Question about future custom content

[Mblake81]

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

Come velious you will see just how much of Kunark goes from being utilized to vacant.

PIR Fail Horn

If they ever start a P2.0 server it would be wise to take note of this imo. Have a world that is massive from the start with gear and levels appropriate,
tacking on xpan's which make previous work obsolete is wasteful.. not only for dev's but for the player base.

The last thing you want is 30 different zones in your game no one goes to.

[Danyelle]

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

Luclin what went wrong:
What Luclin did right:
What PoP did wrong:
What PoP did right:

This is pretty correct in most people's minds I think, and gives a pretty good baseline for what you could add and what you could remove or change to make re-releasing these expacs fun for people here. On a clone server of course (leaving original P99 at Velious)

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

Ghostship casino

I have no idea if this is even what you were referencing, probably not, but it just made me think of this Legends server zone that was a clone of Erud's Crossing with a ghost ship and unique content. It may be kinda neat to have this zone put on P99. Before or after Luclin. It IS a pre-Luclin 'zone'.

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

Interesting idea. I'm not sure how doable it is to give unremovable, persist-through-death buffs to someone and if they could be coded to not count against the buff limit. But the spire effect from say Dreadlands could debuff you with "Teleportation Resonance: Dreadlands" for 3h. While you have that you can only only use spires to port down to the DL spire.

Very doable. There's some buffs (like xp mod buffs, Lesson etc) that persist through death on Live now. If they can do it, EQEmu can.

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

Spires have to auto-port in some fashion when dealing with something like Luclin where there is absolutely no way to reach the content through travel. This is not an issue in classic/Kunark/Velious because at the expense of time and risk you can still travel everywhere (except Hate/Sky) without the need of a port.

Even so, it's not necessarily a problem. There's many ways (as the ideas proposed in this thread have shown) that could allow ports to Luclin without the negative side effects of world shrinkage or fast travel like what was present when Luclin went to Live. Things like centralizing the portals to one spire rather than one per continent (In this case I think the Dreadlands combine spire would probably be the most lore friendly and interesting place to put it. Not the original Nexus spire there, but the big platform with the spires and ruins...)

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

Yes, old stuff becomes less relevant, surprise surprise. Thats inevitable. Its very hard to add meaningful content without obsoleting old stuff. Come velious you will see just how much of Kunark goes from being utilized to vacant.

Not necessarily. It will to a small degreee but there's several things you can do to get close to eliminating it, especially depending upon how far up you go:

1. Make item stats scale at about the level that Classic > Kunark > Velious did. Rather thna the massive stat jumps that started happening in Luclin and PoP and only got worse over time. The stats may not be massive upgrades, there may still (and hopefully WILL) be items very much desired and usable from old expacs, you just have to make sure the fun, lore, and quests/group/raid content from your "expac" is enough to make it fun, interesting, and entrancing like the first 2 expacs were, despite only gaining like 2 stamina per item slot more.

2. Eliminate hub zoning. Zones will empty much much slower if people still have to use starting cities and trade zones rather than congregating in Nexus/Bazaar or PoK/GL/GH like they do on Live.

3. Be very very very careful with when and how level caps are put in and how they are handled. Just because Live raised the cap at PoP doesn't necessarily mean we have to, we can dial back content for level 55-60 rather than 60-65.

4. Make sure new quests/key flags etc integrate themselves appropriately with older zones/flags/quests so that people can't just "content" skip and so that they are guided not only into new zones, but back into old ones as well. Live does this quite a bit now but they are usually only making it a simple "hail this npc", "done" scenario. It could be much more in depth.

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Oh and in regards to a post I made earlier about the 'loading' character select backgrounds being 'zones'. Proof:

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And something interesting I discovered that could be used for some future P99 custom content/GM events. Call of the Forsaken went back and added a 'new' race that is actually an ollllld Classic race (ID 32 - "Ghost") that never received a model. ghm_chr.s3d, ghf_chr.s3d. It's the Qeynos/Freeport/Highpass human citizens/guards as ghosts. If the files are ripped from a Live client and added to global load they function in Titanium and all older clients (since it's an old race ID that has simply been searching for a model file all this time). They animate/sound like the Erudite ghosts of The Hole/Paineel etc:

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[Daldaen]

The item jump from Kunark to Velious was worse than Velious to Luclin if you're looking at end-game stuff. By a lot.

Mid-tier raid stuff from Luclin was a marginally better jump from mid-tier Velious raid stuff.

[Clark]

Luclin.

[Zaela]

I get that people probably wouldn't care about this dimension, but just for the sake of putting it out there:

When I first heard about this server, I (as a dev for a different, highly custom server) kind of felt sorry for whoever was working on it. Piecing together someone else's work from a decade ago based mostly on crappy, rumor-filled second-hand sources doesn't sound fun at all. I guess there's a kind of "archeological" aspect to it which someone could theoretically like if they're into martialing information, and for programmers solving problems always feels at least a little bit good, regardless of what the problem is.

But, for the most part, it seems like an absurd amount of work to put in just to make sure you, as a developer, never get to do anything creative or interesting lest players be subjected to a novel experience.

I get that the server runs on nostalgia. But I think the devs have earned a break, if they want it.

[Alunova]

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

I get that people probably wouldn't care about this dimension, but just for the sake of putting it out there:

When I first heard about this server, I (as a dev for a different, highly custom server) kind of felt sorry for whoever was working on it. Piecing together someone else's work from a decade ago based mostly on crappy, rumor-filled second-hand sources doesn't sound fun at all. I guess there's a kind of "archeological" aspect to it which someone could theoretically like if they're into martialing information, and for programmers solving problems always feels at least a little bit good, regardless of what the problem is.

But, for the most part, it seems like an absurd amount of work to put in just to make sure you, as a developer, never get to do anything creative or interesting lest players be subjected to a novel experience.

I get that the server runs on nostalgia. But I think the devs have earned a break, if they want it.

But it's so much fun re-researching and defending every change you make against obscure and possibly out of context references! The end result definitely keeps me going at least, although I for one am definitely looking forward to shrugging off the chains of endless research and being creative, I know some of the others are as well.

[Taminy]

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

The item jump from Kunark to Velious was worse than Velious to Luclin if you're looking at end-game stuff. By a lot.

Mid-tier raid stuff from Luclin was a marginally better jump from mid-tier Velious raid stuff.

I know you weren't (directly) responding to me but this is why I said mudflation during Luclin was not a huge problem.

[heartbrand]

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

Luclin added:

• AAs allowing you to play your main character for meaningful gains.
• AAs and new spells balanced out classes like Ranger/Druid/Wizard in the raiding game, whereas before they were quite underpowered.
• Tradeskills made relevant. Stat Foods/Drink actually important, Xanthe Earring quest.
• Spell Focii made gearing a caster 100x more interesting and added depth to itemization
• Expansion of FT dropping / Revamp of FT code allowed you to stack FT, again making itemization and gearing far more interesting
• Allowed for slow-self travel, stopping the *Well I am stuck in Karanas and no one can get me so I will sit here for 2 hours waiting for a port*. Fantastic change. Wasn't made too easy or quick.
• Bazaar allowed players to sell stuff with minimal time invested on their end (beyond AFKing overnight or during work). Previously selling stuff was quite tedious and involved too much haggling/bickering with random people. Set price and it sells or doesn't sell, pretty simple. Fantastic addition.
• Beastlords add a decent amount of depth to the game. New buffs/pets/AAs to factor into raid and group balance.

PoP added;

• Expansion of tradeskills. ALL tradeskills made relevant, even pottery and fletching became extremely valuable to have maxed.
• Chain quests similar to Shawl/Ring that were awesome.
• The best raid progression. Something for the worst family guilds and the best bleeding edge guilds. Lore behind the raids was pretty cool
• Raid fights themselves became a bit more scripted and less corner-CH-Tank type fights. The Elemental Gods are probably the best example of this. Extreme endurance/offtank/coordination fights (Xegony/Rathe), burn/AOE/Control fights (Coirnav) and fights focused around pulling/positioning (Rathe/Fennin).

Both of these were glorious expansions. Yes, old stuff becomes less relevant, surprise surprise. Thats inevitable. Its very hard to add meaningful content without obsoleting old stuff. Come velious you will see just how much of Kunark goes from being utilized to vacant.

Biggest thing for me was that raids became more than tank and spank. I dunno why people think PoP didn't have a fantasy feel to it. Great music (possibly some of the best MMO music ever IMO). Great looking zones. And the whole expansion was EverQuest lore. Oh well.

[Herpa Derp]

Is there going to be custom loot too or just existing loot off of the mobs in the new custom content?

[Daldaen]

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

Is there going to be custom loot too or just existing loot off of the mobs in the new custom content?

This is like asking Hillary what she is going to accomplish in her second term that she didn't get to in her first. Way too far in the future and may not even happen.