EZ Server

I've been playing for a couple years now and have seen the drop rate of ess, gsoa, rainbows and any other useable progression items going down down down down down and down.  I understand that there needs to be economies of scale but the nerf rate is becoming ridiculous, PP bags out the wazoo are nice for the shiny effect but u cant buy anything except vendor items that need to be combined with drops.  How about putting gsoa's, ess rainbows as vendor items for a ridiculous amount comparable to the ridiculous pp drop rate.  Its becoming extremely painful to get quest items anymore.

I agree with this, but have a reason why;

Some will say "It makes the best item, it should be hard to get". And I agree. GSoA and Essences make the best items.

The real consideration here is that it's not just for 1 character, eventually you need this stuff on all your damage dealing characters unless you want to 18+ box and zerg everything. Look at Maslow, the guy 30 boxes. There was another player, a Japanese fellow that boxed half that and had everyone decked out with earrings / UWs / RoAs.

Could drop rates possibly be adjusted? I know some of the players at the top have 5-10 characters with Earring 50, UWX!, and RoA 1000 / Mask 1000. With the current drop rates and economy / trade system, this doesn't seem quite as attainable.

Things were altered somewhere along the way, apparently, to where current players really can't achieve the same results with the same /played or applied effort.

Maybe I'm wrong... But maybe not.

I have 30 toons, partially because of boredom and partially because why the hell not?   Magelo Red Horse and have a look.   Many guilds in old-school EQ took the Zerg approach.  With MQ2 and Bogtank, managing 30 is no different than managing 1.  So if you have a dev machine why not run more?

While I have 30 completed T10, I don't need 30.     10 UW 11s,  2 UW 12s, 4 EoA 50s, 1 EoA 46, 22 uc3s, UA, donation items.    I never needed 30 lol.     Play 12 if you want, play 6 whatevs, will still have to grind to get the good gear.   I got my first UW X Thanksgiving of 2013 using just 6 toons to run ToV. (Why the worthless bard has a UC3)

Problem may not be drop rates but rather no one is selling.   Everyone is a buyer now.     Even people new to the server are immediately looking to buy.  Not much of a market if no one is selling.     I'd cut plat drops in half, after doing a server plat wipe.

Anyway, enjoy the grind and spending a wheelbarrow of plat on a loaf of bread.   Oh, and gsoa prices are inflated thanks to Rymo buying gsoa at 20m a pop to deck out his toons.


Maslow
 

it all comes down to the two basics of economics.

1: Supply and Demand.
2: YOUR value of goods/services/time.

The #1 issue on ezserver is the lack of players.  The content is good, the scaling and balancing is GREAT (Even tho some think end game characters are over powered, this is not true.  Playing in sunderock still feels as challenging and fun as starting a new character and playing in the west freeport playground.)

For those of us towards the T10, there are only so many things we are interested in farming, trading, buying.
With the time involved in progressing through T10, we have to weight our ezserver time.

ie.  I need to do the kill 750 orc quest 12+ times, and I need to farm 100 Essence of Gods Minor, which which is more important to me?

With that being said, the only items we are really interested in are.

Tier zone essences (qvic, ct, dragons, gods, abyss, anguish, lp, oc, sr)
Essence of Norrath
Essence of frozenshadow
Gemstone of ages
Rainbows
Superior lightstone

The problem here in is, no one wants to sale these for plat, because plat is basically only used for the 10mil plat token for ultimate weapons, and for magic ores to craft a few items.  This leaves trading for the items.

Everyone wants these items. So that puts us at the supply/demand issue, tons of demand but no supply.  Everyone wants the same thing, and they don't want to let go of anything they have because they value what they have at equal or greater value.

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Lower drop rate.

I have to agree, either I did something very bad and the universe is punishing me, or the drop rate on items has been lowered.
Prime example.  (I keep spreadsheets on things I do for comparisons)  Back in april I would clear qvic, on average the essences would drop per clearing, 2, 1, 3, 0 for an average of 10-12 per 10 clearings. (this is weighted over 100 clearings).  in the past few months, I will see drop rates per clearing of 1, 0, 1, 2.  and I ensure that I kill everything in the zone.

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What can be done about this?  Bottom line is more players.

If each person that currently plays on a consistent basis (I would venture this to be 10 live bodies), would recruit 4 new players, and take 1 of them under their wing to mentor, we could get the user base back up to 50ish players.

New players will be hungry for high end gear, and want to wheel and deal and move on up to where they can farm, make better gear.

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I am sure I have not said anything there that everyone does not already know.

I just vocalized it.

Peace.

I don't dispute that the higher end items shouldn't be easy to get however what I am saying is the drop rate compared to a year ago is so far down its just becoming numbing to progress the nicer items.  If you got your UW's / earrings etc done a year or so ago consider yourself lucky because it is taking the rest of us 3-4 times as long to attain the same items now. Drops are 80% pp - that buys the UW coin to get rusty in your bag while you grind endlessly to get the ess for it.

Have to agree with Bog mostly... need to get more players on the server.  I actually think drop rates are fine with the exception that plat comes too easily.  If you farm 100 OCs, which i did a few weeks ago, I came away with about  150MM pp.  Was probably greater than that as i sold diamonds along the way.  Everytime i see someone selling an EON or GSoA, it's like a race to send them a tell before it's gone...

Incidentally, I six box, and have had to back farm a lot to be able to kill in T10.  Have 4 UW11's, one EotA 50, 6 UC3's, one ROA1000, and that's it.  T10 is totally doable with that setup, and that's not that much back farming. 

Even if new people show up to EZ to play, they get discouraged quickly by the ,for the lack of a better word, "eliteness" of the players here. Back when I played on EZ, I loved it. I was totally immersed in this server. To the extreme where I would call in sick to work so I could sit at home and play. I would leave my toons parked in the nexus and come back fully buffed up and ready to go try to push forward. And then everyone started pissing and moaning about people giving buffs. The whole having to walk to school uphill both ways in the fucking snow argument. It was enough to make me quit. If I wanted to start from the bottom and just fucking stay there, I would play on live. Yes, we all know it can be done. But if people truly wanted a higher population they would actually, I don't know, help them reach it. Without making them feel like shit for getting there via buffs. The more people that play, means the more items getting farmed, and the more items being needed. If people were willing to pay to pass the grind, they would do it. I sold numerous GSoAs and tons of SLS when I was here.

QQ more lil noob snowflake

Precisely why I left.

Hope you found a warm, safe space.

It is really hard now.    Really really hard.    No one else had to work for their gear ever!

Way hard... I'm glad I was able to play through all of this super hard content way back when it was easy.

Are there 2 EzServers?

I routinely sneak into zones I find sub 70s in and buff them  up, If I can catch them not moving around too much I will drop a mil or 2 plat on them.

Usually the last thing I do when I walk about from the computer , and first thing I do when I get back is mgb nexus, and cycle through target warriors looking for anyone with lesser buffs, and have the bogs buff their group.

That is not to mention how many countless times I am in lower zones doing a  pull for someone to get them that one item or kill to get them over the hump so that they can make it on their own and not get discouraged and quit.

I see, Cathiest, Gumboo, and others all /oocing mgb nexus or stonehive every few hours.

Now I have only been on the server since March, and I have meet and played with nothing but great and friendly people (barr ONE that will remain nameless, but you know who you are. ).

Is there trash talk? sure always, I can ignore it, the same as I can ignore people at work that have diarrhea of the mouth.

Like I had to explain to someone the other day.  Quit your job looking for better co-workers and your going to find the same people just different names.  No One is ever going to like everything everyone says.

But I will say this.  If I am busy, and not in a position to EASILY zone to nexus, and get back to where I was, nah, I will not come running just because you want a buff or want something.  If it is not a bother sure.  And I believe 99% of the EzServer players are the same.

peace

Peeps get buffed up,  blitz the content but never quite learn the skills  necessary to make it on their own.  In addition,  when content is blitzed the players are not truly invested in their toons and EZ.   

The core subject of this thread is increasing drop rates, specifically the drops required for the UW.    Well, how does having other higher tier toons help this?     Answer is that it doesn't, those players just become buyers thus increasing the demand on already scarce resources.

If you cannot play this game unbuffed and or cannot just roll a shaman, druid and cleric for buffs then this game isn't for you anyway.     

I concur.  And I will add this, call it karma, or random number gods, or what ever, but there are some players that have alot better luck getting something to drop then others.

example.. scales in tov.  I get 3 green scales for every red.  Thoruz gets 2 reds for every green.  why? no clue.. how consistent is it?  Him and I have been comparing our scale drops since the last double loot.

so dropping back to help someone spawn widowmaker in abyss is always a plus.

Peace

and yes.. as noted above by me, the drop rate of tier zone essences has decrease drastically since march.

So basically in your opinion if more people log on it will increase the drop rate from where it used to be and lower the number of pp bags being dropped ?  I'm not talking about trades I'm talking about the sheer number of drops per zone/clear that's getting borderline pathetic.  We are doing 4-5 times the amount of grinding that the previous players had to do for the same item. fair ?

I am not  100% positive you are referring to me, but it seems it.  so I will say this, there are a few thoughts going on in my posts.  1: I agreed twice that the drop rate from march to now has lowered.  Then on a completely different thought path (that was drop rate, this is economics) to fix the supply / demand issue, more players.

If you increase supply but demand stays the same you devalue your items and make the economy worse.
If you make production easier (aggro zone clicky) while demand stays the same, again harmful to the overall economy.
If you slightly increase supply, while current demand stays consistent, and increase demand for currently devalued items you improve economy (read, more low tier players producing low end items, wanting low mid tier items, while current mid/high tier players maintain demand for mid/high tier items).

... so yes, drop rate of items has went down in the past 6 months. Increasing drop rate alone will not help the economy at all.
    This is not the main topic, so I am not really addressing this issue in my posts.  I do agree with you, I would like the drop rate increased.  6 months ago I would not kill everything in qvic and could farm around 10-12 qvics an hour.  Now I do kill everything that moves, clearing qvic more times per hour, and only garner around 6 - 8 qvics an hour.

... New players will remedy a lot of the economic issues.

peace

I'm not sure that more players would fix this issue.    New players do not tend to farm zones and then sell the items.    Instead they farm zones, use the items for their own teams and try to buy more of the items.      The demand increases but the supply stays the same.

Potential fixes

1.  Lower plat drops and plat wipe

2.   Increase drop rates of essences from qvic to abyss

3.   Allow essence botting - Supply stays nice and high with active botters


Either way, EQ is an 18 yr old game now.    Amazing that people are still playing.

I agree with you for the most part.  Plat is very easy to come by and very useless.
Yes the drop rate has to go back up on essences.. I just ran a test this morning to verify.. I went out to get 20 of each essences.
Qvic 14 clearings
Cazic 8 clearings
D.Minor cleared the zone 13 times for 50 crystals.  50 Fire crystals got me 6 essences.. I am still clearing postorms for more crystals to see just how many clearings I have to do in order to get 20 essences.

A clearing is 95% of all trash mobs, and 100% of all ph and names.

As for the new players.. we all play differently, and we all see things a little bit different.  What I have notices about new players, they will sale most of their essences because really at T4 and below they just dont have the plat to make the strike augs, mana necklaces and shields of ages.  Forget about an UW until T4ish T5ish unless they are really dedicated.

They have 0 use for a gsoa, and they are farming the primo drop zones so usually drop a few and move them into the market place in order to get crafters guild packs, or strike augs, or plat for making their items.

Once they get to T4ish they start working towards an UW and start back farming for extra essences.

The times I have seen new players come around (3 waves of 5 or more new players since march if I remember correctly)  The market got flooded with qvic through gods essences (partly how I picked up all my UWs).

So I would say a mix btw your view point of new players and my view point is more then likely the reality of it.

Bottom line.

Put the drop rates back to 2016 levels atleast.
Allow AT keyboard  essence farming.. (dual monitors, I see no reason why I should not be able to have a character on one running around qvic farming up some essences and sniffing for a gemstone, while I have my raid in sunderock working the orcs over), but as it stands we cant, so I dont.

Peace

People keep referencing some arbitrary drop rate decrease that was implemented within the last XXXXX (short period of time), but has anyone actually obtained an official confirmation from Akka?  I don't really log on much more than exceedingly rarely, but I do visit the forum to read about the state of the server regularly and I don't recall any updates or Akka posts detailing a nerf on drop rates.  I would think that if you are genuinely concerned that something has changed, there's one guy that can clear up any confusion with an affirmation or dismissal of a phantom nerf.  I'm not trying to piss in anyone's Cheerios, it's just kind of a running joke that has persisted for years on this server where new people reference how much harder they have it than veteran players and generally ends up being baseless claims of drop rate nerfs. 

I do remember the time that Hateborne fucked with the ToFS code a bit and Tserrina would spawn off of every ph bat kill and Svartmane would always spawn on her death, but that didn't last very long.  Hate kept saying he didn't touch the spawn chance code at all, but when I told him to come to my ToFS instance and showed him the 5 Svartmane corpses lying there it got fixed pretty quickly.

So now we know who to throw the rocks at!!!!!!!!!!!!! hehehehe what's up Dimurwar! I find it kinda funny to hear people talking about "how easy it was back in the day" and just skim the posts for a laugh.....I think the scales thing is spot on though...have run several toons through for UCv3 and it is different each time...sometimes green...sometimes silver....never have had red drop more commonly than green or silver though.

I agree with original post, put a GSoA on the noobie vendor for more than the current rate (35m or so would protect the player value and yet allow it to be bought with a 10m premium.)

Also could allow essences to be bought this way from 1m for lower tier to  2m each for T8. (going rate is 500k-1m.)  

EOFS could also be bought for something like 10m (level 1) -65m (Master.)

SLS could go for something like 750k, I think current player value is 500k or so.

This would take out plat and help stabilize player pricing. Sure, people could buy really nice gear, but they are paying a large fee for the convenience.

I do think essence drops need to be increased by at least 50% up to T8, and gsoa too. They are simply too rare.

Scales in t8 need to be a universal thing now. T8s been out forever and we are backflagging there. Just one color to stop the rng rape.

I agree with you there. I think the main problem is burn out of old zones....so for the essence problem I suggested this : http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=5442.msg69645;topicseen#new

I also agree with having stuff with high prices to suck money off the server.....that's why stuff is SO overpriced. SLS used to be 50k and now they are around 500k (of course the UW helped with that)

There are no new players to feed the economy lately either. None of us are giving up anything at all, so it's all 100% self farmed or traded for GSOAs..

Drop rate increase or a way to use plat to purchase essences / gsoa / sls would sure be nice. Burnout is real.

I'd say instead of having essences and GSoA available on the merchant just have 1 of the ess available for 1mil per and then give a trade in of 2:1 at a special vendor that you only get access to within either the crafters guild or in each tier zone. Unlock the essence trades based on your tier so in qvic you unlock the ability to buy qvic ess, CT you can trade 2 qvic for 1 CT, when you get into T1 you can trade 2 CT for 1 DMinor etc. Then offer 1 GSoA for 10 of each ess.
By doing this we are adding an alternative way to get ess and GSoA but the cost for the higher ess and GSoA is ridiculously high to keep it from breaking the game, even the most plat rich players won't be able to buy their way into max ANYTHING through the vendor, and the trade rates can be adjusted based on how easy some essences are to farm so that you can't just go mass slaughter t7 or t6 to make essences for a GSoA.
Also restrict trading down so you can't just farm 1 high tier essence and turn it into millions of low tier essences.

The second you slap something on a vendor, you just set the market price. A vendor sells GSOA for 50mil? I'll sell you one for 45mil...

1.) i dont necessarily think this is a bad thing, after all an economy is what we are trying to establish but 2.) i dont think this is likely to happen.

I suppose it really depends on what you put up there. GSOA, for sure somebody would sell those but thats only because its the most traded item (only because of its desirability). Other things are near impossible to get in from players. If this does happen i propose that the plat prices be more than what the players would consider to be reasonable :). Getting enough essences for a UW up to X should cost hundreds of million in plat.

I would rather see really high prices. 100 million to get the ess for UW 10 is waaaaaay too cheap. which is why I suggested only putting a price on the qvic essence and having you trade in ess to get higher ones. The plat costs would be super high but it could help out with some of the low tier ess that people hate farming, and having the ability to trade ess in for higher ones would be nice without making it much easier to get the ess.

Lol yeah i was just thinking about that too and was in the middle of editing my post to up it.

Shame, its back to some pp bags and nerfed drop rate on single loot after it seemed to be somewhat reasonable again for a couple of weeks.  4 TOV runs 3-4 scales per run and the token ess.  No where near where it t used to be on just single loot.  One year ago it was 20 or so scales and 3 or so ess a run, totally sucks now.  Can u please just make it somewhat consistent ? Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf Nerf and Nerf again.

Again, drop rates not touched. Interesting how much speculation has gone into this