Custom content - raid theory

[lurk]

Everyone knows cats on moons won't happen. There's so many reasons why Luclin is the end of an era and why P99 is rightfully ending at Velious. But ignoring all that the worst part is how big of a timesink the endgame is. There's practically no difficult encounters. Sure there's some fights with interesting mechanics but it's still in it's infancy. Basically the expansion just greatly expands player power through AA, focus effects and just makes longer fights (with infinite mana thanks t-rods). Probably the only hard mob was the original emp which I believe had two DTs and was still killed.

So lets imagine years into velious we want some custom content in classic style. Well there's nothing more classic than venturing into some plane and vanquishing the resident God. Make some crazy quest to get into PoP zones and you have some real fun custom content. Remove all trash and mini drops or just make it normal gems drops to keep itemization classic. Bosses have loot and advance you through progression. I believe Grummus, Terris, MB and tribunal would all be good challenges with loot pretty on par with NToV if you remove focus effects.

Once you get into T2 things get a lot tougher. What do you think would be the hardest boss to kill at 60 in velious gear with no AA but years of velious and all those precious recharged clickies?

Saryrn I think is doable. Hell no on Bertox, doubt you could even get keyed for him. Aerin'Dar is like sontalak on steroids and PCP, he doesn't have much hp but you're going to run through a lot of resources to get him down. Kind of have to include VZ in this since he is a god I'm sure it would be easy, TZ not so sure on.

[Drayc]

Personally I would love to see something done with Mayong Mistmoore. His most largest enemies are the League of Antonican Bards, Venril Sathir, the Ring of Scale, and the Claws of Veeshan. I mean he must be pretty powerful if you look at who his enemies are so that could be a good raid target I suppose.

Ive been thinking about this a lot also, as far as custom content goes not really sure which way they will go, I doubt they will just be making raids. I'd almost like to see some sort of other expansion come into play that doesnt really involve Luclin/PoP, say Legacy of Ykesha or something like that.

To me that would be the easiest way for custom content. I mean that is still somehow getting the files off a different client and to us, otherwise someone is hand building new things.

Now that I think about it, they will probably just retool underused zones maybe? I jus dont see how they will add new zones into the game and make them function like EQ is on P99, is there going to be a hub where you get to zone into these new areas? I dont see them adding things into current zones to make them zone lines.

I know there are certain areas in the game currently that you could possibly do something i.e. Orc Highway in Oasis would make sense to be a zone into somewhere.

Sorry that ended up being more then I thought ;-P

[surron]

bros... p99 was in kunark for like 6 years. it will be 2022 before anything custom is release and from my understanding the custom content the devs were talking about is like creating aa's so you can unlock the compass, not zones and encounters.

[lurk]

Now that I think about it, they will probably just retool underused zones maybe? I jus dont see how they will add new zones into the game and make them function like EQ is on P99, is there going to be a hub where you get to zone into these new areas? I dont see them adding things into current zones to make them zone lines.

Bristlebane is an unused God basically. Make up some quest about how he has snuck into undiscovered interdimensional planes and is willing to teach you but requests a huge favor. In order to complete this quest you have to combine every ST talisman, every king head and a ring 10 in a box. This rewards you with an item with 20 charges of group port to Plane of Tranquility. No binding in any of these zones, corpses poof after a few hours.

This breaks up the crowded end game because for such an investment it may be worth it to just stay in tranquilty. Leaving less dominant guilds more chances at velious end game and giving new content to the top

[Amyas]

I hate PoP and loved Luclin.

Farming AA in all my old fav zones was the biznes

[Amyas]

What about AA's and some new lv 60 encounters? No mega port hub pls!

[Zorlon]

There's so many reasons why Luclin is the end of an era and why P99 is rightfully ending at Velious. But ignoring all that the worst part is how big of a timesink the endgame is. There's practically no difficult encounters. Sure there's some fights with interesting mechanics but it's still in it's infancy. Basically the expansion just greatly expands player power through AA, focus effects and just makes longer fights (with infinite mana thanks t-rods). Probably the only hard mob was the original emp which I believe had two DTs and was still killed.


I disagree with this on so many levels. Luclin is a great expansion strictly because it is still level 60. The consider system doesn't get busted. Sure you have AAs and that makes Velious raiding easier, but it doesn't make the expansion completely trivial. There is still a reason for people to want to kill AoW and Vulak and others.

Enter Planes of Power and level 65 and Plane of Time. After you pass about stage 3 of PoTime there is never again any reason for you or your guild to ever leave PoTime because the mudflation in gear and levels makes the entire rest of the game before it completely and totally pointless and trivial.

I'm not going to go into every single detail comparing, but I will throw 1 out there for now.

Nexus -vs- PoK. PoK and the mish-mash of nobody is KOS and everybody has a guildmaster etc.. turns starting towns into ghost towns. Nexus doesn't do that. Nexus makes some travel a little easier and that is all. The only real negative to Bazaar is that it does ultimately kill off the EC tunnel immersion but I don't see that as something so detriment to not consider the expansion.

A Luclin locked server would be so superior to a PoP locked (Al'Kabor anyone?) server that it isn't even close. Planes of Power is the end of an era, not Luclin.

[Amyas]

This is so wrong on so many levels. Luclin is a great expansion strictly because it is still level 60. The consider system doesn't get busted. Sure you have AAs and that makes Velious raiding easier, but it doesn't make the expansion completely trivial. There is still a reason for people to want to kill AoW and Vulak and others.

Enter Planes of Power and level 65 and Plane of Time. After you pass about stage 3 of PoTime there is never again any reason for you or your guild to ever leave PoTime because the mudflation in gear and levels makes the entire rest of the game before it completely and totally pointless and trivial.

I'm not going to go into every single detail comparing, but I will throw 1 out there for now.

Nexus -vs- PoK. PoK and the mish-mash of nobody is KOS and everybody has a guildmaster etc.. turns starting towns into ghost towns. Nexus doesn't do that. Nexus makes some travel a little easier and that is all. The only real negative to Bazaar is that it does ultimately kill off the EC tunnel immersion but I don't see that as something so detriment to not consider the expansion.

A Luclin locked server would be so superior to a PoP locked (Al'Kabor anyone?) server that it isn't even close. Planes of Power is the end of an era, not Luclin.


100% agreed

[heartbrand]

Custom content will never happen

[Spyder73]

There will be a custom quest to rewake the sleeper, and thats about it

[Raev]

Personally I think it would be cool to backport encounters from any of the next 10-15 expansions (especially encounters that aren't as trivial as tank and spank) and adjust their difficulty and gear level (a few rare +125/125 items and focus items for kicks, but mostly pretty comparable to ntov etc). It should actually be much, much easier than making sure 500 quest details and factions are correct.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting on this, though.

[Sage Truthbearer]

I doubt that custom content is ever realistically happening. If you haven't noticed, there hasn't really been any big development work on P99 a long time now besides nilbog fixing the occasional bug report.

[Axlrose]

Some of my pipe dream custom content:

- Make the inner portion of the Commonlands tunnel similar to the Bazaar. Shady sells the seller's bags (and thus extremely heavy) and the players can then sell their wares "off line". To avoid players blocking other players, the area is subtly ~painted~ with seller boxes that the player must be within to be able to sell "off line". This also allows paths to run back and forth across the area so numerous players can cover the spaces relatively evenly. Perhaps have the good races with smaller overall boxes to sell in the torch areas, the neutral races with medium overall boxes to sell in the middle sections, and the evil races with larger boxes to sell in the darkened area.

- Open up the Luclin expansion but with a twist: once you port to the dark moon, you can never return to Norrath. This would avoid further mudinflation.

- Mayong Mistmoore would be an ultra rare raid boss that would appear on a whim deep inside his castle. When he appears, have him run rampant through his zone, slaughtering everyone. Once he was done ~feasting~ (being a vampire), have him return to his depths where the raiders can go down there and slaughter him (or get slaughtered). As another mentioned above, being the enemy of some powerful factions, have him a total bad ass that makes most of the current raid bosses appear wimpy.

[Amyas]

AA

Sleeper goes back to sleep

Beastlord class

Mayong Mistmoore

Naggy/Vox unleashed =P

[surron]

Enter Planes of Power and level 65 and Plane of Time. After you pass about stage 3 of PoTime there is never again any reason for you or your guild to ever leave PoTime because the mudflation in gear and levels makes the entire rest of the game before it completely and totally pointless and trivial.


This is not entirely true. PoTime underwent a revamp 1 year after PoP was out, that is went item affixes such as "Strikethrough" "Avoidance" "Spell Shield" were added to potime, and many items were adjusted with additional focus effects. Before that revamp VT was still highly viable, especially for tanks because of superior AC on VT items. A guild would still be raiding VT to advance into P5 in potime. That is how it was on AK. Although you seem to hate PoP, TAKP will be implementing potime like this and you may end up enjoying PoP.

Hell even velious loot is relevant in PoP. Doze was on lock down for 10 years on AK.

Here's a post from Daldean/Darchon on TAKP boards about itemization and how Velious is still relevant.


AC is king during our timeline for tanks. There's a reason most tanks used Dozekar wrists until EPs, Dozekar shoulders until PoTime, AHR Mask until PoTime, Loyalist Shield until PoTime, AoW/Vulak Rings basically forever.

We didn't have any tank in Temerity replace both 30 AC rings cause the Cazic Thule/Rallos Zek ones never dropped and Quarm never died. The best geared tanks used AoW + TRC Rings with 30 AC each.

PoP = pinnacle of EQ.

[Amyas]

PoP made most of the old world void of life. Extreme end game velious gear lasted a short time.

[surron]

PoP made most of the old world void of life. Extreme end game velious gear lasted a short time.

Except for levels 1-46. Except for guilds who were still progressing into Tier1/2 of PoP (TT,Grummus,AD) they still needed low tier Luclin / high end Velious. Except for people doing epics (because they are still relevant for most classes in PoP.) People dont understand how awesome a 2k population server would be in PoP. Kunark/Velious its still too cramped.

[Blingy]

The only real negative to Bazaar is that it does ultimately kill off the EC tunnel immersion but I don't see that as something so detriment to not consider the expansion.

I've had a thought or two concerning this. Is there a way to lock the bazaar or modify the back-end code to only allow certain things to be purchased in the bazaar? Say for example only raid quality items such as a cloak of flames? If not would it be possible to "tax" items sold in the bazaar. Something like either a percentage (20% to 25% seems reasonable to me) with a 1k minimum amount per transaction. Make the fee(s) high enough that people will still prefer to do business in EC for most things but the occasional 10k+ item will still show up.

[Izmael]

If you want challenge, limit the number of your guild's members to a low number, such as 40. Bam - instant challenge. Twice the loot.

[Ravager]

My dream custom content would be raid mobs in every zone. Would be fun to go after King Ak'Anon and some elite gnome automatons or Leviathan in Lake Rathe. The two Sphinx in Rathe Mountains would make fun raid mobs, or at least make them quest npcs. A level 70 brownie that wreaks havoc in Lesser Faydark would be classically evil. Hill Giant raid mobs in the Karanas would be fun. Turn Jo Jo on Kerra Island into a raid mob.

Or maybe not necessarily raid mobs, but every zone would be better with a boss mob that drops some kind of worthwhile loot or quest pieces, just to make use of all of the content that gets ignored.