Adding the Planes of Power in to the original trilogy

[falkun]

I have to admit, I wasn't seeing PoTime as a zone at the bottom of the Hole. With the "planar tear due to the battle of Paineel", I feel that PoTime should be closer to the actual battle. I'm thinking something like the Live version of PoDisease where you just FALL in. You zone into Paineel, and instead of avoiding the MASSIVE HOLE IN ODUS, you dive right in. Either you are attuned and you zone properly, or you are not and well...we all know what happens when planar discontinuities occur.

[guineapig]

Brilliant. So technically the zoneline to PoTime would be from Paineel and NOT The Hole, correct?

I'm assuming by doing this via a PoTime flag the player would still be able to visit The Hole by using the door.

[falkun]

From my memory, the only way to get into the hole safely WAS to either have the key for the rock or that wierd duck/stand swimming thing you could do. That would be unaffected. From the map of Paineel, after zoning in from Toxx, you would just fall into "The Pit" on the south side of the cliff there, instead of going to the East for the newbie area/The Hole. That hole would be where the "PoTime Planar rift/tear" would be located. You simply fall into it.

[guineapig]

Right, that's what I figured you meant.

But technically jumping down would zone you in to the Hole as well, albeit dead. So I assume the game treats it as 2 seperate zone-lines in which case there is no complex coding required.

[falkun]

By complex coding I was thinking of the "interested erudite faction" (I really should come up with a name). Coding how local guilds interact with your flagging through their precious god's zone. Coding dynamic interactions between the IEF (see above) and the local guilds (I guess I'm thinking of WoW's phasing (God I hated that, so I should probably stamp out that idea now)).

Also would have to create and place the NPCs for this IEF, as well as changing the coding replacing planar projections with specific individuals in the IEF for flagging purposes.

Stuff like that. I really am not a game designer, so I have no idea how this is all accomplished behind the scenes.

[falkun]

There is an issue with adding PoP zones to home cities instead of locations away from home cities. Everyone agrees that PoK - a central hub that allows you to get to all the old zones and the new zones swiftly - was a bad idea. The problem is that a form of PoK existed in classic and still does on this server: the TD Firepots.

Yes, binders will have to keep their TD firepot bind (which is useless in Velious) for an expansion cycle, but they will be rewarded in their efforts when PoP is released attached to the old world.

However, I think the problem here is not the PoP zone locations, you have done great work in spreading them out appropriately. The problem is in the existence and the (albiet removed/nerfed) bindable nature of the firepots in TD. If the pots are to be left in, I feel everyone should not be allowed to bind there, and if you are currently bound there, you will find your bind spot moved. You can still use the Firepots, but you have to run there like everyone else.

[falkun]

Since this topic came up again, I linked this post to that discussion. Also, now that I'm revisiting this topic some months later, I think you should relocate planes so you do not have to go through Classic planes to get to Powers planes.

The reasons for this:
PoNightmare is a T1 zone, and those L51ish can EXP in that plane. Why make a great plane inaccessible by requiring a raid force to get through it (who would want to raid Fear just to get to an EXP zone in PoN). Alternatives like PoJ, PoI, and PoD would be so much easier to get to for EXPing.

Also, putting PoAir at the top of PoSky would suck. You are basically requiring anyone that wants to do PoAir to maintain key corpses for Isle1-7, that's a pain in the ass of a task.

Finally, requiring port stones (for Hate/Sky) to get to Air and Torment is an added hoop when PoStorms, Valor, and possibly even CoDecay (T2, like Torment) are better exp zones on the same tier and PoEarth, Fire, and Water are easier to access than Air would be. Air would literally be one of the hardest zones to get to in the game due to the stone + keys required.

I would suggest:

Cazic Thule
* Plane of Nightmare
- Lair of Terris Thule

West Freeport Arcane Scientists Guild Hall (FP Caster Guild Hall)
* Eryslai, the Kingdom of Wind

Neriak Third Gate - Temple of Innoruuk
* Plane of Torment

[Kabilos]

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

I think the only way to really be able to enjoy PoP without ruining the game is to never implement PoK. Sad but true.

The moment you implement a neutral city with a bank everybody will go there, regardless of where it is or how hard it is to get to.

I might be into the idea of adding a Great Library somewhere out of the way on the continent of Kunark or Velious that would have some spells, quests and such (and be neutral by default like The temple of Solusek Ro). But I wouldn't put a bank or any portals there.

Like connecting the Library to the Dragon Shrine or Kael Drakkal? 2 factions, everyone would be going to when they do the custom armor quests..

No bank near either of those that I can distinctly remember, and they're quite out of the way depending on where you put the connection device.

maybe..just spitballing here.

[stormlord]

Give more bind points to casters and melee.

I -never- understood why they didn't just give us more bind points. It would have been funner to determine where we go than to be herded like sheep. Then you could use gate potions to travel around. You'd want to put some thought into where your binds are, of course. That's the whole idea. For example, if you can only have two binds, then you want to cover as much space as possible while giving yourself as much room as you can. Since you can end up in many different places in the world, you really have to think about where you bind.

Part of the fun is figuring out where to bind. Soulbinders removed a lot of the fun because you weren't really thinking a whole lot about WHERE in the zone. In fact, if it were me, I would have given all the players the ability to bind themselves. And there's the problem that there're SO MANY ZONES. How do you move around in a timely way? Their solution was to give us luclin spires and pok books. But those took a lot of the thought out of it. I prefer systems where players are in more control of things than this. More player-run than developer-run.

Something similar happened in Vanguard. They added a kind of builtin teleport system. IMHO, it was a mistake. One of the best travle systems I've seen was in UO. In that system, you could use recall and mark spells on runes to travel around. You could have bags of these runes set to any location in the whole world. You could literally BE THE TRAVEL SYSTEM. It was kind of fun to figure out how to be an efficient traveller. It opened up the whole world, not just sections of it that're sanctioned by the developers for 'increased use'.

EQ just ran out of money and enthusiasm. The non-linear things just evaporated. It's despairing. The game got run down and too predictable. They couldn't afford to do the more complex things.

Games need to move more towards player-run kinds of worlds. They're smarter and funner. I never enjoy bad breath developer to be pushing me around and leading me like a dog. It's patronizing. And not fun.

[Felwithemagi]

Thread necro. Implement a bazaar/AH, as per Luclin. Despite it's implementation of having to stay afk and logged in, it was the single best feature post classic. Hands down. Remove all the portals, neutral cities, AA's, mounts, and the subsequent whining in this thread about such and such. That one feature added the most benefit and game improvement over any other.