The future of P99, what would you like to play ?

[Nydosa]

Yet another 'hypothetical custom content' post, but in a nutshell... I'd honestly love to see a take on polishing the content in the original 3 continents, done by people who are passionate about maintaining a classic ambiance.

1) Add a new layer of mystery and puzzles: Introduce a scattering of new quests at all levels on the original continents, from easy to brain-exploding difficulty. No hints, no guides.
2) Change the comfort-level: Introduce 'some' lore-fitting changes to zones or pockets in zones. Basically 2.0 of some classic zones, preferably targeting those that are horribly underpopulated or avoided. Rare mob cycles in more zones. Increased danger/risk/reward factors.
3) Polish unfinished, broken, or out-of-tune content from the ground up: Broken quests/items that are classic?, item balancing (especially classic vs kunark vs velious), newbie zone difficulty, sparse mob populations, spell fixes (levels, mana, usefulness).
4) Add in 'some' new top-level content: As many have said...scattered PoP raid zones, or perhaps some Luclin raid zones, attached to classic locations. Fit in with the classic lore.
5) Add in 'some' new bottom-level content: Beastlord could be heavily modified to be a 'useful' class as an option for freshness. Newbie quests, and new drops/mobs.



This doesn't mean things like the Frogloks taking over Grobb, but perhaps outdoor zones like the Karanas are given more rare-mob tables like Frontier Mountains? How about more NPCs wandering the wilderness seeking items, lost-ones, or picking fights? What about a classic-based "Ring" war, shawl, or Greenmist? Could some mundane outdoor zones be instanced to be used as raid zones [Lesser Faydark]? Why not explore the day/night cycle mob tables for more zones?


Another way to put it... pretend the creative energy for putting cats on the moon went into 'Let's add more depth to our already great world'. Really, we're playing the same old-world content nearly 2 decades later...couldn't some tasteful depth to that be an interesting dynamic to explore?

[Evia]

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

Yet another 'hypothetical custom content' post, but in a nutshell... I'd honestly love to see a take on polishing the content in the original 3 continents, done by people who are passionate about maintaining a classic ambiance.

1) Add a new layer of mystery and puzzles: Introduce a scattering of new quests at all levels on the original continents, from easy to brain-exploding difficulty. No hints, no guides.
2) Change the comfort-level: Introduce 'some' lore-fitting changes to zones or pockets in zones. Basically 2.0 of some classic zones, preferably targeting those that are horribly underpopulated or avoided. Rare mob cycles in more zones. Increased danger/risk/reward factors.
3) Polish unfinished, broken, or out-of-tune content from the ground up: Broken quests/items that are classic?, item balancing (especially classic vs kunark vs velious), newbie zone difficulty, sparse mob populations, spell fixes (levels, mana, usefulness).
4) Add in 'some' new top-level content: As many have said...scattered PoP raid zones, or perhaps some Luclin raid zones, attached to classic locations. Fit in with the classic lore.
5) Add in 'some' new bottom-level content: Beastlord could be heavily modified to be a 'useful' class as an option for freshness. Newbie quests, and new drops/mobs.



This doesn't mean things like the Frogloks taking over Grobb, but perhaps outdoor zones like the Karanas are given more rare-mob tables like Frontier Mountains? How about more NPCs wandering the wilderness seeking items, lost-ones, or picking fights? What about a classic-based "Ring" war, shawl, or Greenmist? Could some mundane outdoor zones be instanced to be used as raid zones [Lesser Faydark]? Why not explore the day/night cycle mob tables for more zones?


Another way to put it... pretend the creative energy for putting cats on the moon went into 'Let's add more depth to our already great world'. Really, we're playing the same old-world content nearly 2 decades later...couldn't some tasteful depth to that be an interesting dynamic to explore?

I like this guy's line of thinking

[Azimon]

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

I like this guy's line of thinking

I agree, in my eyes Luclin was a horrible expansion...Mobs in that expansion had way too much armor in the end game, and there was too much grinding for "special" weapons in order to raid. Aa's are cool, but alot of the "problems" in Velious could be fixed with items with abilities, especially for rangers and their bow issues before luclin.

I also hated the fact that travel became easy, as it is such an important part of the game.

[Daldaen]

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

I agree, in my eyes Luclin was a horrible expansion...Mobs in that expansion had way too much armor in the end game, and there was too much grinding for "special" weapons in order to raid. Aa's are cool, but alot of the "problems" in Velious could be fixed with items with abilities, especially for rangers and their bow issues before luclin.

I also hated the fact that travel became easy, as it is such an important part of the game.

Let's dissect this, as people tend to have false memories of something back in 2002:

There were two special weapon types that were required. Seru and Emperor bane weaponry. Seru was killed before any weaponry was acquired using charmed pets, summoned damage shields, and caster DPS. Yep, melee were useless in the fight. Just like all the fights with silences or magic immunity where caster DPS is useless. Emperor was also killed without the weaponry being required. It certainly made the fights easier but they were hardly a requirement. You're complaining about 2 fights out of an expansion with well over 30 raid mobs/events.

The VT bane weapons were merely options to swap in for fights against Greater Akhevans, but they could still be hurt with normal weapons just the same.

AC just brought melee down from being ridiculously OP as a form of DPS, to being in line with casters. Druids, Magicians, Necromancers were actually able to compete when DPSing on raids with stacking DoTs, focus effects increasing spell power/duration, better spells and AAs. The game actually had more balance. I'd love to pull some of our Vulak, AoW and Tunare parses. Compare the rogues, monks and rangers to the wizards, necros, And mages It's not even within the same realm. When all of those classes were actually designed as primarily DPS players.

Travel being easier... Really... Let's again remind ourselves, the Nexus had a portal to each continent. Antonica (North Karana), Faydwer (Greater Faydark), Odus (Toxxulia Forest), Kunark (Dreadlands), Velious (Great Divide). Also, the Nexus functioned on a 15 minute cooldown. Meaning your average wait time when arriving at a spire was 7.5minutes.

So if you wanted to travel from GFay to Toxxulia, you would have to wait 0-15min for the port to nexus and then 15 min for the port from Nexus to Toxxulia. An average of 22.5minute trip one way. If any of you had to wait 22 minutes for a dial a port Druid you would not tip them. And this only transfers you between 2 of 5 destinations. Not anywhere close to the 15+ different locations each Druids and wizards can drop you off at (all of which overlap with and are more convenient than the 5 nexus portals).

So the next time you think Luclin made travel too easy, run from where you are to one of the 5 Druid rings the nexus could take you to, wait 15-30 minutes and then ask a dial a port for a port to one of 4 other locations, and then run to your final destination....

[Bwils]

Stopping at vellious to keep the classic experience is great. But the issue is you can't evolve your character anymore only by getting better gear. Eventually population will be burnt out. Luclin would ruin the classic experience with the bazaar and other factors but the ability of AAs I feel is the only way to have the grind long lasting. If they do Luclin they would have to do POP then stop there. Adding new expansions would kill the experience for half the server who want classic so they would have to open another server. Adding Lublin and POP would be a lot of work for devs so it would never happen.

[Azimon]

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

/who all dial
/t druid port me

Very very crucial part of the Everquest experience.

Yeah, it is, SoW and Port is an important part of the economy. "Is it worth paying to port there since im short on funds?, should i pay for a SoW instead?"

Once you're max level and "rich", a port is "nothing" in terms of cost, but it's at that point still a great source of income for druids and wizzies

[NarcolepticLTD]

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

Yeah, it is, SoW and Port is an important part of the economy. "Is it worth paying to port there since im short on funds?, should i pay for a SoW instead?"

Once you're max level and "rich", a port is "nothing" in terms of cost, but it's at that point still a great source of income for druids and wizzies

Who actually pays for SoW? I sow everything even corpses for free, and never have a problem getting sow on my other toons.

[Thiefboy777]

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

Who actually pays for SoW? I sow everything even corpses for free, and never have a problem getting sow on my other toons.

I do, 10 plat.

[Kalex716]

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

I have literally not paid for SoW one time ever and I have never accepted a donation for SoW on either of my chars that can cast it and donations are VERY VERY rarely (Like 1/100 at most) offered for it. DAP typically expects 1pp per lvl for ports and from the DAP folks I've asked its not uncommon at all to receive ~30pp tips even from lvl 60's. Getting a port isn't prohibitively expensive at any level unless you have absolutely no idea how to make plat at all in this game. You can farm enough plat at sisters in Lfay at lvl 12 in a couple hours to pay for all the ports you'll need for a month+

NarcolepticLTD said it best. Porters on this server are griffon masters. You're absolutely 100% deluding yourself if you think otherwise or think it's somehow vastly different than the "easy" travel of PoK or that adding something like PoK would somehow ruin the game. Literally the only thing it'd ruin is all the people who leveled druid alts specifically to tag them DAP and earn 1kpp an hr to cast port spells. Would it really ruin the game if that went away? Somehow I don't think so. It's a racket not much better than Chardok AE proxies in my book.

You do understand that spending the first half of your argument, discussing how trivial it is to leverage the existing player population for transportation... Then the other half discussing how people porting can turn 1kpp an hour, and compare that type of gameplay to a "racket", and chardok AE proxies, makes it a challenge to take your position seriously, right?

[NarcolepticLTD]

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

/who all dial
/t druid port me

Very very crucial part of the Everquest experience.

not to mention 90% of the server 50+ has a hammer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

For a classic server where travel times are an important part of being so immersed right now... there's a whole lot of people pretending druids aren't griffon masters on p99.