Suggestion to Encourage Levelling Across Norrath

[Jibbery]

Hi all,

As a long time (old time) EQ fan and I jumped back on P99 after a break. It was brilliant picking a new class/race and levelling and exploring old world via a new perspective.

Something as I’ve noticed in the run up to 50 is how the ZEM of Paw, Cazic Thule and Hole makes you choose these zones for XP or anywhere else for fun/variety.
The good behaviour this ZEM created critical mass in the zone. What isn’t as fun is you are stuck in hole for 50-60.

Could we implement a rotating ZEM in new zones every few weeks or months? This could help encourage exploration and variety but keep critical mass in some zones.

Is this a horrible idea?
If not, what zones should be considered?

Comments welcomed!

Hugs and Kisses,

Jibb

[Jibartik]

Hi jibb!

*waves in skeleton

[strongNpretty]

Seriously. Just get rid of ZEM's all together honestly.

[strongNpretty]

/ all hole.. List was cut short cause all of Riot/Kittens/Vanquish is packed in there.... 4 players in Karnor. 1 in Velks. 5 in Seb. 1 in Solb. 1 in Chardok. 0 in Howling Stones..

WTF is this shit?!?!

[Gustoo]

It just makes too much sense to have changing ZEM's

Be great to make the entire karanas a crazy kill boosted area to get people out there.

And so many other places.

[strongNpretty]

Why is anybody in a hurry playing a game called EVERquest.. No ZEMS needed.. All zones the same.. Grind on you bums.

[Batty]

Seriously. Just get rid of ZEM's all together honestly.

Then people just pick whichever zone is most efficient and go clog up there. That doesn't resolve the root issue at all.

[Baler]

ROTATE HOT ZONES ZEM

[beargryllz]

ROTATE HOT ZONES ZEM

I'll agree to this as long as they don't publish it in patch updates

You just realize, "hey, Unrest is kind of shitty" and then move somewhere else

Word will spread, but then you just change them in a few weeks. Random dice roll. Indoor dungeons only

[Indecisive]

This has been suggested many times, but the devs don't seem to be very interested in the idea. Perhaps it's too much work, or too unclassic, or all of the above - nobody but them really knows. Point is, as good an idea as I and many others believe it is, I wouldn't hold my breath OP.

[Baler]

This has been suggested many times, but the devs don't seem to be very interested in the idea. Perhaps it's too much work, or too unclassic, or all of the above - nobody but them really knows. Point is, as good an idea as I and many others believe it is, I wouldn't hold my breath OP.

I bet someone would have to push a button and that would be too much work.

[Jibbery]

Great comments. Yes I could see either removing all ZEM or do a rotating ZEM. The behaviour I think we want is to get enough critical mass in zones to get people to explore together. A rotating ZEM would do that i would think.

Also /wave skeleton!

[Man0warr]

Why do people need to explore? It's a 22 year old game, most everyone here knows every zone. All a Rotating ZEM accomplishes is it taking a few days for people to find the best ZEM and then that will be the place everyone congregates.

If ZEM values are flat across the board, then everyone just packs back into the zones with the best Loot, i.e. Sebilis.

At least the Hole can literally support 10-12 groups of people wanting to XP comfortably. Can't say the same for other zones.

[jadier]

Why do people need to explore? It's a 22 year old game, most everyone here knows every zone. All a Rotating ZEM accomplishes is it taking a few days for people to find the best ZEM and then that will be the place everyone congregates.

If ZEM values are flat across the board, then everyone just packs back into the zones with the best Loot, i.e. Sebilis.

At least the Hole can literally support 10-12 groups of people wanting to XP comfortably. Can't say the same for other zones.

Yeah, that's sort of the trick. If XP is the same everywhere, then everyone just fills up the good loot zones.

Currently, the Hole has a ton of people, but it's not particularly hard to convince folks to go to the (many) open loot camps in KC/Seb.

Likewise at lower levels, if ZEMs were flat/random, no one would ever go to CT (healing mobs are awful) or Splitpaw (no loot whatsoever) or Permafrost (who wants to go that far?).

Case in point to that: look at TLP servers. CT/Splitpaw/Perma are ghosttowns. Same with Runnyeye and Gorge and all the other under-utilized zones. By giving them a high XP modifier, people are incentivized to go to those zones instead of Unrest->UGuk->Lguk->KC->Seb (the TLP path).

The issue is that (basically) all of us know the zones and know what's good or bad about them. There are intrinsic reasons Odus was 100% empty before the Hole launched.

However, because the zones with poor XP still have great loot (Lguk/KC/Seb/etc), you can pretty easily round up a group of friends/guildmates to go there. No one is going to complain too much about the slower XP of disco.

But the nature of the current server population is that if you want a pickup group without putting forth any effort to build it yourself (what most people want) a single hub zone will exist. No amount of changing ZEMs will alter that.

TLDR; If you don't want to put forth the effort of making an adventuring group to go somewhere fun, don't complain that others don't want to do that either and just live with the hub zone. If you do want to take the iniative, the balance of risk/reward is actually pretty good such that it's not too hard to go where you want with whom you want to if you try.

[Floraline]

This new rule set of TLP is super crowded, so I'm seeing activity in the Karanas, Crushbone, CT, Najena. Its nice that people are out exploring snd grouping in under utilized zones. Of course, Unrest also has 7 instances going, lol.

[jadier]

This new rule set of TLP is super crowded, so I'm seeing activity in the Karanas, Crushbone, CT, Najena. Its nice that people are out exploring snd grouping in under utilized zones. Of course, Unrest also has 7 instances going, lol.

Yeah, the new rule set does the opposite of what’s proposed here. Instead of making everywhere equal xp, they’ve made everything equal loot.

If you equalized both xp and loot, then sure, that will expand the player base. But even then, given how tricky it is the move around the world, most folks will just plop in one “good” zone and all semi-afk until they get a group invite. As you point out, that’s why there’re still 7 unrest instances!

[rajax]

My idealized terribly unclassic suggestions to hopefully encourage people to spread out to underutilized zones:

1) Boost group xp bonuses so that adding a 3rd member's division in total xp is halved, 4th is quartered and the 5th and 6th members would be essentially free with no further reduction in group xp rewards. Encouraging large groups and going to less crowded/more dangerous zones.

2) Give all Kunark & Velious zones a modest base ZEM boost to reflect the increased hp/damage tables & difficulty those areas have over old world content. 5%-10%.

3) Indoor dungeon zones gain a base ZEM bonus over outdoor zones of 10%. Additionally up to a small 5% base ZEM bonus based on length of respawn times, 5% max at 25+ minute respawn times. Additional small base ZEM bonuses subject to barriers to entry, ie. key, quest item or port requirement etc.

4) Indoor dungeon zones gain a dynamic ZEM modifier that reflects usage:

For every total in game day (72 minutes) that 13+ players have been active (killing/receiving XP from any significant amount of monsters, ie. 5+ kills) The ZEM decreases 1% or if no or <7 players active ZEM increases 1%. Never going lower than outdoor zones base modifier with the bonuses from #3 and never going higher than a 200% total or double bonus over base outdoor XP. So up to 12 players could hunt in a dungeon zone with no - change in ZEM, Single group or abandoned areas accumulate a bonus and popular areas slowly decline down to base value. I'd favor not publishing the current ZEM anywhere but maybe showing a small "green" or "+" for zones with a strong bonus maybe on a /who report at least initially to encourage exploration.

5) Most controversial suggestion- Severely reduce XP base value of city guards/NPCs. Guard killing/camping should never have become the most profitable and safe source of XP & cash at mid to high level game. New characters in the yards and doing quests retain the big ZEM but guards spawning statically and alone shouldn't be notably better XP than clearing rooms of harder, patrolling spawns in remote zones.

[Dolalin]

This has been suggested many times, but the devs don't seem to be very interested in the idea. Perhaps it's too much work, or too unclassic, or all of the above - nobody but them really knows. Point is, as good an idea as I and many others believe it is, I wouldn't hold my breath OP.

Looking at it from an eqemu server perspective, it requires someone sitting down and tweaking lots of values in a db, which can be automated if the goal is just to make it random, but that might result in a zone like Highkeep getting a big ZEM, which will cause all kinds of issues for CSR. So then you would have to build some logic into the randomization script to keep some zones from getting unsustainable ZEMs.

So it quickly becomes a few hours worth of work.

And I know very well how rare it is to have a few hours to sit down and concentrate on something with my family and work commitments etc.

I'm not a P99 dev but that's my thought process and I'd wager theirs is similar...

[hightension]

1. Will certainly be abused, you will just have bots/alts filling those spots afk

2. If you boost outdoor kunark zones it will just mean bards, druids, wizards level faster and you'll see even more PL groups. I do agree that end game dungeons could use a little tweaking.. . but outside of those, ultimately I think you'd just see the majority of them being used to level up alts faster via PL ala runnyeye.

3/4. How much faster do you want levelling to be than it is now ? Your solution of making it easier to level overall with further incentives or using complicated mechanics to artificially control xp seems counter to the point of classic EQ and what makes it interesting. This type of over thinking is what lead mmo's into a death spiral in my opinion

5. There are only so many zones with guards to kill. By eliminating this, you're robbing people of a relaxing solo playstyle enjoyed by many. Some don't like grouping or being funneled into what you deem is the only way to play the game. This would also just result in more stress and people fighting over a now a reduced amount of solo spots.

My idealized terribly unclassic suggestions to hopefully encourage people to spread out to underutilized zones:

1) Boost group xp bonuses so that adding a 3rd member's division in total xp is halved, 4th is quartered and the 5th and 6th members would be essentially free with no further reduction in group xp rewards. Encouraging large groups and going to less crowded/more dangerous zones.

2) Give all Kunark & Velious zones a modest base ZEM boost to reflect the increased hp/damage tables & difficulty those areas have over old world content. 5%-10%.

3) Indoor dungeon zones gain a base ZEM bonus over outdoor zones of 10%. Additionally up to a small 5% base ZEM bonus based on length of respawn times, 5% max at 25+ minute respawn times. Additional small base ZEM bonuses subject to barriers to entry, ie. key, quest item or port requirement etc.

4) Indoor dungeon zones gain a dynamic ZEM modifier that reflects usage:

For every total in game day (72 minutes) that 13+ players have been active (killing/receiving XP from any significant amount of monsters, ie. 5+ kills) The ZEM decreases 1% or if no or <7 players active ZEM increases 1%. Never going lower than outdoor zones base modifier with the bonuses from #3 and never going higher than a 200% total or double bonus over base outdoor XP. So up to 12 players could hunt in a dungeon zone with no - change in ZEM, Single group or abandoned areas accumulate a bonus and popular areas slowly decline down to base value. I'd favor not publishing the current ZEM anywhere but maybe showing a small "green" or "+" for zones with a strong bonus maybe on a /who report at least initially to encourage exploration.

5) Most controversial suggestion- Severely reduce XP base value of city guards/NPCs. Guard killing/camping should never have become the most profitable and safe source of XP & cash at mid to high level game. New characters in the yards and doing quests retain the big ZEM but guards spawning statically and alone shouldn't be notably better XP than clearing rooms of harder, patrolling spawns in remote zones.

[eqravenprince]

If you want people to adventure more, items would have level limits. People would bounce around zones working on upgrading their gear.

[cd288]

Rajax I agree with a lot of your comments besides the dynamic ZEM. That’s way too much work to expect volunteers to do.

Idk if you need to make the exp bonus for groups that high but certainly it would be nice because it would mean you have fewer groups of three or four sitting there exping while multiple people sit LFG. Kunark outdoor zone boost would also be nice because it just makes no sense to EXP there unless you have to. So much easier and more efficient to EXP in the old world.

[cd288]

1. Will certainly be abused, you will just have bots/alts filling those spots afk

2. If you boost outdoor kunark zones it will just mean bards, druids, wizards level faster and you'll see even more PL groups. I do agree that end game dungeons could use a little tweaking.. . but outside of those, ultimately I think you'd just see the majority of them being used to level up alts faster via PL ala runnyeye.

3/4. How much faster do you want levelling to be than it is now ? Your solution of making it easier to level overall with further incentives or using complicated mechanics to artificially control xp seems counter to the point of classic EQ and what makes it interesting. This type of over thinking is what lead mmo's into a death spiral in my opinion

5. There are only so many zones with guards to kill. By eliminating this, you're robbing people of a relaxing solo playstyle enjoyed by many. Some don't like grouping or being funneled into what you deem is the only way to play the game. This would also just result in more stress and people fighting over a now a reduced amount of solo spots.

You wouldn’t see that in Kunark zones. It’s not like some of those Kunark zones aren’t already to most popular locations for bards and Druids, it literally changes nothing. There’s so many good exp spots in the Kunark outdoor zones for both groups and soloers that simply go unused because it doesn’t make sense from an efficiency perspective.

If I’m soloing in the old world on a caster I can probably kill two mobs for the same amount of mana it takes me to kill one in Kunark (or if not the same amount of mana, the point is after killing the Kunark mob I need to med...my mana bar can’t kill two mobs one after the other like it can in the old world). That’s such a huge discrepancy, especially at higher levels when you’re already spending hours and hours on each level. Boosting those ZEMs a bit would make it make more sense to explore the Kunark zones sometimes.

[rajax]

Rajax I agree with a lot of your comments besides the dynamic ZEM. That’s way too much work to expect volunteers to do.

Idk if you need to make the exp bonus for groups that high but certainly it would be nice because it would mean you have fewer groups of three or four sitting there exping while multiple people sit LFG. Kunark outdoor zone boost would also be nice because it just makes no sense to EXP there unless you have to. So much easier and more efficient to EXP in the old world.

Ideally, the dynamic dungeon ZEM I was imagining would have been just automated without requiring staff involvement. More or less bug free- like Mob pathing... With no idea how P1999 logs data this may be trivial or impossible to implement.

If that proposed max cap of 200% or double base XP sounds too generous, to put it in perspective- as I understand it, that is the same as the current permanent ZEM for The Hole that is causing everyone to swarm there. As I worded it, this would take 5 continuous real time days of no or 1 group only activity to reach that cap and would lower if the area became very active with 13 or more players.

The group bonus also could be too generous, but concerns about PL or BoT groups seem irrelevant as people who only care about min-max XP rates are going to do whatever it takes to get to 60 as quickly as possible- fun be damned. No matter what bonus or nerf is applied. Just report and enforce the server rules or ignore them whichever you choose. If large groups just sit around hogging trivial outdoor content, perhaps those “free” 5th and 6th group spots should only be in effect in those specific dangerous dungeon/raid zones the staff flags as “group encouraged”

Maybe the best solution would be to simply change the ZEM periodically as the original poster suggested but never publish any changes. Not knowing the ZEM is as classic as it gets. The things I suggested would be more in-line with a far future “blue” that focused on original new content and new server ruleset.

[Toxigen]

Just boycott the Hole if you're a competent player.

Leave all the dead weight mouthbreathers to trip over themselves in there.

There is more fun (and $$$) to be had in other zones.

[strongNpretty]

Then people just pick whichever zone is most efficient and go clog up there. That doesn't resolve the root issue at all.

Then at least that's on us....

[strongNpretty]

Why do people need to explore? It's a 22 year old game, most everyone here knows every zone. All a Rotating ZEM accomplishes is it taking a few days for people to find the best ZEM and then that will be the place everyone congregates.

If ZEM values are flat across the board, then everyone just packs back into the zones with the best Loot, i.e. Sebilis.

At least the Hole can literally support 10-12 groups of people wanting to XP comfortably. Can't say the same for other zones.

Sorry for the many folks that this applies to- I have hella to see and adventure still. I feel bad for those who have beaten this game into the sand, and continue logging into for pixels... That shits sad.

[Man0warr]

That's all the incentive you need then. Have fun exploring.

[jolanar]

ZEM should be based purely on zone difficulty and nothing else.

[cd288]

ZEM should be based purely on zone difficulty and nothing else.

I mean it generally is. but the term difficulty in a game like EQ also includes things like travel/how far melees are from a bind point etc.

[Faxi]

Seriously. Just get rid of ZEM's all together honestly.

agreed.

one low ZEM for outdoor zones.
one HIGHER ZEM for dungeons.
one middle ZEM for dungeons with the best loot tables - Seb, HS

EQ gets more interesting. No more lawyer questing Camp stealing bitching in Hole. Economy gets balanced with more variety; you cant give Loam away.... its worthless because Hole is the only zone to level past 50.

Nothing would make P99 more classic than balancing the ZEMs and letting players explore.