Quillmane spawn

[Lune]

Originally Posted by BigPlays [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

My point is a lot of the items were meant to keep people on, paying that fee. They were charging a monthly fee for a reason and I am sure the marketing department and higher ups at SOE were asking them how they planned on keeping people subbing. If they did not charge a monthly fee, the alternative is microtransactions (which is now the way to keep people paying) Exp pots, mana pots, heal pots etc could have cost $4.99/bundle.

And getting the lev cloak is not "hard". it was never intended to be hard but something of an anomaly. It's not like you need to kill some raid mob or a hard mob to get it. It is "time consuming" which to my point, keeps the person paying that fee. And I do not think they thought levitate was a big of a deal that it really is, especially in pvp. Many items in this game are not hard to get, they are time consumers.

My other issue is that the cloak is not "hard" to get.

That is NOT how classic EQ was designed and how dare you say that, heretic. Smedley didn't have enough power yet to design it like that. Besides, the massive amount of time and xp it took to get to 50 and then 60 served that purpose.

[Trexller]

i want to believe that in like 1997 a creative decision had weight over a profit strategy

but watching all the major game devs in the 2000s+ every studio has followed this model, before even the first line of code is written:

"We need to make Money!"

"how?"

"We'll produce video games, and we want to make X million off each game"

*Devs hit Y million in development costs*

"OK we're almost out of money so we're launching the game after 6 hours of alpha testing, and all the unfinished content and major bug fixes will be released as $$ DLC"

"Wheres my $60 dollars today, and $25 in 4 months bitches?"

[Ooloo]

It's a stupid way to think about it. Every single videogame that has ever been made that you've ever heard of was made, ostensibly, to make money. Like obviously.

That doesn't mean that when they drew the froglok skin or decided on the names of the various gods or whatever they were calculating exactly which names and which graphics would make the most money. Likewise, there's no logical reason to automatically assume that making a highly desireable item rare was only done to make money. Everquest was like the 3rd mmo ever made.

If you want to talk about mmo's being optimized to make money, *modern* mmo's definitely fit that bill. But in 1999 it was still very much a punk rock hodgepodge of wide-eyed developers and people like smedley funding their passion project, and they just kind of fell ass-backward into success. And quillmane was in from day 1, so I really doubt it was some money making scheme.

All of this is kind of moot anyway because p99 is free for us to play, thank god. All credit to the p99 staff for that.

[BigPlays]

Originally Posted by Ooloo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's a stupid way to think about it. Every single videogame that has ever been made that you've ever heard of was made, ostensibly, to make money. Like obviously.

That doesn't mean that when they drew the froglok skin or decided on the names of the various gods or whatever they were calculating exactly which names and which graphics would make the most money. Likewise, there's no logical reason to automatically assume that making a highly desireable item rare was only done to make money. Everquest was like the 3rd mmo ever made.

If you want to talk about mmo's being optimized to make money, *modern* mmo's definitely fit that bill. But in 1999 it was still very much a punk rock hodgepodge of wide-eyed developers and people like smedley funding their passion project, and they just kind of fell ass-backward into success. And quillmane was in from day 1, so I really doubt it was some money making scheme.

All of this is kind of moot anyway because p99 is free for us to play, thank god. All credit to the p99 staff for that.

I am sure some of that monthly charge went into maintenance, but they still needed to keep people hooked. The monthly charge evolved into microtransactions. Let's say Microtransactions were a thing back then (let's say starcraft had custom skins you could buy then and some other games had some sort of cosmetics you could buy) EQ would have been using that to charge you for EXP pots, mana regen pots, health regen pots etc.

They needed to make money and to do that they needed people to keep playing. If spawn timers on naggy were a day and not a week, and dropped every item on the table, people would gear up quicker and the carrot disappears. So they make shit super rare in order to get people to chase after the carrot. Now it might not have been 100% their intent, but I am sure part of it was to keep subs.

[cd288]

Originally Posted by BigPlays [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am sure some of that monthly charge went into maintenance, but they still needed to keep people hooked. The monthly charge evolved into microtransactions. Let's say Microtransactions were a thing back then (let's say starcraft had custom skins you could buy then and some other games had some sort of cosmetics you could buy) EQ would have been using that to charge you for EXP pots, mana regen pots, health regen pots etc.

They needed to make money and to do that they needed people to keep playing. If spawn timers on naggy were a day and not a week, and dropped every item on the table, people would gear up quicker and the carrot disappears. So they make shit super rare in order to get people to chase after the carrot. Now it might not have been 100% their intent, but I am sure part of it was to keep subs.

I already countered all your arguments in your other thread about this topic. None of that was done with monthly subscribers in mind - those types of decisions really didn't start happening until Luclin/late Velious. I don't think you even played EQ back in the day lol.

[Duik]

Sure, Quill was rare, but lvl appropriate adventurers in SK most likely aided epic mages hunting the cloak.
Eg killing placeholders unbeknowingly (I certainly was one of those adventurers) and not specifically looking for the pointy headed horsie.
I recently saw the interview with the eq dev regarding Quill. Didnt really take particular notice though, but Idid recall him saying many unintended things stayed in game because time restraints. Also unfinished quests by him and others littered the db.

Spent alot of time in SK, my game partner even snagged the cloak for her druid. Didnt even know of the epic mage thing. Our small guild had a lvl52 mage (about our highest lvl then) who dropped his fucking bundle when he heard we "wasted" it. We didnt even know about mq i dont think.
So, maybe quillmane seems rarer now cuz the is no incidental adventurers hunting elephants, lion etc along with p99 devs maybe not knowing the real mechanic as well.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Liz Woolley? You old battle-axe, how the hell are ya?!

[Ooloo]

There are two types of changes, classic by the book and classic in spirit. Classic by the book changes require a mountain of evidence. Classic in spirit changes (like nerfing swarm limit or changing quillmane) are meant to curtail some emergent aspect of gameplay that never existed in classic, even though it theoretically could have. Making quillmane somewhat hard to get is a classic in spirit change, which I support because pumping out lev cloaks all day like it was before is lame as shit. You might as well just have every character start with one if it's gonna be that easy. No swag factor at all, it's just mehh cool I have a lev cloak now like every single other player on the server.

[Croco]

Originally Posted by Ooloo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There are two types of changes, classic by the book and classic in spirit. Classic by the book changes require a mountain of evidence. Classic in spirit changes (like nerfing swarm limit or changing quillmane) are meant to curtail some emergent aspect of gameplay that never existed in classic, even though it theoretically could have. Making quillmane somewhat hard to get is a classic in spirit change, which I support because pumping out lev cloaks all day like it was before is lame as shit. You might as well just have every character start with one if it's gonna be that easy. No swag factor at all, it's just mehh cool I have a lev cloak now like every single other player on the server.

Not everyone had the same experiences playing in classic. So to make a bunch of changes to try and force a "spirit of classic" which when it comes down to it is really only 1 or 2 peoples idea of what classic was is incredibly stupid. You are never going to be able to give people a taste of what classic really was due to a ton of factors. Not the least of which are internet speeds and availability of information.

To put it simply you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, and to spend more than a decade forcing players into your specific idea of what it was like to play back in the day is asinine. The other option, the better option, is to make a 1 to 1 sandbox of exactly what classic was and let emergent gameplay do it's thing. The devs of this project have chosen to do the former and in doing so have created a ton of extra work for themselves and made all the servers much worse for their choice.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

Sounds like they took a fair pita spawn and created a plausible-deniability spawn anger factory.

In all fairness this is a pretty deep immersion item to lust after. There's one solution.
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