Shards Population, not so talkative?

ek05

Dalayan Beginner
I was on Twitch and a discussion began on a EQ stream about how Everquest is essentially half social club and half game play. There is so much time prepping for fights in EQ that there ends up being a lot of dead time. I feel it has pretty difficult to get that social aspect out of Shards in the last few years.

Maybe its the lack of population. Maybe its the old user base. Maybe its etc etc. My point is... if people look for that aspect of EQ in SoD, I feel its almost impossible to find even if you look for it. As the current user base, maybe we should try to just talk more in certain channels? Some people consider it spam but... I don't know, maybe its a good thing compared to status quo?

Any thoughts?
 
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most people are social within their own guilds but there isn't a ton of pugging exp or pug raids anymore - simply put theres no reason to pug. along that same line i assume most people just hang out in their guilds voice channels and chat rather than starting random conversation in /ooc. theres also the part where stopping to type in /ooc takes time / effort when im trying to actually play the game. this is a trend you start to see across gaming in general - its something people complained about with classic WoW (game not being as social as it used to be). it also doesn't help that fresh characters often contribute literally nothing or are just liabilities / detriments in some exp areas. if i pull 30 mobs in kaesora and 1 or 2 get loose on some new guy he'll get the shit kicked out of him compared to a real character that will just solo it / ignore it without much effort. I personally don't socialize with people outside of my guild because i have no reason to.

One of the biggest things i've seen new or returning players asking for help with in /ooc is various quests that have you kill mobs / do things that essentially only reward the person doing the quest. this isn't exactly a bad thing, but stopping what you're doing to go help a random dude with a quest you've done 100x over for yourself or guildmates already when you get nothing in return (other than the feeling of helping someone) isn't exactly appealing. theres also a lot of questing that involves killing trivial mobs with long respawns, or killing mobs that have little to no platinum / exp reward. getting people to help do things like that isn't easy, especially considering most of the time that stuff can be done duo / solo even with relatively low-gear characters.

one of the biggest issues i've found is that in a lot of cases playing with other people slows your progression more than it helps. basically the big bottlenecks for a lot of people these days is opus drops and platinum, not exp. adding more people to your group increases your EXP/hr but doesn't increase your plat earned or opus earned by a proportional rate, as you have to split the items and named only respawn so fast. i made a thread about this a while back, but i think the point is still very relevant as it was never really addressed.

curious to hear what others have to say, but what it boils down to for me is the fact that i have zero gameplay incentive to group with others (sometimes this even extends to people within my guild).
 
I'm still wtf about why SoD doesn't bring more population, I suppose nostalgian people stop at proj1999 as it is the closest to what people can have experienced in the past. I suppose it will be difficult nowadays to get in touch with people not familiar with EQ - and the very old engine we can't deny it - that will find this game just too old to get to , without trying it. I noticed people think of EQ as a relic of the past, which it kinda is.
Maybe talking about it more as an independant game using an existing engine now, a rogue-like.
I think Instagram is a good mean to get to people these days. When you're looking at Proj1999's, it's pretty well followed and the pictures and story are great. I'm building one and will try to make some posts, never know.
EDIT : actually could people post me nice screenshots of what could be appealing to the public ? please no photobucket redacted stuff :/
 
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I think some of the early content is a bit too grindy too for some new players. Like the main quest feels about a third too long to get to HFB. If the MQ faction quests specifically gave about a third more faction per quest, you could skip some of the turd quests and get 'into' the meat of the game faster. Also, some very key parts of progression are tied to extremely random drops (archaic pages, runic 2 pages). and so the build up to get to the point that you can help a guild raid is a bit intimidating to new folks.

I'm frankly baffled why drop rates (of gear not charm credits) in hate were nerfed. who cares if new players catch up to being raid viable faster?

also bringing back consistent (week long) blessed zones for newer plays to use as a stair step to gather together to progress through levels would be a good move. if it stacks with covid and they get to level cap faster, that's a good thing.

Finally, i think that experienced players have a hit list of things they do. so like Main Quest , Finish your faction , refuge , diety spec and quests , codex bonus, refuge spear, runic 1,2, archaic, voices, get a few gate necks, do Lake for that boss ass clicky. and class-based landmarks that make you improve greatly. How badass would it be if your class guildleader sort of guided you. like at first you talk to him and he just dumped a list of milestones you should work toward. maybe it leaves off ones you have done. Once you're 5th seeker he stops mentioning all that, and starts mentioning going into yclist.

SoD has a very good list of objectives and quest structure but it's fairly cryptic even with the wiki's individual parts available to peruse if you know the quest names.

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oh and because i haven't harped on it in years on the forum. Make less mobs immune to CC measures. it's endlessly frustrating to make a class that can solo, t hen to get to ikisith and half of everything is immune to snare. I appreciate that summoning was removed some year backs but i PROMISE if you make no mobs out of dungeons immune to CC, that ye olde tank + healer combo will kill faster than the snaring necro/wizard/druid.

it's really really painful and offputting when a new player reaches a point where all they can do is suck alone.
 
I think some of the early content is a bit too grindy too for some new players. Like the main quest feels about a third too long to get to HFB. If the MQ faction quests specifically gave about a third more faction per quest, you could skip some of the turd quests and get 'into' the meat of the game faster. Also, some very key parts of progression are tied to extremely random drops (archaic pages, runic 2 pages). and so the build up to get to the point that you can help a guild raid is a bit intimidating to new folks.

I'm frankly baffled why drop rates (of gear not charm credits) in hate were nerfed. who cares if new players catch up to being raid viable faster?

also bringing back consistent (week long) blessed zones for newer plays to use as a stair step to gather together to progress through levels would be a good move. if it stacks with covid and they get to level cap faster, that's a good thing.

F

I would also like to suggest increasing the rate that players skill up. Even without massive experience bonuses I found my characters were woefully behind in casting or key class abilities by many levels on the way to max. Having to sit around and cast fleeting fury 17000 times isn't fun for anybody. Live made this change a year or two ago and it was probably one of the best things they ever did. Its just another frustrating time sink that I think everybody can agree serves nothing but moderate frustration.
 
I would also like to suggest increasing the rate that players skill up. Even without massive experience bonuses I found my characters were woefully behind in casting or key class abilities by many levels on the way to max. Having to sit around and cast fleeting fury 17000 times isn't fun for anybody. Live made this change a year or two ago and it was probably one of the best things they ever did. Its just another frustrating time sink that I think everybody can agree serves nothing but moderate frustration.
i definately agree.

also i'd suggest dropping the plat price of training so that if a newbie does fall behind they could just use their skill poiunts to catch up on a select few.
 
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