Custom content - how much is too much?

[Swish]

Obviously it's jumping the gun to expect custom content as soon as the final Velious patch comes out, but as time goes on people will be thinking about what might be added and how it'll shape the P99 experience.

I was doing some looking around and wanted to share a youtube video from the Hidden Forest, who it seems have a tiered progression system. Worth a look below. Looks better than some of the live release vids for Underfoot and later expansions imo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVL-eQonUSA (1.40)

The world there is also reshaped, so for example there you can zone in from South Ro to City of Mist. Would adding zones from later expansions within Norrath as we know it up to Velious be too far? Paludal Caverns off a zone wall in Feerott, a LDON ladder system, custom AAs, as some random examples...

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I was going to put a poll up but I don't think that's much of a gauge - comments below, what would you like to see (or not see)? ^^

[Ivory]

Cap level max at 39....and the game shall forever be exciting and challenging. Even 5 years later people will still be struggling to achieve a new piece of gear...instead of finding themselves so bored of stomping all content in the game that they begin to challenge each other to who can show off best by soloing raid content like dragons.

((And if you want, you could decrease exp gain to make up for the loss of levels)).

[Maciver]

Custom content in my mind is not creating the same problem as in live EQ.

Add new zones with velious level gear. Make more exciting, challenging, and intelligent content. Something that takes a lot more time and effort to figure out and beat. Avoid the mudflation. No thanks to more level / AA grinding.

Make the content the reason to keep playing, not the grind for more levels or loot. Sure there should be interesting items to obtain, but nothing that scales up past velious level gear.

Edit: Heres one idea thats easier than adding new zones and such. GM controlled events. One day a dragon shows up in fob flying around wreaking havoc, gm controlled, unique abilities etc. Until uberguild01 shows up to kill it. Perhaps a week later it or another mob is in another zone. If it was human controlled could be a much more unique challenge. Its obviously not gonna follow normal aggro rules. Anyway, just one idea.

[fadetree]

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

Make the content the reason to keep playing, not the grind for more levels or loot. Sure there should be interesting items to obtain, but nothing that scales up past velious level gear.

The trouble is, that is really, really hard to do. There are only so many ways you can add 'difficulty' to an open world MMORPG, and whatever form you pick will be hated by half of your target audience. Adding 'interest' is even harder, because that is even more subjective.

Anyway, I think that's what they tried to do in PoP, and I think they did a great job. That whole progression was super interesting and it was difficult in the time-sinky way that you have to go with in these games. They did add some pretty good raid fights, and were starting to get away from the old AOE vs. tank and spank mechanics that earlier raids were like.

For instance, your example had a PERSON running the 'interesting development' for a week. Good luck scaling that kind of thing up. Bring back player controlled monsters so the players 'create their own content'? That's fine, but too many are tards that just want to annoy people, and it's effectively a PvP server.

[Maciver]

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

The trouble is, that is really, really hard to do. There are only so many ways you can add 'difficulty' to an open world MMORPG, and whatever form you pick will be hated by half of your target audience. Adding 'interest' is even harder, because that is even more subjective.

Anyway, I think that's what they tried to do in PoP, and I think they did a great job. That whole progression was super interesting and it was difficult in the time-sinky way that you have to go with in these games. They did add some pretty good raid fights, and were starting to get away from the old AOE vs. tank and spank mechanics that earlier raids were like.

For instance, your example had a PERSON running the 'interesting development' for a week. Good luck scaling that kind of thing up. Bring back player controlled monsters so the players 'create their own content'? That's fine, but too many are tards that just want to annoy people, and it's effectively a PvP server.

The encounters in pop were fun, but the flagging system was shit. Go afk a couple of raid days and it sucked. Even with the few extra you could drag along. I'm all for time sync progression - I enjoyed farming emp keys and weapons in luclin with my guild mates.

Not player controlled, GM controlled, you wouldn't give players access to this, thats asking for trouble.

Edit: Adding complexity goes a long way in adding interesting, and difficulty. I'm sure people could come up with idea's all day in this regard.

[fadetree]

Yeah, it seems like that would be true, but it never seems to work out. PoP added a ton of complexity to the flagging system...and you hated it. It's not just 'complexity', it's complexity that you like, which is really hard to do.

[Zemus]

Re-use some of the zones and models and re-implement the mobs in the zone to be compatible with the trilogy world.

For example Velspar could be re-implemented. Also lots of room to add to PoM as the zone was very much unfinished in the p99 timeline. I'd like to see a bristlebane raid encounter in his throne room.

Would not want custom content to go over the top and lose the current feel of the game.

[Maciver]

True, you won't make everyone happy. I guess i had two main opinions here:

1) Scaling upward and creating more mudflation seems like a bad idea to me.
2) Adding level and AA grind just trivializes the content we already have. Sony just used it as the carrot to keep people paying. I'd rather the carrot be interesting things to do.

Why scale at all? Why not just more content of this caliber? Theres a reason people want to play in this era.

[Jorgam]

The problem I see with all of this is that as it is now, the top end guilds are still going back and killing crap like Nagafen and Vox. This is insane!

Until there is someway to keep them away from even the most basic of raid targets that are so far under their ability, nothing will change. I don't believe adding more content that is tailored to them will do anything to stop them from going back to killing every lower mob they can find once they are done with the new uber stuff that week, none but themselves can even see/kill.

[Xzavie]

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

The problem I see with all of this is that as it is now, the top end guilds are still going back and killing crap like Nagafen and Vox. This is insane!

Until there is someway to keep them away from even the most basic of raid targets that are so far under their ability, nothing will change. I don't believe adding more content that is tailored to them will do anything to stop them from going back to killing every lower mob they can find once they are done with the new uber stuff that week, none but themselves can even see/kill.

This server is a case study on why raid instancing was created.