[stormlord]

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

But that will always happen in any game that expands unless you expand the population dramatically. People will go to where the shiniest new toys and the biggest carrots can be found. If you don't increase population to fill the empty zones caused by the older population moving to the new zones, then you'll have empty zones.

The only other choice you have is to revamp the old zones and make them on par loot/exp wise with the newer content. Well, that does partially defeat the point, work, and expense of creating the new content, but it could and was later done to some of the classic EQ zones and dungeons. Eventually people get through the old content.

At some point a large enough portion of the population has "beat" the old content and becomes bored and restless. If you are a company which is making money off of subscriptions, then the last thing you want is for that bored and restless population to go elsewhere and give their $$$ to another company. So you have to design new content for them. That content needs to offer enough of a reward to spend plowing through it, so the carrots need to be made larger than the ones from previous content.

So the population goes to where the bigger carrots are. The loot from the older content becomes worth less and so the new population becomes better equipped to deal with the content, and as more new content loot becomes available, it starts to trickle down to the new players. It just keeps growing and growing. Each new expansion increases the effect.

Kunark did this to an extent, and Velious will do it more. There just isn't any getting away from this. Eventually the population on this server will get bored with the content that they have already "beat", and unless Rogean adds more content, they will leave for other games or servers. So unless Rogean can continue to add new players to make up for the loss of population, it will come down to expand or die. It's the exact some dilema that Verant and then SOE faced, just on a smaller scale and without actual $$$ and jobs at stake.

Rogean does have one advantage that SOE didn't have, and that's hindsight. He can restructure and redesign the world however he sees fit. He can connect zones anyway he sees fit, can leave out zones, and he can mess with the transportation systems. He can selectively add in features, skills, spells, etc without having to enable an entire expansion. For instance, I'm pretty certain that Rogean could add in the Mount system (horses, etc) without having to enable the entire expansion that they came in. So he could in fact create a whole new EQ with it's own progression, look, and feel so as to not break things about the game that he likes.

But let's talk about one important thing in EQ that was always at issue for people with limited play time... Travel time. Yes, I understand that the feeling of being in this HUGE and interactive world was part of the appeal, but for people who only have an hour or three to play at a time, spending 30 minutes or more tied up into travel time just to be able to play, especially with the ban on boxing so people can't create their own porting system, is that you start to lose the casual players who get frustrated that they are wasting all of their play time just trying to get places. So the Spires and Mounts were created, followed by PoK and the Stones. Rogean has the power and opportunity to fix travel, but in ways that don't break the feel of how big the world is. Well, at least attempt to anyways.

So while it might not be "classic", P1999 could become the game we always wanted EQ to stay/become, because as the old saying goes... Hindsight is always the best sight.

HOW mudflation happens is not written in stone, as you make it appear to be.

Mudflation, far as we know, IS. At its core, causes of mudflation can be diverse. But the most predominant trait is that of attrition. Essentially, as people gain knowledge and resources, old things start to lose value. But anything that results in a decrease in value is, essentially, mudflation. Foe example, if I increase your stats and you kill faster, you'll be able to acquire more knives than before. More knives means that their value has decreased. It's like magic, eh? Mudflation can also be as simple as a bug or imbalance.

What caused these sequence of events in EQ?

Well, when you examine the history, it boils down to changes in population.

Essentially, with less and less people in the lower levels, forming groups becomes harder and harder. This causes much grief. This is before any expansions have ever been released, keep in mind.

So what do you do to relieve this pressure? New players and low level players are complaining that they can't find groups. Higher level players are leaving because they've already created a few alts and have grown bored.

What do you do?

There're a trillion trillion ways to approach this problem, not one or two.

First of all, you need some new content for the high level players. New content can be a change to the old content or it can be completely new. This isn't an option, it's a requirement. Most players are not going to be satisfied rerolling alts into infinity. They want NEW things. Now, how you add NEW things is what's really going to distinguish you from someone else. In player-driven worlds, players are the main creators of content. In developer-run worlds, developers are the primary creators. This is aside from the fact that you can change current content or create entirely new content. But no matter what, SOMETHING has to change.

(yes, even doing the same things in eq can produce new circumstances, but for most people, new circumstances just aren't enough to keep them interested. and the few new things they learn about hte game aren't enough either. bottom line, NEW means reaching the threshold where most players are satisfied.)

How do you address the problem with low levels and new players? As you may recall, continued top-heaviness has made the low level areas feel more empty. The rate of incoming players is decreasing with time, as well. They haven't yet added another expansion which would further spread players thin. With more time, to be sure, the game would also grow old and less attractive to others, but for now, the game is young(ish).

When the game was initially developed, they had a target population size in mind. For example, consider Blackburrow, home of the Sabertooths. When they built this thing, they were keeping track of what they expected player populations to be. They told the map designers what they wanted in terms of its size and rewards. They did this for each zone.

The problem is that EQ is not dynamic in its handling of zone size and rewards with respect to player populations. If the initial estimates for player population are off then the whole system starts to break down. And that's what's happening now. There're just not enough players in each of the lower level zones to keep everyone satisfied. So what do we do?

History is our best example. We can see what sony did. They made an expansion and added extra powerful items to it. These items, in turn, would get traded to lower level players and boost their performance. Another thing they would do is make bonus-experience zones like Paludal Caverns. They also would periodically change the core game mechanics to ease the burden on players. This would have the effect of increasing the solo-ability of low levels. They also changed the experience curve, among other things.

My argument in my two previous posts in this thread are that sony favored the idea of boosting the performance of lower levels via the latest expansion content too much. Perhaps it was their way of selling expansions. But, more than likely, it was just their preference for addressing this problem. If you look at the entire history of this game and other sony games, you see a consistent pattern where they dismiss older things in favor of the new. The problem with this is that many players do not like it, me included.

I could give you a million examples. One thing that stands out in my mind is that I hadn't seen a lot of the older content. So how is it that sony suddenly decides I have been there and would just be bored if I had to go there again? Who are they to say where I should go or where I've been? Much of the things they did to the game gave me no choice. It was not inclusive. I did not show up in their meeting room and voice my agreement or disapproval. They simply threw it on me, as any developer would. I mean, I accepted the license agreement when I started the game so I fully expect them to ignore me when they change things, but...

If you like the way things went then we can agree to disagree.

But if all we ever do is live in the present moment then we will never learn better. We have to look at the past and examine it closely so we can learn lessons. I refuse to be dragged down this road like a dog and told what to think or do by others. I am not going to repeat the past 12 years with sony in the hands of someone else, if I can help it. I am in this to win, one way or another, my own way. Patronizing developers can shove it.