybe that's exactly why. In any case, I digress.

I was thinking about this guy on live LONG ago, who regularly ran Lady Vox raids. He was good, patient, and always taught the entire raid both how to raid, and how to, eventually, raid her for yourself. It was cool, cooperative, and great community building!

Now, we have THF, that is so much better than live for "the feeling", but lacks the community aspect that this dude had in his raids. It wasn't about your guild, and he actually did it selflessly. I'm not suggesting that, haha.

What I AM suggesting, is maybe make the Xeg tokens and such tradeable to a merchant, or quest giver, that could create an instance of the appropriate raid zone. It would be nice if the trader/quest giver "bought" the item for a suitable amount of coin, which would increase the need to farm these tiers, and it would allow me, and others, the chance to log in and lead a raid into these zones for people that might not be able to do so by themselves. It wouldn't be selfless, but it would be helpful maintaining a decent population.

Now, could someone abuse this system? Probably, but if you made the trader use a lockout timer per raid tier it should limit that, right? Maybe you could change the loot table of this instance to just reward the inside quests, and not drop the amazing loot, or maybe not. But, it should help getting people to progress, or at least have the hope for progress.

I prefer working with others, and if I led these types of instances I could then just play solo, while others are gaining something they need to progress.

Maybe the trader could be part of the guild "Sword for Hire", haha, and it would create a few mercenaries in the process, or maybe it would bust. I don't know, and I'm not a programmer, but maybe it would be worth the time to consider? As an extension to this idea, I would be willing to collect a drop in each tier that I could trade in so another could help me with the upper levels, for the same reason. In the end, we get to work together, but can also maintain our allegiances to current guilds and such.

As always, I am very happy to play here, and show my support with donations. That does make it easier, but it still requires intelligence, diligence, and occasionally, assistance from friends.

Regards,

Enrikk

[Denizen]

As a relatively new player on THF who just recently reached level 70 it is a little disheartening to hear that this issue exists. I personally do not like to bot but I have had to do it out of necessity as there isn't really a lower level population on this server. The thought of trying to solo the tiered content with an army of bots just does not appeal to me. I'd much rather find a group of people who have the same goals and whose play times match with mine. However, it seems that most of the guilds are mostly made a few people with an armies of bots. I enjoy this server but I am starting to yearn for a more social experience. Hopefully my search for a guild will end eventually and if it doesn't then I guess I'll have to learn how run an army of bots or just move on (which I really don't want to do).

Well the problem DOES exist, but don't shoot the messenger please. I soloed through t7 because of it, on the other hand I had a fun time soloing and developing the necessary boxing skills and equipment (much pre-MQ2).

BUT if you don't want to box, GREAT, form a guild for NO-BOXES (suggested name) and go for it. We need some non-boxing guilds!

[conradd]

What I AM suggesting, is maybe make the Xeg tokens and such tradeable to a merchant, or quest giver, that could create an instance of the appropriate raid zone. It would be nice if the trader/quest giver "bought" the item for a suitable amount of coin, which would increase the need to farm these tiers, and it would allow me, and others, the chance to log in and lead a raid into these zones for people that might not be able to do so by themselves. It wouldn't be selfless, but it would be helpful maintaining a decent population.

I found this idea interesting.

Let's say I want to go to Nadox for example. I'm flagged to zone in but I know I don't have enough "power" to manage the zone. I know I can create a raid instance under conditions (see below), so I can plan the raid with friends or guildmates or some high level people of the server or /ooc to see if people are ready for a run

The conditions to create a raid instance can be :

• quest reward : for example, you need to farm some elements to create a token, like the "Frozen Mortality" one or with global loots (so you can buy it from other people and use your money for something ) or with items from some nameds in previous tier zone.
• timer : you can only create one raid instance every 24h or 72h or a week, as you wish.
• guild size : guild with more active people can create more raid instances (even if I don't know how to check the players activity)

With this, people with low boxing activity can play higher tier zone, people who needs to know how to manage a boss fight strat (like Vistrinda) can learn from others and high level people can help others.

Of course, the old system will still be alive. It's only another way to play for people who need assistance.