Boosting Rule Adjustments

[Mullygrubb]

Kestrel you want a simple solution for this?

RP SERVER with that set of rules -- people can have all their "immersion" over there for all the rest of us care.

This is actually a great idea! Give the people championing "immersion" their own home, safe from the horrors of speed levelling. And let the rest of us race into end-game content as painlessly as possible, as most of us came here for.

[Beckett]

A lot has been stated in this thread since I was here yesterday so instead of playing reply catchup, I want to focus on what you're saying in this snippet and relevant content that has been posted by others already.

They made adjustments to the EXP calculations to make in dungeon lvl 60 boosting no longer viable. Players found a work around through dropping group right before the mobs die. This is very clearly a loophole/work around that players have been exploiting. We can agree to disagree about why the turtle team did what they did, but this work around was not something they intended. We have implemented this rule to patch this work around, in retrospect I wish we had found a more mechanical solution to the work around but we have limited development capacity and now here we are.

We as players need a clear cut definition for what boosting is in the context of this rule.

Is the underlined component of what you stated in my quoted reply your definition of what boosting is in the context of this rule? As written, it sounds like a blanket prohibition on all boosting as described in the quote above + all boosting and potentially-maybe-it-is-maybe-it-isn't-boosting scenarios outside of dungeons (AOE or single mob tagging in the open world).

If the definition of the rule is what I underlined in your quote above and solely restricted to that, then I don't have a problem with it and I feel like a lot of people will not have a problem with it either. If it is in fact a blanket prohibition on all boosting and tangentially-related activities then that remains an issue that I simply cannot agree with you on.

Please provide us a clear cut definition. The 11 pages of forum posting and >100 replies that I've read do not provide this definition and I, among others, are confused still.

Not by being able to multibox 20 accounts with "warlock networks and moon cloth slaves". Before this thread I've never even heard of such terms and I've played vanilla servers on and off since the original vanilla.

These terminology and concepts are so commonplace that you would have to be actively avoiding any and all WoW content since its inception. For this reason, I do not believe you.

The initial intention of the rule was to ban this specific practice (we don't think sub-optimal in group boosting will really be much of a thing should the loophole be closed). We also indented for it to include the mob tag lvl 60 following type boosting that occurs.

After some more internal discussions and reading at least 12 of the pages on this post (will be getting to the rest shortly and going through the cesspool that exploded in the general section another day...), we have pushed a change that we should have just made to begin with. We have pushed an update that patches out the group dropping exploit.

In light of this we don't feel this rule is necessary any longer as the other rules sufficiently cover most of the areas we feel are most damaging to the game. Lvl 60 following/mob tagging may have it's own prevention mechanic implemented at some point in the future. Expect conversations and polls on the forums leading up to that should it happen.

Well it appears you've rolled back the rule change... maybe... so uhh thanks?
I mean I think we are all more clueless at who this was even aimed at. RMT boosting was obviously already banned.
Some people didn't like to see that others were ahead of them and thus had a 60 to carry them around? Or people who are killing the immersion of them leveling on their undead priest with their gnome warrior buddy? Well, bad news for them, even more tag-boosters are going to be massacring their precious Loch Modan ogres now with the dungeon XP tagging patched.
Just seems to be a silly thing for you guys to be wasting time on right now.

[Yotca]

A quick message to say I wholly support the ban. I like seeing people leveling.
An uncontrolled community always end up optimizing the fun out of the game.

People will say it's just a choice, and players can just decide not to boost, I think this is incorrect.
Most people will always take the path of least resistance, even if ends up not being fun. For example: Incursions on SoD. Nobody liked them, yet everyone did them, because it was better than questing.

The path of least resistance extends beyond the server. As soon as someone puts out a western TWOW copy WITHOUT a retarded ruleset, this place is going to be a ghost town. Hell I'm already seeing people bite the ping bullet and jump ship to Capy.

https://github.com/zeizei336/turtle-w

Kestrel tongue in cheek isn't the right way to go about this all while ignoring very serious points:

• Server economy especially for small populations is very dependent on leveling alts for the CD materials, that was the case on all Blizz servers and was the case on Twow -- you can disagree as you stated but you'd be wrong -- supply & demand isn't rocket science
• Turtle increased arcane crystal/black lotus drop rate via the survival trinkets for a reason -- both to fight RMT and allow players with less game time to be able to afford these materials
• A smaller portion of the player base will be coming much later than the rest due to trust issues with the server, vacations -- insert reason -- etc and they will be "solo" leveling due to lack of people to run dungeons/quests with which is why boosting friends/guildmates is a thing ; basically whoever missed the train is left out hanging in the rain
• On a PvP server staying lower level longer means being food for that much longer especially when a larger part of the server population is 60
• Most of us care about end game raiding and end game PvP -- having to play the "shit version" of the game for much longer simply isn't the fun people come here for

[Holydruid]

Then I assume you equally lost faith in the turtle team when they implemented this EXP change originally? Did their server only survive economically because of the drop group work around? That would be a bold claim.

This is not an answer, that's a deflection back onto me instead of the actual claim. Whether I criticized Turtle's EXP change (which i did) or not doesn't change the math on OctoWoW's crafting economy, those are two different servers with two different policies right now. Turtle nerfed shared EXP gain in a party, they didn't ban boosting for using alts to farm or craft materials for other characters. Comparing "did Turtle's server survive" to "does banning boosting hurt cooldown-gated crafting supply" isn't a real comparison, it's just changing the subject.

And even if it were comparable, "the server survived" isn't the same as "the policy was good for the economy." Servers survive bad decisions all the time, players just adapt, prices shift, and the people who quit over it aren't in whatever data you'd point to as proof it worked out fine.

So I'll ask again, directly: on a server where endgame crafting mats are gated behind multi-day cooldowns and raid-scale demand requires dozens of crafter-months of output, does shrinking the viable crafter pool down to fresh mains increase or decrease supply, and what does that do to prices? That's the actual claim. If the math's wrong, show where. If it's right but you think it's worth the tradeoff, just say that. I'd rather have that conversation than another redirect.

Naxx and K40 phase are going to be hell with all the gated crafting materials that are required for 1 tier piece.

Like I said, I don't want to have an entire discussion here on how we view what constitutes a "good" economy on a world of warcraft server. You and I will not agree and I know that for a fact. The prices will go up, the supply will go down, (who knows how much) that is not necessarily a "bad" thing for the server's economy. You think reducing the crafting CD of mooncloth would "help" the server economy? Or would it change it? This is a long, theoretical discussion about game design and economics and I genuinely would like to have it, but why don't we have it at fireside or in a different thread maybe and you can get a better idea for how I personally (not the whole dev team) views managing the economy.

Actually we do have that data point directly, not just an analogous one. Turtle already tried banning boosting themselves. That's not a hypothetical parallel policy on a similar ruleset, that's the exact same rule change, on the exact server this one is built off of, with years of player reaction and economic outcome already on record. If you want to know what happens to crafting supply, prices, and player retention when boosting gets banned on a Turtle-based ruleset, you don't have to guess, you have a real case study sitting right there.

So "we won't know" doesn't really hold up here. Either look at how that played out on Turtle and use it to inform the decision, or if it already has been looked at, just say so and tell us what was found instead of presenting the outcome as an open question. Given this server is explicitly modeled on Turtle, ignoring their own experience with this exact policy while claiming uncertainty about the result is a strange position to defend.

[Ziggler]

jesus can somone write in SHORT lines what is allowed now and what is not?

[Vargali69]

yes, definite;y need CLEAR clarification... because "and truing to not be the A-hole here, though i am one" technically speaking ANY xp gain is a boost of some kind, even when solo... also, the journey matters arguement honestly should ONLY apply to the first character, everything else is just repetitious grind.. i mean WoW as an entity is 20 years old, how many toons on ALL servers played have we ALL made.. specially for people like me who are ALT-a-holics.... seriously though, i've witnessed people level up toons day after day, and some of us simply take longer to level... but we still make friends "or we should be, some of us introverts do struggle there".. and it's a pain to see your friends max out a toon and you can't run with them anymore because some dunderhead thinks it's boosting... and i've seen world chat, too many people willing to throw out accusations or even a simple one time random assist.. the point is yes the journey matters, but even in REAL life the low levels as it were DO get help from higher ups from time to time.. we don't see arguements there about boosting do we.... and as i said at the beginning, it could easily still be boosting as a solo player killing ONE mob for xp.... i've even seen a lower level doing all the work and the higher level gaining xp.. rare i know, but i've seen it before... and there is "not counting the one example of 60's helping lowers" no clear definition.. as if everyone is only dancing around the problem..

[Atriana]

Are the boosting and multiboxing rules on the main site current? I just read through them and the seem exactly the same that t-wow had. I don't get what all the grief is about, what changed?

[Denin]

Are the boosting and multiboxing rules on the main site current? I just read through them and the seem exactly the same that t-wow had. I don't get what all the grief is about, what changed?

Seems they reverted it back, relatively sure it was changed for a brief time. Hence the 15 page outcry here. It said something like any sort of aoe boosting is bannable.
But yeah i cant see it now either, so i am unsure if my memory is playing a trick on me or not:D

[Denin]

But yeah, i fully support wanting to make this a long term project like Turtle was. One of the best things about Turtle was that it was always easy to return to. And pick up my progress from where i left of.

I do not believe a rule change is needed to achieve that though.

Been on many private servers in the last 15 years or so, and not a single one has rivaled Turtle in the aspects of enforcing their chosen ruleset, or the near proffesional GM support they had.

Turtle wasnt perfect but it was better run than many official mmos, regardless what some feel about the creator and such. It worked for a very long time and they dealth with issues as they sprung up.

Octo so far, feels much like home, best not to rock the boat on that imo. People adored Turtle, copying their ruleset seems the smartest thing to do imo.

I've seen mentions in this thread of Octo being even more ambitious than Turtle was, and that is a grand claim. But something that needs to be proven over time, dont get me wrong, would love to see it! But its far from there yet.

If Octo simply proves it can stand the test of time, i have no doubt it will just keep growing, if you guys manage to build upon what they made, while keeping to the same idea of a Vanilla+. It could become dangerously huge.

Ive said it in chat, ingame a few times, i hope for another 8 years! More? Bring it on!:)

[Yotca]

Guild mate made a pretty solid argument on discord:

"How is boosting a low level toon with a higher level toon any different from taking them in greens to Naxxramas and getting carried by people in full t3+? We do that with every alt, I see no difference and it's not like they're gonna ban us for it."