Dwarves vs Elves - Custom Faydwer PvP

[azxten]

Working on a new PvP server. The premise is Dwarves vs Elves on Fawdwer only with some custom addition of classic dungeons and raid mobs.

Rules (need feedback):

1. Two teams (Human/Dwarf/Gnome vs High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf)

Why? This allows for team balance outside the typical Faydwer races. Humans allow Bard/Ranger/Druid/SK and Dark Elf allows Necro/SK.

2. No shaman OR Dwarf and Half Elf Shaman

Why? Otherwise we might as well just add all the races which loses some of the Dwarf v Elf focus. A lot of players probably want to play Shaman so it could be added a custom class for other races.

3. Coin loot

Why? People don't like punishments for PvP death. A lot of PvP players love full loot, item loot, exp loss, etc but this limits the player base to a small niche who will tolerate such extreme loss on PvP death. The intent is to appeal to a wider range of players.

4. Fast exp

Why? Lessens commitment for new players to be able to contribute to PvP on a peer level with older players.

5. No level range for PvP

Why? Creates more of a team atmosphere where you rely on your team mates always. A level 1 spamming snare on a level 50 should have a chance for the spell to land even if it's small.

6. Scaled PvP damage to allow lower/higher levels to have fairer fights while still having a power differential

Why? Same as no level range, more of a team atmosphere. Allows new players to quickly be capable of holding their own in fights or at least being able to escape instead of being steamrolled in one spell.

7. PvP death sends you to a team city, can't gate for 5 minutes after (stop bind rushing)

Why? With only coin loot there is minimal punishment for dying in PvP. The only punishment is the corpse run and this should be equal for melee/casters and some guaranteed distance away from likely PvP areas.

8. No cross team trading, guilding, beneficial spells, or language. Dwarvish (Dwarf/Gnome/Human) and Elvish (High Elf/Wood Elf/Half Elf/Dark Elf) are mastered at start by the races on those teams. Languages can be learned over time.

Why? More emphasis on separation between teams, less griefing especially for new players who won't be able to understand the enemy, and avoid the overpowered cross team guilds healing your enemies during fights and such.

9. Instanced dueling/team fights possibly for PvP points to be spent in some way

Why? This lets new players of EQ PvP the opportunity to practice fighting quickly and learn skills required to successfully fight in open world without becoming annoyed by how much they would die otherwise having no opportunity to learn except for a brief fight between corpse runs.

10. Each team has a capital city that is safe for their team and is where they can join instanced duels.

Why? Casual players like safe zones, this is the minimum we could offer. Another potential safe zone would be a trade area where teams can trade between each other and possibly languages spoken in that zone are clear. Haven't decided if this is worthwhile yet or if teams should be expected to only trade between each other or drop trade between teams if players can speak each others languages or otherwise work out deals.

Map (need feedback):

Base map - Unrest in water area of yard there is a little cave that will zone to Najena, within Najena is a wall with magic symbols that looks like a door but goes nowhere which zones to Sol A, Sol A/B connect as normal, and back in Unrest near ghost spawn is an entryway that goes nowhere which zones to Sol B. In Crushbone near back of zone there is a piece of wall cut out like a cave but shallow which would be the zone to Guk Top which zones to Guk Bottom as normal. In Butcher on the shore somewhere would be a clickable item zone to Blackburrow, within Blackburrow there is an empty room with some cool hangings on the walls which would have a clickable zone to Paw, within Paw would be a zone to Cazic Thule. Permafrost is a clickable access zone in Steamfont maybe in the Minotaur caves.

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Team influence - This shows general team influence over areas and the most common paths teams would run between areas. Dwarves would obviously sometimes want to go to Guk and Elves would want to go to Solusek as an example but this isn't shown because those are "risky" zones for them since their enemy team has closer city spawns than they do making those zones easier for their teams to control in general.

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Custom paths/ports/city - Extended path to avoid lfay/gfay bottleneck and advantage to elf team who would otherwise control this critical bottleneck. We add a clickable zone item to Butcher/Steamfont that allows an alternative route to the Dwarf team and roughly the same 1 zone separation for the teams that the Elf team has. Also add a Wizard port to Cauldron and a Druid port to Guk. The Wizard port makes Wizards more useful and gives the Elf team the ability to quickly travel to Cauldron and adjacent zones in a similar way Dwarf team Wizards could port to GFay. We also add a Druid port into Guk to balance the Wizard port to Cazic Thule. This makes ports valuable utility spells even on this small continent. The Dark Elf camp in lfay becomes a slightly larger custom camp where Dark Elf players start possibly with some custom level 1-5 mobs for them to level on before traveling elsewhere. Bank, vendor, spells, trainers, etc. This prevents the elf team from all starting in essentially one zone together and forces some distance similar to Kaladim to Akanon.

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[Jibartik]

Im touching myself.

[Tradesonred]

Its a great idea to reduce the size of the world while keeping some dungeons accessible, remedying to game being made for when you /who'd 50 players in a zone.

[azxten]

Instead of Steamfont to Permafrost it should go Steamfont to Runnyeye to Permafrost. I forgot about runny and this also provides better separation between a zone with steam and a frozen cave. Pulling all the classic dungeons in helps with itemization. I think the only thing missing now would be like Kerra Island and Befallen. Nothing too serious missing there I think.

The server isn't Counter Strike friendly enough. I'm thinking skills and spells should auto train as you level. I had an idea for auto loot too but that gets a lot more complicated so probably not.

Scaling for PvP needs to maintain a sense of power connected to your level while still allowing lower levels a sporting chance to escape or contribute in group fights. This somewhat depends on how long it takes to level. If it takes 2 hours to hit level 50 and there is no exp loss scaling in this becomes kind of meaningless. Leveling to 50 you might get beat up in fights but if leveling is that fast it's a temporary experience. To maintain the Counter Strike twist maybe players should just start at level 30ish. A level 30 vs a level 50 is already roughly achieving that goal of escape/group fight viability.

[magnetaress]

sola b should be off of steamfont cuz kobolds and fire

or do sola in one zone right next door so u can go underground from steamfont to dagnors

so sol a dagnors and solb steamfont

[Imago]

This would be a fantastic place to play. 10/10. Keep us updated.

Great ideas with the ports and dark elf starting area.

[azxten]

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I like the idea of using dungeons to connect steamfont to cauldron. This is the revised map where I also attempted to balance dungeon level ranges between team and ensure that Perma/SolB as raid zones are balanced. Dwarf team has a one zone advantage reaching Permafrost, Elf team has a one zone advantage reaching SolB.

Akanon zones to Butcher now because it's too hard to balance things when one team starts several zones apart and the other starts within 1 zone of each other. Humans could have a little camp at the docks similar to the DE camp then the spawn situations are nearly identical and fits with the idea of the humans being from Antonica. Each race still has a unique start.

Oh and Felwithe/Kaladim are the capitol cities players return to on PvP death. So I'm counting zone lines to locations. This is a bit off as some zones are bigger than other but it's something. Since a lot of the zone lines are custom it's possible to try to even out the run distance using the location of the custom zones within other zones.

[Gustoo]

Kick ass I like that.

The pvp level range and loot / no item loot or permadeath is all interesting. On a server like this stealing armor is gunna be more of an inconvenience than a meaningful threat to pvp since this is way more pvp focused than any live server so having reduced death consequence seems rational.

As far as races go I see the biggest problem is that most pvp psychopaths have been gnomes historically and they also are the only ones who can make the telescope, so maybe that needs to be a vendor item.

But more than the telescope is the kinda players who are gunna roll gnome murderers vs panzy elfs. The dark elf fan boys might be enough to balance it so we’ll have to count on that.

[Jimjam]

I’ve long been a fan of the Faydwer pvp idea. I’d probably cut the level cap to somewhere way below 50. Maybe 39. Maybe even lower.

[azxten]

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All the zone connections are done now. Languages are in, common tongue doesn't exist. Forced languages in all channels including OOC. Halflings replace Humans on Dwarf team to make it classic short team Dwarf/Gnome/Halfling. Using VZ/TZ tag colors but blocking beneficial spells cross team except for Elvish/Dark Elf who also can't attack each other. Fixed EQEmu VZ/TZ teams attack code. Dark Elves speak expert Elvish at start. Halflings/Gnome speak expert Dwarvish.

I'll probably do Bard/Shaman Halfling/Dwarf and some kind of Shaman for Elf team maybe Half Elf/Dark Elf/Wood Elf. Going to leave Gnome SK and Halfling Ranger which is in EQEmu code already. This gets us back to class parity between teams after switching Halfling in for Human.