Population

[Mistmaker]

I have played many games that are not fit to play and have a family (kids etc) if you wish to advance past group/solo items. These are the ones where your 100% attention is needed during the raid or even just to stay alive. Back in 99 (if you raided at all) you even had guilds that would kick you out of the guild if you were not fully devoted to what was happening during the raid. WoW was extreme for this and and I also know EQ2 was too.

I don't think the game was designed for family back then. Could you think of playing EQ with your 7 year old? After his first CR he would never play again. Today I play with mine on Asgard, because all those game frustrations I removed. I think today's family player also has kids that they involve. That was rare to see back in 99.

The EQemu servers I think would be more difficult to play if you have a family are the ones that I had problems playing. So from my experience with 4 kids and 3 dogs anything that requires me to play an FD class like P99 I found to be difficult. I would also say anything that requires me to play a box team like EZServer would also be difficult.

So server fit for family would be IMHO those that dont require you to run a large box team and those that you can include your kids. If you wish to play on p99 make sure to apply for that IP exemption and then watch your kids fight over who gets to play when you only get 1 extra for access.

I speak from my own personal experiences and others may have a different experience so just telling it how it has been for me. Back in 99 i was married and had a child then too so again I'm talking from my experiences.

Originally Posted by The_Beast

Just for the sake of topic, I am not really sure I understand the difference between "yesterday's" family man/woman playing EQ and today's family player.
I noticed some of today's players make an implication, that all the people who played everquest back when it came out, were "alleged" single young people
with not much RL responsibility, allowing them the time to play that regular Everquest grind back then. But people like myself and many others I knew,
we already had a wife, kids and full time job when Everquest was released in 1999. No, we couldn't spend 3-4 hours a day, but I never spent that much
time on any game, even when I was single and care free. The original Everquest was definately not a game setup for impatient players. It wasn't a deal where
you would eventually see "Game Over". Somedays, I had just enough time to login and add 100 plat to my bank and logout, then go watch a movie with my
wife. There was always tomorrow.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Good write up Sunbeam!

And I agree with most of it, specially with "people won't come, unless the people are already there", which is a big problem for creating group oriented server.

I think I want to note however - non camping progression works for Baldurs Gates, because BG is a full scale RPG with a big evolving story-line. Moderns MMOS like WoW don't really have that. Yes there usually some central story line which mostly caters to high end raiders, but that's it - most of WoW consists of small time quest chains that go like this : "Investigate Village X - Kill 5 mobs - Investigate Y - kill 10 mobs - Kill local boss - Reward". I can produce those quests chain 20 an hour.
When playing WoW I found myself desperately running around doing these, and getting XP too fast to actually enjoy exploring what is obviously a beautiful scenery. I actually WANT to stay in zone for a WHILE - I want to camp/roam around that beautiful waterfall to spawn that rare named Z and kill it for some sweet random loot. But NO - the quest chain keeps pushing me forward to next location when I barely taking a look at the current one, and a handful of quest steps down the road I am ALREADY leaving the zone for the next.

What I ideally want from EMU server is some sort of middle ground between Hard Core EQ and modern MMO.
EQ was too hardcore and too slow - WoW too casual and too fast.
Crafting in EQ was painful and mostly meaningless with only goal to skill up to do a quest combine.
Crafting in WoW is boringly easy and just based on mats grinds.
EQ2 had perfect crafting system (which they dumbified few years later) that was both REASONABLY challenging AND REWARDING.

What I want from EMu is a server where SOlO exists for ALL classes, but groups/raids also exists, and no bots/boxes are allowed.

This would allow server to be acceptable to casual solo players, and when their number builds up - they could potentially form up pick groups or even guilds to take on harder tasks. It is OK not to make ALL content solo-able - let there be hard encounters that REQUIRE a full group (or hek even 2 for super boss fights) - yes you can't do this solo, so persuade others to join in!

[sunbeam]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayerZ

What I want from EMu is a server where SOlO exists for ALL classes, but groups/raids also exists, and no bots/boxes are allowed.

This would allow server to be acceptable to casual solo players, and when their number builds up - they could potentially form up pick groups or even guilds to take on harder tasks. It is OK not to make ALL content solo-able - let there be hard encounters that REQUIRE a full group (or hek even 2 for super boss fights) - yes you can't do this solo, so persuade others to join in!

I've come to think that the problem is, at least up through PoP (which is where both the content and the player interest stops really), the problem is the inordinate amount of hp's on the raid mobs.

Look a good group can do LOTS of things. Find a way to get through Ssra Temple, kill past the butterflies in Temple of Veeshan (and deal with those roaming assassins that seem to sneak up on you as adds).

But then you hit the crazy hp's on the raid mobs you started to see in Velious.

A C-Heal chain is just not a viable thing to require for progression (and this among other things is a loot based game; you need the loot to progress).

Really Kunark is doable without adjusting too many things. There is a lot more knowledge out there, and the techniques are all worked out.

It's when you start hitting Vulak, Avatar, and all the rest that it becomes totally unworkable.

How many people did it take to do Lord Bob (you know Doljon-whatever in Velk's) back in the day? Think he is only around 100,000 hp's with some buddies to make it harder. If you have to have more than that, it's not happening.

Then there are the things like PoSky (the deathtouching mobs). You know that that zone was never soloed till people could eat those deathtouches in some fashion? Just saying that zone was never soloed till after the Avatar of War could be soloed in game.

If you need PoSky for a quest piece (like some epics, notably the mage one), you really have to have a lot, like 40 people at least to do it if the zone is like live. And people are going to die every 18 seconds or whatever, actually the youtube videos I've seen have it timed "death touch incoming, 5-4-3-2- Buffy is down, drag her corpse and have Beerswill click her back... deathtouch in 10 seconds..."

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by sunbeam

Look a good group can do LOTS of things. Find a way to get through Ssra Temple, kill past the butterflies in Temple of Veeshan (and deal with those roaming assassins that seem to sneak up on you as adds).

But then you hit the crazy hp's on the raid mobs you started to see in Velious.

Well essentially - you can't just take stock EQ DB adjust a few numbers and call it a new server - the ENTIRE WORLD has to be re-done from scratch
So lev 61 mob in Velious is NOT 4x times stronger than lev 60 mob in Kunark, but smoothly progresses to be slightly harder

Heck if anything the combat engine needs to be rewritten to be more straight forward rather than try to emulate LIFE's weird pre and post 40/50/60 difficulty spikes, hard/soft stat caps etc.

And yeah, DT fights were the stupidest of the all - it was essentially a challenge only to bring shit load of people to survive them, with no chance to play around them.
Good things they dropped this crap in all following expansions.

[The_Beast]

Well back when the "family man" played EQ, it wasn't much different than someone having, for example, a hot rod project in the garage that he worked on whenever he had time.
My wife, kids and I would spend time together as a family, sometimes the wife would spend one on one time with the kids and times I would spend "daddy time" with the kids. Any
hours I spent on EQ was strictly when the wife and kids were busy, or sleeping. Right from day one, it was always difficult for a guild to have enough on for a raid, I soloed, I grouped
and had the odd opportunity to go on a raid once in awhile. I just did whatever was feasible at the time. A family lifestyle doesn't really prevent you from doing anything in the
game, it would just take a lot longer to accomplish things you want to do. It can take many more months and lots of patience, while keeping RL responsibilities a priority. I never
climbed on to play any computer game when my wife and kids were awake and/or in my presence. But I wasn't in one of those relationships where the "couple" spends 24/7 together.
We gave each other our own space, and what we did in that space was an individual preference. Some used it in the garage, others were in a sports bar with his buddies and
some, well, we were playing EQ. At one point, we had a Thursday night ritual where 5 of us got together in a room every Thusday night we had setup with our towers and have a
"gaming night" The wife and kids were doing their own thing at a friend's house, doing girly things

[tdanger84]

tune server for 6 man(properly geared) group and allow bots. players who want to solo can use bots, players who want to group can drop some bots in favor of their friends. everyone gets to do what they want, everyone's happy. why does it have to be one way or the other? restrict IP and take out raids so no one can make multiple groups or box if you want to prevent steamrolling.


if you want, toss in some OPTIONAL world bosses(yes I took that idea from your server Mistmaker =p ) with cool fluff items like cosmetic stuff, graphics, mounts, auras, whatever and let the people who want to group take them but the solo player wouldn't need them in order to progress.

grouping with real people should give you an extra edge, not create a minimum standard. example, a solo player of max level, lets say 70 in this case, should be able to take out whatever the max level boss is in that world, but a couple real players grouped can do it at 65 with slightly less gear. ALL players who want to play can do so in the way they like, the people who group just have an edge over the solos

[Albator]

"e.g i don't get why if some don't like <insert whatever>, then they don't want others using it?"

Its the whole reason people play an mmo. Because everyone is on an equal playing field. If the playing field isn't equal then its broken. Its like a pacman top 10 scoreboard where some people are playing with an xbox controller and others are playing with an atari controller. There should be different scoreboards for people playing with one controller vs the other. In the same way there should be different servers for people playing EQ with one ruleset verses another.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

e.g. i don't like boxing more than a few, but i don't get jealous about a guy boxing 50 toons. i'm a little jealous of what's required to run 50 toons, i mustl admit! but, that has nothign to do with "me/you" playing the game of EQ.

As said above the issue in equal playfiled

If server set up is group oriented, yet mass boxing is allowed, then 1 guy looking to play the group game finds himself completely alone and without a group, because no one really groups, but runs a box army. And that sort of defeats the whole purpose of a "Group server".
Even if we talking a server with thousands of player, where SOME people run a box army, then we have a different issue where couple people running boxes interfere with ability of others to play because they solo claim the content meant for a whole groups.

[mjbcb0717]

The best solo server right now is casual dreams it's actually balanced out were you can't blaze trough shit all the little edge things poru has you may look at it like oh this is going to be easy. Nah its not content might be scaled to solo but it's going to take you a bit to get to 65 then work on AA to do the custom world bosses and potime will take you several hours to clear I went back because there are no fun solo servers anymore besides this one. No PEQ no GM commands you still gotta run were you wanna go granted pok is open and there is a porter but only takes you to city's and small zones so you will need to work here to get some were nostalgia with a little kick I call it

[kokey98]

There's a fundamental difference in how we perceive reality.

inclusion provides the best probabilty for population, if people don't get emotional about things.

we are discussing play preferences, and excuding any type will reduce #s - i think that can be agreed upon, but not necesarily where it ends for each individual.

maybe that is the intention to reduce #s, nothing wrong with that, either. this isn't a "how-to" or "you should" this is simply discussing real motivations and working up from there, instead of a top-down inductive approach which leads to all sorts of fallacious reasoning being manufactured.

prefer a server anyway you want, but the assumptions/inferences some make are not causality. (everyone should be required to study "logical fallacies" in school) this isn't an reply to tell you to prefer somethign else, its to highlight that the real reasoning motivation is actually different than what is communicated.

even so, it doesn't have to change your mind, either... this is a video game which is about entertainment... if somethign is not fun, even if irrational about it, it is not enjoyable... that's normal. and since it's a video game, hurts no body.

with that said...

- the rules of the server do not cause behaviour... a server's rules may attract a certain type, but that is different. someone who won't group will still not group regardless of boxing/bots or any relavent rules. it is a pre-existing preference to play.

-behaviour is not a pathogen. it isn't a communicable disease. it may be true that the proportion is less/more than it was before, but that's not relevant, either. if i was to guess like that, i'd go a different route and blame the personality types that drawn to mmo's as the reason it's difficult to get a group.

-one person above clearly sees it as a competition between players... i don't in anyway.. i haven't even inspected a player in ... i can't recall doing so.. and likely an accident before i turned the click option off. this is a personal choice as to how to "be"... not somethng you should apply to others as universal truth and cause for this or that. this doesn't negatively impact others, so it probably should be as inclusive as possible for long-term success.

-it is an even playing ground, if all have the same options available. they are choosing to do it that way becaue they like it that way. (and vice versa)

so, if there's no rational reasons, what's the real motivation?

the fact that someone got 'more' while feeling they did less to achieve it. sounds more like jealousy (the word choices above hint at it too, not just in this thread but anytime someone tries to explain why boxing is unfair, ever).

there's no other reason to dislike it. (tried to stay general, this applies more so to bots, mercs, boxing)

the people that don't like boxing on small servers more than likely don't like others getting stuff that they cannot get or don't have, because there's no other rational reason on a small server. there is no leaderboard, there is no fierce competition for resources in the game etc. etc... so, if no toes are stepped on, all you have left are personal feelings about the matter.

-eq an even playing field? the game is inherently coded to be unequal in so many ways. i'd argue it's not the "spirit" of the game to begin with. this particular concept is neither logically for or against anything related. it might be a popular thuoght, but that doesn't make it a truth.

-Stratificaton of players is inevitable no matter what rules you choose. players being better than others, in regard to gear, is guarnateed to occur 100% of the time.

(i don't like to box, btw. it's 100% inconsequential in my experience if others on a small server box. eq has many options, and if it's the "last" dungeon, that's a bottleneck you can never avoid.)

[ChaosSlayerZ]

I will disagree with you on 2 points:

RE : numbers. When you say that excluding ANY type of player just causes reduction in number of players is only partially true. Let say we want solo/group no-box server. A guy comes alone and says - I want to group staff with my 12-box team. We say NO - he leaves. Did we just loose 12 players? No lost 1 guy who wanted to do group content solo - therefore he won't be grouping AND he would be competing for content. If we would let him Box - then everyone can box. Then suddenly people who were could box but were fine with grouping all start boxing - and group content becomes EXCLUSIVELY boxer thing.
Its not like I want to intentionally exclude players, but server goal is server goal - you can't have a PvP server when 99% of people don't want to PvP.


Another point is on "behavior is not a pathogen" . Oh this one is tricky. One MMO dev who worked early in his career on EQ, and then worked on Guild Wars 2 have said that "The game will FORCE players into a pattern and players will observe it". It doesn't matter what crazy rule set you come up with, if there is sufficient desire to play your game/server overall, the players will accept the entire rule set and push others to do so as well. Of course this is more relevant for actual MMOs that have tens of thousands of players, and not Emu server with 20


And finally - yes some players are better than others no matter if they solo, group, raid or box. Some play MUCH longer and therefore can get a lot of progress faster and may even burn out sooner. Those things are natural, but server NEEDS to chose a preferred mindset - if you allow EVERYTHING - then you will mostly get 12-boxers, and then that casual solo guy who likes to group occasionally won't even come because he will feel lost and alone

[Albator]

Mabye you didn't like my last example kokey, lets look at another example where we liken an mmo to a real world. The world has rules. Laws of physics. No one gets to break these laws. If someone could just turn off gravity for himself that wouldn't be fair or natural.

Since an mmo tries to mimic a real world in many ways then there should be rules everyone is subject to. Since it is a game people want to choose a ruleset that they think is fun and want it to apply to everyone so it is fair and natural like a real world.

[tdanger84]

the reason solo players comment more on the high end preferences is because that's usually the point in which we can no longer play and our inquiries are to see if they are doable or not. no one want to invest their time in 60-70+ level to find out they hit a wall and cant use their acquired gear and skills to take out the next hardest boss, or can only kill trash mobs. I disagree with the idea of instant access to high ends and the assertions that solo players want to bulldoze through everything. challenge is expected, just not impossibility.

it is clear that the player base is quite divided but one thing for sure is that we are all out here still beating this dead horse. so whatever server one makes, there will be people trying it out. go ahead and make your server of solo bosses with finely tuned bots. I can assure you that I will be there to at least give it a shot and I know that others will too.

[The_Beast]

Originally Posted by tdanger84

I disagree with the idea of instant access to high ends and the assertions that solo players want to bulldoze through everything. challenge is expected, just not impossibility.

That makes an interesting point, but consider this example, (in theory), if you logged on to a server with content setup for that exact same classic grind like P99
up to, let's say level 55. Then after reaching 55, you are then eligible to spawn bots and start doing higher end mobs that are doable by soloing (with bots).
Does something like that fall into the "expected challenge" category ? That's not something within my goals, but the scenario presents a relevant concept.
I really like the whole idea of the bot system, only because it provides an grouping alternative that may not otherwise be available, without boxing. It does come
with a disadvantage though, which I am considering putting some effort into a solution for it. If a player spawns 5 bots, he may have just found himself a group,
but they come with no gear. You have to not only hunt for your own gear, but for the entire group you just joined. It's what I call unfair mechanics that way.
My initial intentions in "finely tuning" the bots is making an attempt to mirror player characters, especially with base stats. Just for example, I noticed if a
player rolls up a level 1 halfling warrior, you're looking at an AC of 31 to start. But it's bot counterpart has a base AC of 12.

[tdanger84]

sounds good to me. personally i really enjoy having systems to unlock bots rather than just getting them all at lvl 1. its one thing I enjoyed about ZippZipps server, you had quests to unlock them at various level intervals. I was playing around recently on Deadly Crusaders and it involves a quest system to unlock bots using tradeskills and level requirements. IMO an unlocking quest line system is a fun and rewarding way of obtaining the power needed to progress. And you are right, gearing is part of the challenge. i dont mind taking the extra time to gear out a group of bots if it mean I will be able to keep going. gearing is half the reason I play this game. my bank is always filled to the brim with everything i can collect from dungeons and I regularly hand it out to anyone that will take it. I would much rather use it to gear out my bot group than make 5 different alts to unload cool items on. killing that tough boss for that weapon upgrade or getting that lucky random drop is what this game is all about.

some of the other bot servers put merchants with defiant gear or such to gear out their bot armies but I would much rather just have increased drop rates on old world items and remove lore/no drop and lower rq lvls