Now that I think about it, the "xp lever" idea isn't making sense

[Virindi Clown]

I think it could hurt things in the long run, but I was just going to accept it as the best thing for DT right now.

However, if you, the people at Turbine, want to get people back on DT and fighting, then WHY IN THE WORLD don't you just drop the barriers on atleast allegiance housing on DT for a month to try it out?

We even have the allegiance bind stones, so if allegiance housing recalls were removed on DT, allegiances could still have a meeting point. It would be ATTACKABLE and CONTROLLABLE, just like with lifestones when allegiances took them to "claim" a place, only the allegiance bind stones are ONLY in towns, so it's even better! To get that, we would be trading only instant access to a few of those hookable portals at mansions for the people that even have them.

You could even take it further and give certain dungeons special extra allegiance bind stones so that people fight over just them.

Many of those things could be done RIGHT NOW.

It's all so simple, and something needs to be done with this safe zone business no matter what else you do to the game. Something along those lines basically needed to be done when DM came out. This has gone on for far too long.

It would seem to me that practically EVERYONE agrees that DT isn't what it used to be, and that one of the biggest problems (of the fixable ones, at least) is housing/safe zones/barriers/allegiance housing or however you want to look at it, since it is all really a problem for the same reasons when you get right down to it. Just taking a look at this forum right now, it's pretty darned obvious that I am not exagerating in the least.

[Jida]

I agree with you on some points.

When Ibn first posted it was like your Mayor saying the Olympics are being hosted in your town.

Woooooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooo!!!!

Then you realize what the ramifications of that statement mean.

Most of us were just happy to see DT being treated differently and that seperate content was now on the table.

With a little time a whole system could be made for DT. With less time a few tweaks here and there would start bringing the people back.

If Turbine can do seperate patches then they could phase a number of things in,...

1) Remove housing from DT. Just undo what you did. Turn off all housing on the entire server. A 30 day warning for people to unload things would be needed of course.

2) Add rentable chests to towns. These act like housing chests. You feed them a few notes and then you can store items in them. You can add people to your chests as well. Basically the same thing as the housing storage without the housing.

3) Remove 75% of the lifestones on the server. Keep the town ones, keep the quest ones and then keep a few wilderness ones.

4) Remove all the all portal spells except portal recall 1, portal tie 1 and summon portal 1. Keep the quest recalls and set their casting time to 30 seconds. Keep lifestone recall as well.

5) Remove the @recalls (@lifestone/@house recall/@etc).

6) Remove all the portal gems except the quest based ones. Make the quest based ones have a 30 second timer and fizzle if you are attacked while trying to use them.

7) Remove all the 'extra' portals added to the game since retail. Keep the new locations but remove the portals that go everywhere.

8) Revamp the town portals to create a full loop. Starting in one town you can get to most of the mainland towns by hitting the series of portals. So instead of a number of loop runs there is only one needed.

9) Increase the AL on store bought items. Make plate 300al at the top end and go down to leather at 150al. Make the store bought items worthwhile to even have in the game.

10) Implement any number of the ideas posted by the clever PvPers here. Just take a handful and start to work on them.

Do the above and you will slowly gain back your clientel over time. Then, release one of the 'big' items and get the rest back.

The things that I posted above are on the 'simple' side of things yet allow for the game dynamics to change drastically.

[Virindi Clown]

Those are all good ideas. I'm sure we've hit on most of them before, but that's the kind of stuff where you need to see it all go in at one time, instead of little by little.

You can kind of sum up those ideas by saying get rid of safe zones, whether it be housing or random LSes and then give towns a purpose so people start heading there, instead. Sounds like a plan to me.

[Jida]

With a small announcement beforehand these sort of things would spur DT on.

Then while the population feels great about these changes you work on something bigger for DT only.

Choose your favorite and go with it. There are 100's of ideas floating around after all.

The dynamic that I am trying to get to goes like this,...

On patch day you have 1 main and 5 characters full of loot. Since your apartment is now gone you (and all of your characters) spawn at their LS's. All of your portal ties are gone and your LS is now your 'death LS'. If your LS was removed then you are put at a 'common' LS with all the other refugees.

You take your main and head to your town of choice. In the towns around and in the buildings are an assortment of chests. Each one has a very small crystal next to it. This is the same as the ones that used to be by houses only they are 1/5th the size.

Each chest requires a writ, an item and some money to buy and writs/money per month to use. Depending upon the town you are in this will require more or less items/writs/cash.

You run into town like many others and fight/find chests/etc. Once you get a chest you can use the new @chest commands to the same effect as the @house command (adding people and such).

Since the towns are the only spots to 'safely mule' many people will migrate their characters to their chests. Many others will go back to the old secret drop muling tactics.

Players would also now only have 1 tie to use. They can decide to either LS at the town with their storage or get a tie to the town. This limits people distributing themselves all over the place.

People would be much more tightly packed together and this would lead to more fighting.

People would also be in fewer spots so it is easier to target rival guilds.

Guilds would band together for protection.

This 'tightening up' of the server is the first phase.

The next one can be adding value to the towns you have a chest in. Higher sell rate swith lower buy rates,... more services from NPC (i.e. buffbots),... etc.

This can easily be expanded upon.

[Rapton]

I like many of these ideas, however I do not like the following:

destruction of many of the random lifestones

destruction secondary portal ties

destruction of certain @recalls

Reasons:

Personally I have always loved using things like -25 xharabyn lifestone, or some of the random lifestones in northern osteth and in the dires simply because of the "I'm in the middle no where" feel. Which I love. However, most likely eliminating alot of these would help.

Secondary portal ties I think should be kept, simply because it makes life a little easier being tied to umbral hall and than to my hunting dungoen. Allows me to be a bit more self sufficient, and than have my other chars keep more important utility type portals, and hunting dungoens.

I agree, eliminate housing barriers, cut down on the amount of housing. Almost no one uses cottages (unless your me and see an opportunity for easy housing), delete most of these, keep some near the town, I mean NEAR the town. Theres easily 6 or 7 clicks of space around some of the major towns that housing could take up, or even get rid of the dark majesty style housing, and make some of the huts and buildings that you see in the game. I dont think that we need to totally kill housing, just the barriers.
However if you dont wanna do this, which I take it you dont, kill off the housing, let people get all their stuff, give them a refund, or better yet, how about one of those three level tokens :) But you get the idea. I think we need storage, and I am for increasing the storage in chests. Increase the storage in chests, if your gonna kill housing. Now how are you gonna be able to get a hold of chest easily without something to help identify or recall to it. I think we need something to help distinguish them, atleast a kind of /chest recall.

Without housing we wont need the /house recalls

/lifestone and /allegiance hometown would both be quite useful to keep in imo.



btw if this happens, lets get the exp lever rolling so that were not stuck just killing 60s and than fighting level 200s. Lets narrow the playing field which would mean better fights.

[Abukkubuk]

Yeah to only get ppl back to DT is remove SAFE ZONES!
i think only Marketplace can be SAFE ZONE! no more. because on its name, its a marketplace. sure there will be many bots trading stuff, but to feed that bots, ppl will need to hunt, and die as well;) and pk too... just remove barriers! it really freaks me out when im chasing somewhere outside, and he goes into his mansion and heals then attacks again and heals and so on... that sux!

[Virindi Clown]

Rapton, you wouldn't have to get rid of ALL the extra lifestones. There are far too many extra random ones, though. Quite a few need to go.

If there are fewer lifestones, and the towns all lead to eachother, there would be no need for two lifestone recalls.

I think housing should either be left alone (aside from barriers or allegiance housing recalls), or removed entirely. If you get rid of it, there would likely be a lot less lag. If some is left and moved next to towns, the lag would actually be worse.

What we need is stuff designed like AB. Everyone knew there were good dungeons around it, but they were UNTIEABLE, so you HAD to go to the town to get to them. That made the fighting there awesome in its time.

Now there are all these obscure dungeons you tie to, so everyone has their own private macro dungeon. That's another form of a safe zone if you ask me.

You should not be able to hide yourself from other people so easily. All the spread out tieable dungeons and lifestones and multiple recalls allow this to happen.

Places with specific recalls, like Mt. Lethe, Caul, AE, and Bobo, should have the best of the best stuff so that there are options, and everyone isn't forced into one place, but everyone isn't spread thin and has common places to fight at. It used to be that way, and it was great while it lasted.

While I sort of agree with the idea of making the market place NPK so that people can easily trade (there basically is no trade economy on DT, it needs some real help), I wouldn't support it happening.

Lots of people fight at the market place. It just doesn't make sense to me to turn something that is at all used for PvP into a complete NPK zone.

[Jida]

Remove the marketplace on DT entirely. It serves no purpose other than yet another spot to dilute the population.

The main goal is to get people together and interacting again.

If you are not a long term DTer then you may not know some of the history of the server. Believe it or not,... most of the things we miss on DT is the politics.

Not the whining, not the complaining. The real politics that came with having a FFA PVP server.

Right now you do not have to care about others since you have 10 different places you can recall to and 30 different portal loops within 1 click of you.

When you are reduced to 1 lifestone recall, 1 portal recall (with portal tie) and whatever quest recalls you have being non-tactical, you might see more interactions from the player base.

The 'convenience' of all the items added to the NPK worlds have no place on DT.

Would I miss all the luxuries? Sure I would.

Do I think it is best for the server? Damn straight.

Reduce the server down to 1 lifestone per town, 1 lifestone per outpost and 4-5 other lifestones in the wilds and you have the start going.

Make almost all of the dungeons untieable (good call VC) and bring more of them near to the towns. This brings people in for the leveling/selling in a specific area and allows for others to plan out raids. Better areas would have more fighting going on.

Reduce the amount of portals that can be summoned. This means when you see a portal that has been summoned it is going to maybe a dozen possible places.

The full portal loop from town to town also means no need for all the subways that were put in. Take those out too.

If someone is portaling around they will take the risk of people also portaling around.

All of this brings the server together into conflict (haha that sounded stupid).

If you want to hit autorun and stop at the nearest pedler in the middle of nowhere then go for it. There just won't be an easy way for you to do a corpse recovery.

The dires towns would be oasis' in the middle of nowhere. No portals in and nothing to tie to nearby. If you want to get there you have to hoof it.

These towns then would be desireable for people to hold onto and for others to raid.

The BIGGER picture here is that the overall effect is one of making DT unique and built for conflict while leaving the NPK servers built for comfort.