Discussion, would you prefer cities to be cities, or dungeons? - Page 4

Jimjam · #31 08-18-2019, 07:18 AM

Mate Nife spawns in his temple disguised as a fish. He is level 50! Something like the fourth highest level npc in vanilla!

Zuranthium · #32 08-18-2019, 07:43 AM

There's so many places where more dungeons can be put in, and also more outdoor areas that are seen on the world map, but weren't in game. Beefing up some of the existing outdoor zones would be good too (mainly in content but also in size for some places).

Spatially, the way Antonica exists in-game is kind of a mess compared to the map. West Karana is a lot wider than it needs to be (although I like it that way) and too short height-wise. The "Desert of Ro" zones should be MUCH wider, and a bit taller too, and there needs to be other zones between that section and South Karana/Ogguk (which itself appears to exist in the center of some grassy area, rather than connecting immediately to The Feerroot). Rathe Mountains and Lake Rathe have their positions flipped, and both Rathe Mountains and Innothule Swamp should be shifted 90 degrees in terms of how wide/tall they are supposed to be. Halas should also be further north and way more east.

Ideally I see the game world as having 10 "sections" where a significant amount of players should viably be able to go Level 1-->60, without even sticking to the same leveling path, and get good loot at the same time:

Antonica (West + Central + East)
Faydwer (West + East)
Kunark (West + East)
Odus
"Oceans" (North + South) - facilitated by a more robust boat system, which also helps with general inter-continent travel.

Then there's also Velious for more higher end content.

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

In fairness a lot of the 'zones' on the map are actually areas inside other zones... I think.

There's really a LOT missing:

*5 different lake zones (only 2/7 lakes on the old world map are in game)
*the barren coast
*jaggedpine forrest
*unkempt woods
*southern qeynos hills, and another zone south of there, unless included together as one huge zone
*the dead hills
*the northlands or the frigid plains (depending on how you situate that area; one of them is the current tundra area next to the mountains, but the other is missing)
*the nest
*at least one zone west of Oasis (logistically there should be several, unless this is going to be single massive zone)
*the loping plains
*hills of shade
*dragonscale hills
*the buried sea
*broken skull rock
*abysmal sea (which looks like it should maybe be the size of the Pacific, bridging a looooong gap between Odus and Faydwer)

Many of these were put into the game in later EQ expansions, but generally the implementation was not interesting or even in the right place, and quite a few are still missing: all of the lake zones, curiously, and most of the zones that should be over in Western Antonica. I was always sad the "dead hills" area on the world map didn't exist. Seemed like it would have been a spooky place.

Ennewi · #33 08-18-2019, 08:52 AM

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

Mate Nife spawns in his temple disguised as a fish. He is level 50! Something like the fourth highest level npc in vanilla!

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a Koalindl says, 'Foolish mortal! You have disturbed the Prime Healer as he swims in the guise of his creatures. For this... you shall perish!

Interesting. So it is him with an illusion up, talking in the third person. I always just assumed it wasn't Nife to the fullest extent, like an avatar or something, similar to the other gods when they aren't in their respective planes.

Jibartik · #34 08-18-2019, 09:42 AM

What a magical world.

Jimjam · #35 08-18-2019, 10:36 AM

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

Interesting. So it is him with an illusion up, talking in the third person. I always just assumed it wasn't Nife to the fullest extent, like an avatar or something, similar to the other gods when they aren't in their respective planes.

Maybe yer right and it is just an avatar and not a true incarnation.

Keza · #36 08-18-2019, 12:08 PM

If every city was a 55+ "dungeon" you'd have a a lot of problems. Certain quest NPCs, merchants and trainers being frequently dead , especially in preferred camps. The proximity of NPCs that weren't designed to be camped results in a nasty case of the heal-through-walls which is a super unfun issue for many of these camps, although mainly only problematic for breaking in. Then the problem of needing to itemize these zones, which would require tons of new items to be added, all of which needing to be high level items, this creates a secondary problem of an influx of new powerful loot making an easy game easier. Once it's itemized you get loot.. that you can immediately sell/bank without even leaving the camp.. ever. Everyone would just have mules to use during downtime. The last thing I can think of off the top of my head is that if they were they to implement this into green right now there would be a lack of defined camps, resulting in mass neckbeard hysteria and the staff's mental decline into madness. An antiquated theoretical problem would be lagging the shit out of cities, but obviously not many people are elf-simming so hardcore that they are on 2 decade old computers and dial-up. I also don't think oversaturating the game with a million dungeons in a single level range is a good thing, especially at 50+ since it already has a lot of great areas.

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

what if they just made it as difficult as killing things in dungeons if you had negative city faction?

But once you're faction is tanked it cant go back up maybe and all cities would need to be designed to be as dangerous to navigate as any dungeon.

The concepts specifically of making the enemies more difficult if you have negative faction would be pretty hard to implement in a balanced way.. I wonder the point of it to begin with. Doesn't that just make it easier to farm them when you have positive faction? Likewise making it impossible to raise city faction impacts other aspects of the game as well. People wouldn't exp in a city they weren't prepared to lose faction for, and grinding faction is brutal so you don't need either of these restrictions. All you need to do is make sure someone can't simply switch between grinding in 2 different cities to raise rep with the opposite city, as that makes faction grinding too easy, an especially negative thing once cities are itemized and non-kos to you.

I think they could have done some interesting things before launch, like creating a separate zone in Oggok with a non-pvp arena that functions as a raid encounter. Freeport could be in a cold civil war where they rarely end up in a zone-wide skirmish. Some cities could have dungeons in them, like dwarven mines in Kaladim or some madcap inventor's nuthouse in Ak'anon. Probably too much effort to do that without a dev team.

Ultimately I don't agree with cities being a straight-up dungeon just because it hampers new players. I mean people already hunt guards in cities anyway, that's the same thing on a smaller scale. There's plenty of trash dungeons that could be doctored up and plenty of zones to put new dungeons in if they wanted to go that route. The latter sharing some problems of dungeonizing cities, but not all of them.

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Originally Posted by Bardp1999 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They did this in WoW....worked just fine and was fun when the Alliance would attack Ogrimar or vice versa

No they didn't. Cities were just cities, and it was still annoying when people made a raid for it since there was no point in fighting them. People only ever 'raided' cities because they were bored, wanted an achievement or were desperate to pvp before battlegrounds were added. Pretty sure city leaders didn't drop anything either. Just like EQ they exist for worldbuilding reasons, not as a raid boss. And then later for achievements to show off your e-peen.

Jibartik · #37 08-18-2019, 03:48 PM

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