Luclin

[Xorekle]

Out of curiosity, I'm thinking, there's only 3 major game breaking changes in Luclin, IMO, and one minor.

Other than that it remains in the spirit of classic mostly.

AA's - Breaks classic game immensely, simply, remove them, like we have currently, you cannot spend/use any AA's; makes Luclin insanely harder, but hey, who cares.

Bazaar - Breaks economy of game immensely (supposedly), but easy fix, is to simply again, keep the UI disabled for the bazaar, similar to AA's and maps. If people can't make themselves a trader, and can't search items there; the bazaar simply becomes a big empty, central, well named zone to replace the EC tunnel for manual trades.

Mounts - Ability to regen/combat/cast on a mount is huge for casters, makes raiding and several encounters easier. Treat mounts as standing not sitting, fixes the regen cost. Also, could disable casting and combat on a mount; if that was done, then mounts would simply be a way to move faster, a vanity item, and very expensive way.

Nexus - Instant travel, especially at lower levels, kind of bothers folks. There's two ways to fix it I see. Either enable only one nexus, for instance, the Dreadlands or Great Divide; this way, if only one nexus was enabled; people couldn't really use the nexus for instant travel between major regions; or put a level limit on being able to use the spires.

There is a third option, if you increase the timers, by doubling or tripling them, I'm not even sure you have to fix the nexus. If it's only enabled for the 4 major zones, Tox, Dreadlands, GFay, and Great Divide; with long timers, no one will use it regularly for conventional travel.

What if once Velious is good and done, if the Luclin was released, especially with the disabling of aa and bazaar UI's and mounts being speed and vanity, or vanity only, I think it'd still be in spirit of EQ Classic.

Raid gear, seems to progress similarly too:

Kunark added about 10 ac on average to all gear (30% increase)
Velious adds About 10 ac on average to all gear (25% increase)
Luclin adds about 15 ac on average to all gear (30% increase)

Kunark remained the same or decreased the average primary stats on all gear
Velious increased the average primary stats on all gear by 5 points
Luclin increased the average primary stats on all gear by 5 points

Kunark did not increase the average number of primary stats increased per piece of gear.
Velious increased the average number of primary stats increased per piece of gear by 1.
Luclin increased the average number of primary stats increased per piece of gear by 1.

Kunark increased mana/hp of gear by about 20 points (200% increase) on average.
Velious increased mana/hp of gear by about 40 points (150% increase) on average.
Luclin increased mana/hp of gear by 30 points (43% increase) on average.

Kunarks average gear weight was about 13, or for 10 slots about 135;
Velious average gear weight was about 14, or for 10 slots about 135;
Luclin average gear weight was about 10, or for 10 slots about 120;

Kunark average non magic resistance on gear is about 5.
Velious average non magic resistance on gear is about 8.
Luclin average non magic resistance on gear is about 15.

Kunark average magic resistance on gear is about 2.
Velious average magic resistance on gear is about 5.
Luclin average magic resistance on gear is about 5.

Now I doubt this would ever happen. But thoughts?

[Xorekle]

Oh, and of course, we could leave out the other changes that impacted classic, such as no newbie quests, no zone reskins, etc.

I could go either way with the Post-luclin, between release content. Jaggedpine Forest, new class combos, and soulbinders don't seem too harmful to me either.

[Sampten]

When Luclin came out, the spires were on 15 minute timers. They'd only port you to the moon once every 15 minutes. Also if you were in the area of the spires (directly within the 4 of them) you were automatically ported.

They eventually reduced the spires timers to 5 minutes and forced you to hail the person at the spires for an item, which when sitting within the area, would be required to be ported.

I don't have a problem with the 15 minute timers, I do with the 5 minute timers. Once you got to the Nexus, you always had another 5-10 minute wait until you could take the spires back down because they never lined up perfectly.

In my opinion, the game went to wrong with the Planes of Power portal stones in Plane of Knowledge. That allowed you to cross the world in an instant, taking the massive world out of the equation.

[kruptcy]

I would rather see them re-invent Luclin, using the zone geography (as it would be a bear to recreate all that) but changing the NPCs, quests, and item drops to compliment what is currently out there. Maybe make some alternative zones to level in in the late 40s early 50s so KC doesn't have 40 people in it every night.

[Xorekle]

Added a gear level comparison, in general, even the Luclin raid gear seems to progress at a similar rate to the Kunark and Velious gear. It's not until we get to Planes of Power that the raid gear creates a huge gap, and sky rockets; also PoP added a ton more powerful aa's, and level 65, and new spells, all of which broke the game, and obsoleted a lot of Kunark and Velious.

Luclin seems to complement Kunark/Velious more than obsolete them. That being said, it helps fix the end-game dungeon and raiding problem too. It adds a LOT more 50+ groups and raids, and lets the server scale way way past our current numbers. With no level cap increase, it doesn't upset the power balance much either. The biggest problem with Luclin for classic and outdating content, was AA's. AA's made several things trivial, that in the past, were not. Also, mounts helped make soloing and small grouping in the outdoor zones a lot easier. Removing both of those, Luclin's gear and zones themselves don't really change the overall high-end dynamic that much.

The bazaar, made gear available to people a lot easier and sooner than normal, because of AFK selling. So fix that, disable the bazaar interface and AFK selling, no one can come across swaths of gear with just a few PP anymore.

No instant gear, no aa's, no mount advantages, no level cap increases, no newbie gear, and Luclin is just another expansion, allowing more dungeons, and advancement at the same rate we seen in Kunark and Velious, with a new race, and class. Not to mention, with no AA's, and no bazaar, the raiding scene in Luclin is going to be brutally hard, a real challenge. Our high end players wouldn't have to worry about getting bored, and would probably even embrace the challenge.

[Xorekle]

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

When Luclin came out, the spires were on 15 minute timers. They'd only port you to the moon once every 15 minutes. Also if you were in the area of the spires (directly within the 4 of them) you were automatically ported.

They eventually reduced the spires timers to 5 minutes and forced you to hail the person at the spires for an item, which when sitting within the area, would be required to be ported.

I don't have a problem with the 15 minute timers, I do with the 5 minute timers. Once you got to the Nexus, you always had another 5-10 minute wait until you could take the spires back down because they never lined up perfectly.

In my opinion, the game went to wrong with the Planes of Power portal stones in Plane of Knowledge. That allowed you to cross the world in an instant, taking the massive world out of the equation.

pretty much my thoughts exactly

[Fiyero]

I don't think it was so much that Luclin was game breaking (not to the degree PoP was), it was more so people just didn't really like the abrupt concept change from the world of Norrath to Cats on the Moon. That and a lot of the Luclin zones were just horrible and the raids sucked (aside from Ssra Temple).

[sox7d]

Release PoP or Luclin, but once you travel there, you can never return to Norrath. Problem solved.

[Sampten]

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

Added a gear level comparison, in general, even the Luclin raid gear seems to progress at a similar rate to the Kunark and Velious gear. It's not until we get to Planes of Power that the raid gear creates a huge gap, and sky rockets; also PoP added a ton more powerful aa's, and level 65, and new spells, all of which broke the game, and obsoleted a lot of Kunark and Velious.

Luclin seems to complement Kunark/Velious more than obsolete them. That being said, it helps fix the end-game dungeon and raiding problem too. It adds a LOT more 50+ groups and raids, and lets the server scale way way past our current numbers. With no level cap increase, it doesn't upset the power balance much either. The biggest problem with Luclin for classic and outdating content, was AA's. AA's made several things trivial, that in the past, were not. Also, mounts helped make soloing and small grouping in the outdoor zones a lot easier. Removing both of those, Luclin's gear and zones themselves don't really change the overall high-end dynamic that much.

The bazaar, made gear available to people a lot easier and sooner than normal, because of AFK selling. So fix that, disable the bazaar interface and AFK selling, no one can come across swaths of gear with just a few PP anymore.

No instant gear, no aa's, no mount advantages, no level cap increases, no newbie gear, and Luclin is just another expansion, allowing more dungeons, and advancement at the same rate we seen in Kunark and Velious, with a new race, and class. Not to mention, with no AA's, and no bazaar, the raiding scene in Luclin is going to be brutally hard, a real challenge. Our high end players wouldn't have to worry about getting bored, and would probably even embrace the challenge.

You could raid PoP without ever having to really have raided Sleeper's, ToV or VT. You needed some Kunark, some Velious and some Luclin gear, but weren't necessarily need to raid those places regularly and be super geared. That being said, once PoP came out, you geared up via it. First it was Ornate, then it was Elemental gear. You needed that, and other gear from raiding PoP, to progress and eventually get into Time. The gear in Time was fantastic, but it totally tipped the balance.

Once you were PoP geared, Velious and Kunark became a joke...there's no getting around that.

Then again, you couldn't do squat in Gates without PoP gear and that's when the game became Raid-centric. Mobs ran at SoW/Selo's speed, and hit like mack-trucks for the common player. It was unfair. You needed to be an Plane of Fire/Water/Earth/Air at a minimum to do anything in Gates.

I don't know if a Luclin geared raiding guild would face a challenge in Velious/Kunark. Because of the added level advancement, I have to imagine that they'd find it a tad easy.

[myriverse]

There was no abrupt concept change. Moon; continent; there's really no difference. It's just a new land to visit. You were still whacking things with swords.