[Opinion] EQ Next - Game Changers/Breakers

[t0lkien]

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php?serverid=-1

Unless I'm misunderstanding that site (and it's a little hard to read IMO), that's an average of around 700 players per server per day, with peaks of no more than 1500 o_O

If that's even ballpark, that 40k active connections figure is (and I mean this without insult) laughable. I kind of knew this because 40k active connections is in the realms of CCP's server tech, and that stuff is world-wide and absolutely cutting edge. I suspect it may even exploit some unreported quantum bug in time and space [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/09...-server-model/

That WoW data may not be current/complete though...

[JurisDictum]

Community is what brings MMORPG's to life. It's the difference between Diablo 2 and Everquest. And those games are worlds apart compared to say, WoW and Diablo 3.
Things that kill community:

-Solo to max level with efficiency. Obviously if you can just solo and deal with no one but yourself, you will opt to. Who wants to spend 15-30 mins assembling a group if they can just level alone at roughly the same (or better) pace. I feel that EQ did it best, by making this a niche thing for certain classes, that only situationally competed with group exp.
Otherwise, everyone is shortly dumped into the endgame having little to no grouping experience. Then suddenly expected to find groups, make a lot of friends, and get into the raid scene. While some people managed in early WoW, most socially awkward gamers just pouted to blizzard until they streamlined raiding into a group-finder like system. This way you barely had to talk to anyone and could essentially continue to solo.

-Anything endgame or groupable is instanced. Instancing encourages linear dungeon crawls that are tailor made for any random group of people to complete as long as they are the correct level range. Every piece of loot is massively farmed by the server and easily obtained by anyone. This is where, IMO the game stops being a true "MMO" and more of a action RPG (Diablo style). I want a dungeon to be a place, in the world, where people go to explore. Not a level in super mario.
With modern technology and sufficient funding, a lot of the problems with EQ overcamping and cockblocking can be solved by adjusting spawn rates real time. In other words, more people in the zone = faster spawn. They could also just make the areas bigger in the first place. There are many ways of incentivizing guild rotations for top content. For example: only get full rewards once a week, yet the mobs spawn once every 48 hours. Or something to that effect. If more than 3-4 guilds on a server are doing top raid content, chances are you should make the game harder.

-Making all travel instant. Maybe we don't need to wait 20+ mins a boat these days. But instant porting around the map makes the world seem artificially small. Horses and hearthstones are good enough.

If you disagree with the majority of this, I have a hard time understanding why you aren't playing WoW. It is clearly the best "modern mmorpg," if that's your thing.

[Kiwaukee]

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

Community is what brings MMORPG's to life. It's the difference between Diablo 2 and Everquest. And those games are worlds apart compared to say, WoW and Diablo 3.
Things that kill community:

-Solo to max level with efficiency. Obviously if you can just solo and deal with no one but yourself, you will opt to. Who wants to spend 15-30 mins assembling a group if they can just level alone at roughly the same (or better) pace. I feel that EQ did it best, by making this a niche thing for certain classes, that only situationally competed with group exp.
Otherwise, everyone is shortly dumped into the endgame having little to no grouping experience. Then suddenly expected to find groups, make a lot of friends, and get into the raid scene. While some people managed in early WoW, most socially awkward gamers just pouted to blizzard until they streamlined raiding into a group-finder like system. This way you barely had to talk to anyone and could essentially continue to solo.

-Anything endgame or groupable is instanced. Instancing encourages linear dungeon crawls that are tailor made for any random group of people to complete as long as they are the correct level range. Every piece of loot is massively farmed by the server and easily obtained by anyone. This is where, IMO the game stops being a true "MMO" and more of a action RPG (Diablo style). I want a dungeon to be a place, in the world, where people go to explore. Not a level in super mario.
With modern technology and sufficient funding, a lot of the problems with EQ overcamping and cockblocking can be solved by adjusting spawn rates real time. In other words, more people in the zone = faster spawn. They could also just make the areas bigger in the first place. There are many ways of incentivizing guild rotations for top content. For example: only get full rewards once a week, yet the mobs spawn once every 48 hours. Or something to that effect. If more than 3-4 guilds on a server are doing top raid content, chances are you should make the game harder.

-Making all travel instant. Maybe we don't need to wait 20+ mins a boat these days. But instant porting around the map makes the world seem artificially small. Horses and hearthstones are good enough.

If you disagree with the majority of this, I have a hard time understanding why you aren't playing WoW. It is clearly the best "modern mmorpg," if that's your thing.

Agreed, with one exception.

I think instanced groupable content is fine for major quest mobs and events. I think it's acceptable (and maybe better) for major quest mobs to be separate from campable or competitive content. If you want to have endgame quests that require drops from raid content, that's fine, but I think the majority of quests should require resourcefulness and determination instead of a batphone. I feel like some of the best quests in EQ were those that were rich in lore and gated by the time investment and ingenuity required rather than the power of a raid force. Circlet of the Falinkan is a perfect example, and I'm looking forward to it going live with Velious.

I think it's sad that some of the best lore in EQ wasn't experienced by a large part of the population because they did not have the capability of killing the raid bosses (due to competition), thus didn't even start the quest. A shame, because many of those quests were FANTASTICALLY written.

[Snifflechomp]

Re-railing this thread.

Someone said it already: Game play is king.

I basically want EQ with modernized features.

Leveling needs to be hard, and NOT quest-based. This is something I hate about WoW. If you aren't doing quests then you might as well be wasting your time.

Gear needs to be iconic, and truely difficult to obtain. Top end gear should never be crafted. Gear should NOT be restricted by levels (except for procs) just like it is now. This was part of the brilliance and replayability of EQ. You can slap that Fungi Tunic or Cloak of Flames on your level 1 alt.

[Snifflechomp]

This one is so big I thought it deserved its own reply.

I want a non-arbitrary combat system.

Most games use a model that determines the chance to hit, resist, etc, based on levels. A lvl 5 has no chance to land a spell on a lvl 50 for no reason other than the level difference. Conversely, a lvl 50 might get a huge bonus when attacking a lower level opponent.

Levels should simply give you access to better spells, skills, and gear but should not, imho, place arbitrary restrictions on what you can hit and for how much.

[diplo]

i wish my coworkers played EQ [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Scoresby]

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

This one is so big I thought it deserved its own reply.

I want a non-arbitrary combat system.

Most games use a model that determines the chance to hit, resist, etc, based on levels. A lvl 5 has no chance to land a spell on a lvl 50 for no reason other than the level difference. Conversely, a lvl 50 might get a huge bonus when attacking a lower level opponent.

Levels should simply give you access to better spells, skills, and gear but should not, imho, place arbitrary restrictions on what you can hit and for how much.

Yeah, I'd actually like to see it where the game essentially had unlimited levels, but with a non-linear leveling curve. To the point that you effectively have soft capped limits in place. Maybe the (typical) max level people reach is 10, but you still have content available for levels 11-20, it's just no one will likely ever reach these.

The levels basically buy you a bigger toolbox of abilities and more damage/efficiency via skill gains. However, each player has the same number of base hps and the major differences are the flexibility a character has by having more abilities and the increase in raw stats from gear (but not to crazy extremes).

A rough balance of this would mean 10 level one characters would have a shot at taking down a level 10 character in head-to-head (in a simple example melee just auto-attacking). Throw in the added abilities of the level 10 and the difference is more apparent with the level 10 winning out easily. I feel a system like this avoids some of the obvious traps of mudflation and actually makes the end game a bit more accessible without reaching "max level" if tuned correctly.

Speaking of that, raid tuning is silly. Let the raids be uncapped. If it takes you 100 people to kill it, that's what it takes. If you can do it with two groups, awesome. The benefits of mobilization/gearing a smaller raid force are clearly better, so any tuning should be a matter of player preference (how many people do we want to do this with?).

Lastly on gear. Gear should be important, but I like the idea of having situational gear that again, improves the flexibility your character has. Fishbone earrings were a good example. This item gave anyone a huge benefit when fighting under water. Think more like Metroid or Zelda, where you have certain equipment that makes things either way easier or possible at all. I feel for raw stat/more better gear, a healthy mix of drops and crafted is the way to go. Unlike a previous post though, I think at least some of the absolute best gear should be crafted (with a chance to fail on combine) using materials that come from rare/raid sources. Doing this actually gives some backbone to crafting and keeping the materials rare ensures the items stay rare (just like normal raid drops).

Everyone has their wishes, those are a few of mine!

[Rooj]

Why does it matter how many people a WoW server can hold, if they're all in instances? There is no longer a reason to ever leave the city in WoW. You just level up from dungeon/battleground queues. And when you're max level, well, you do the same thing.

[Atmas]

Things I would like to see:
A large expansive world that is not easily traversed. (I hated EQ2 for making everything a bell click away)

No or fewer gear sets for higher end gear. I really hate seeing everyone wear the same crap.

Items with unique abilities. One of the things I really liked about old EQ versus newer games were that some items quested or obtained actually augmented game play style.

There really is a million things I would like to add but since I doubt any EQ Devs are reading this will leave it at that.

Finally I know this may derail things but many of you forget or don't realize EQ created instancing. WoW went a bit overboard but I think some of the aspects of their use of instancing was good. I'm mainly talking about use of instancing to drive story and temporarily alter static areas. Anyone remember that epicly long chain of quests in Dragonblight during WoLK? Where some dragons wrecked shit infront of the LK's castle and you have to bust some skulls in Undercity (horde side).

[Scoresby]

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

Things I would like to see:
A large expansive world that is not easily traversed. (I hated EQ2 for making everything a bell click away)

No or fewer gear sets for higher end gear. I really hate seeing everyone wear the same crap.

Items with unique abilities. One of the things I really liked about old EQ versus newer games were that some items quested or obtained actually augmented game play style.

There really is a million things I would like to add but since I doubt any EQ Devs are reading this will leave it at that.

Finally I know this may derail things but many of you forget or don't realize EQ created instancing. WoW went a bit overboard but I think some of the aspects of their use of instancing was good. I'm mainly talking about use of instancing to drive story and temporarily alter static areas. Anyone remember that epicly long chain of quests in Dragonblight during WoLK? Where some dragons wrecked shit infront of the LK's castle and you have to bust some skulls in Undercity (horde side).

Phasing as it were. Yeah, there are definitely good cases for it, but there needs to be careful consideration about the loss of community when using it. I think having a few "trials" or "proving grounds" type dungeons where you get your own instance might be OK as would certain storyline portions, but wholesale use of it just waters down interaction too much. The right answer IMO is more servers.

However much content you create, decide how many people that can support (conservatively) and then create additional servers as necessary. Don't be lame and link servers together either. If I play regularly with 5000 people, I'd like to see the SAME 5000 people so I can know who the assholes are and who's worthwhile hanging with.

The real trick is understanding that (one day) your playerbase is going to all be pushing for the same tier content, and you need to ensure there is enough of it to support them. Long travel times is a good idea. If you have multiple top tier areas, but they are separated by a long travel time then you essentially have a scenario where multiple top tier people can setup base and exist in relative peace. That also opens up an entirely new avenue of trade routes where you could have real-world like economic impact of supply/demand based on geography. Players could become traders and spend their time hauling stuff back and forth to make bank.