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#1
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![]() Possibly sounds like click-bait, but it's not.
Like what if they tuned the mobs to be more challenging, so instead of your group chain pulling an entire dungeon, your group struggled to handle one camp, like the good ol' days? I'm really referring more to the raid scene than anything though. As a kid there was nothing more terrifying than zoning into the Plane of Fear or Plane of Hate. You could actually die instantly and may not be able to get your corpse back, perhaps ever. The first time I got invited to raid on P99 it was Plane of Fear. Green server back when the server was still fairly new. I remember being so nervous and opening a beer to calm my nerves as we met up outside the portal. There wasn't enough people for us to do the raid, we only had like 15 people, I kept hoping more people would show up, but it was looking more and more like they were going to have to call it. And then I got confused because they said to zone in? With 15 people? Are you insane? I don't want to lose my corpse, I just joined this guild a few hours ago. Against my better judgment, I zone in anyways, and am confused with how I'm full mana 99% of the time (as a Cleric), and how easily we're clearing the zone. And also how plentiful loot was. Anyone who played back in the day knows that you normally raided the Planes with dozens upon dozens of players. I remember having close to 100 players at times, and having to stare at the ground to keep my computer from crashing. Despite having this many players we still regularly wiped and had hellacious corpse recoveries. And yes, loot felt dramatically more rare. Perhaps this was because I was competing with 8 other dudes in the raid, since again, there was way more players in a raid? But honestly I feel like the drop rates were just way lower. Like I never saw a flayed turmoil skin belt drop in 1999, but I've seen them drop multiple times every time I've raided Fear on P99. Also I remember spending months trying to get my last pieces of Woven Shadow, and I had seniority on them. We cleared all the abhorrents and the stuff just didn't drop. I also had a Cleric friend who despite raiding Hate for years, never completed their full purple look. Meanwhile on green I had characters getting full planar in a single raid. Like I don't know. I think the game might actually be more fun if they tuned raiding to be way harder, and maybe made the loot slightly more rare, to where getting a piece of planar gear is a huge achievement and not the equivalent of welfare loot (a WoW term, I don't mean that to disparage anyone). Or maybe I'm out of touch? Maybe raiding was easier on other servers, and I've seen some interviews with Brad where he addressed the planes being treated as a place where you get free armor. But man I swear I struggled really hard on my server just to get basic planar stuff [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] | ||
#2
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![]() Also to make raiding the planes truly classic, you could make players load in sporadically at different times. I feel like that was a big cause of wipes "back in the day." We all tried to zone in at the same time, but would actually finish loading minutes apart from each other, so players would get picked off, or panic and aggro a bunch of extra mobs, lmao.
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#3
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![]() Over tuning mobs doesn't make the game better. They tried this in SoL or PoP in the end game zone (forget which), gave some minis something crazy like 3 million HPs and took end game geared guild like 45 mins of tank and spank. EQ got blasted hard after that for being a dumb time sink, and devs reacted swiftly to down tune the content and add different features to the bosses.
P99 can make some simple changes (which require no coding, simply policy change) to make life more classic and challenging: no longer summon rotted corpses, no longer restore accidental destroys or drop transfers, no transferring of raid loot even if on encounter log, no restoring deleted accounts. This was classic as fuck. Real death fear no longer exists on P99, staff should not do corpse restores. Period. For coding changes: fix the mana cap / mana values (everyone gets the nerf bat here), make channeling classic, adjust charm to classic rates. This would objectively make all content harder (i.e. more classic).
__________________
Wedar - Level 60 Grandmaster <Azure Guard>
Check out my Zone Guide to The Hole The Hole wiki now fully updated and accurate: Hole Wiki Page | ||
#4
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![]() Forgot: no longer reimburse botched quests because you gave wrong item to NPC, boo hoo. This was also classic as fuck and would remove a huge GM burden for item restores
__________________
Wedar - Level 60 Grandmaster <Azure Guard>
Check out my Zone Guide to The Hole The Hole wiki now fully updated and accurate: Hole Wiki Page | ||
#5
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![]() Ive said it before in another thread.
Throttle ya bandwidth down to 56k. For old times sake. Getting 70 -100 on a raid is prolly fantasy, there were 1000 - 2000 per server at times back then. Maybe tuned to be bronze/ class armor clad tanks needing 30 odd. I did a naggy raid with 60 odd and lagged out while moving and i ran into a giant people said. (I didnt see obviously). My wizzie didnt tank real well. I was wearing cultural chain. Classy... | ||
#6
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![]() I totally feel you, Wakanda! The game's lost its edge, and it's time to bring back the good ol' days of challenging raids and rare loot. I mean, who doesn't remember the thrill of zoning into the Plane of Fear with a 100-man raid team and praying to the EQ gods that you wouldn't get insta-gibbed? The game needs a serious difficulty rebalance, and I'm not just talking about tweaking a few mob stats. I'm talking about a full-on overhaul of the raid scene. Make it harder, make it more rewarding, and for the love of all things holy, make loot rare again! Welfare loot has got to go, and we need to bring back the sense of accomplishment that comes with earning your gear. So, who's with me on this? Let's make EQ great again!
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#7
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![]() Quote:
Unfortunately at 15-16 years of blue and 8(?) years of Velious, people are geared to the teeth...the most committed are probably BIS on 4-5 characters or crazier. Do planar break in attempts fail on green or is everyone tooled up by now? | |||
#8
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![]() For the most part P99 does a great job of emulating the classic environment (better than any other project out there) aside from a few things mentioned that it seems the Devs are focused on resolving (i.e. classic channeling and spell resists that make things like charm and pacify less guaranteed).
To me a lot of the "imbalance" referenced here is a function of a time locked progression server. Having everyone run around in full velious gear at lvl 5 is undoubtedly a massive impact on the feeling of ease as one progresses through the world. Even the folks trying to do self found are massively boosted by basically being gifted all loot in any group they join as everyone else has an abundance of gear/plat. In true classic live as better loot became available there wasn't enough time to create such a surplus that it trickled down to brand new players (twinking was always a thing but it was like a fungi, weapon, and haste item not a full suit of skyshrine armor or better). Players were focused on exploring new expansions and learning new mobs, mechanics, and furthering their primary character. I joined P99 green after it was already in velious so I didn't get a chance to experience a fresh server yet but I would imagine the sentiment on day 1 of green wasn't that this was some unclassic detuned server that was way too easy. I'm sure when everyone is running around with rusty weapons and the definition of twinking is banded armor that the difficulty level would align with what we recall of our classic experience. Just more evidence that its time for a fresh server. | ||
#9
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![]() I would agree with no more corpse summons even though I have taken advantage of it at times.
The loot thing is totally tangential. People are saying "loot was more rare" but that's just your own personal memory. You need to display actual evidence that it was. My understanding is that the current drop rates are as close as we can get based on in-era sources, source code, etc. As far as people being twinked and the server being mudflated, that is a solveable issue by rolling a new server once the existing one reaches a certain point in the timeline. Green can be merged with Blue and a fresh server rolled out which solves the twink issue for a period of time. | ||
#10
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![]() Quote:
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