How to make leveling more interesting

[Shoran91]

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

That was certainly a train, no ghouls on the first level. I think Skeleton Llrodd is the highest dude before you use your first key and he doesn't even agro. You should've been fine.

Yeah, I zoned in immediatly aggroed it and was rooted till death. Very sad v . v

[Samoht Farstrider]

I have been on Befallen an few times and that ghoul is there about 50% of the time.

[eqravenprince]

People talk about how EQ is awesome due to the challenge and WoW is easy mode. Yet barely any groups go to challenging dungeons like Befallen, Najena, Runnyeye, Sol A, Permafrost, Dalnir, and Cazic Thule and they have high ZEMs, apparently not high enough.

[indiscriminate_hater]

bring back kedge

[Versch]

The ghoul is part of the Gynok Moltor spawn chain. It can be a ghoul, large skeleton, icebone skeleton, giant rat or the named himself. It was not a train, as that spawn will path from zone in to the next floor down.

[Kergan]

Groups? What Groups?

I think rotating ZEM isn't a bad idea at all. It's not like ZEM itself is classic, and nobody knows the exact values anyway. We already dick with the exp here might as well incentivize people to check shit out.

Honestly though, lets say you jack paw to a 200 ZEM you're just going to have people plvling there instead of somewhere else. There aren't enough low to mid level players to support a lot of grouping. The game starts 55+ when we all get crammed into the same half a dozen places, or you can go solo those previously difficult encounters in mid level dungeons with ease.

In the mid 40s killing mid to high 30s blues (outdoors) I'm pulling like 6-7% a kill solo and getting a kill about every 3-4 minutes. I don't think even a good group is going to be much (if any) better.

[Alphathree33]

Experience = difficulty X risk X novelty

You should get lots more experience for pulling one mob, accidentally getting 4 more adds, having the cleric go to OOM, the tank almost dead, and using all your cooldowns to survive... than you should for killing a single mob with six people piling on.

High Difficulty/Risk = aggro from monsters that collectively represent a big threat versus the current state of the group (mana, health, buffs, level, gear, class configuration)

High Novelty = you've rarely defeated an encounter with these parameters (types of mobs, number of mobs, location) before

Note that the present system of "green/blue/red" cons is an approximation of the difficulty metric, but looks only at comparative level -- an impoverished view of the actual situation.

And it doesn't consider novelty at all.

[Yumyums Inmahtumtums]

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

People talk about how EQ is awesome due to the challenge and WoW is easy mode. Yet barely any groups go to challenging dungeons like Befallen, Najena, Runnyeye, Sol A, Permafrost, Dalnir, and Cazic Thule and they have high ZEMs, apparently not high enough.

The game has a very sharp curve with regards to resists and hits/misses (both on you and the target) if there is a large discrepancy in levels between you and what you're fighting. Nothing makes for a shittier time than your level 9 group getting fist-fucked by a level 18 ghoul in a dungeon with key progression.

A shitty but classic fact about EQ in this era was that the zones were designed to hold a very large range of levels. You could xp in befallen from level 3-25 if you were picky about the mobs. The unintended side effect was that you would essentially be walled off from content with a very good chance your "wall" would come screaming at you with the force of 50 mobs your level. The long and short of it is that high ZEMs only serve power levelers and nothing short of a revamp will change it, which isn't going to happen because classic.

We all have our reasons for choosing this server as our vice but I think most of us came here because it was classic, not perfect.

Tl;dr - original dungeons suck and rarely worth it. Shits classic.

[myxomatosii]

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

Groups? What Groups?

I think rotating ZEM isn't a bad idea at all. It's not like ZEM itself is classic, and nobody knows the exact values anyway. We already dick with the exp here might as well incentivize people to check shit out.

Honestly though, lets say you jack paw to a 200 ZEM you're just going to have people plvling there instead of somewhere else. There aren't enough low to mid level players to support a lot of grouping. The game starts 55+ when we all get crammed into the same half a dozen places, or you can go solo those previously difficult encounters in mid level dungeons with ease.

In the mid 40s killing mid to high 30s blues (outdoors) I'm pulling like 6-7% a kill solo and getting a kill about every 3-4 minutes. I don't think even a good group is going to be much (if any) better.

To avoid the cram effect like Paw I was thinking 2-3 zones would be on each rotation, given EQ's tendency to have zones like highkeep which is a great zone for
11-15
22-34
49-55
rotating ZEMs could potentially impact 2-4 level ranges of players since a single zone can cater to many ranges.
If you do like 3 zones per rotation that's 3(2-4) = 6-12 areas that open and close each cycle.
Assuming each area only has one realizable camp, which most have more making it 6-12++.

[Velerin]

Dungeons are obviously so much more fun than outdoor zones but the bottom line is the way EQ was designed outdoor zones are almost always more efficient. CRs and death exp penalties all make for more risk, more challenge but it also makes people sit on zonelines and in outdoor zones.
I love classic eq but always thought the exp loss was just too much. It could easily be halved and still be a good challenge. You already have to do a naked CR, possibly dying again in the process. (i'm not asking it to be changed here, its not classic)
For pure leveling experience, OT is just better for 90% of people than say Sol B/Guk. As sad and boring as OT is, as more fun as Sol B/Guk are.

OT = safe place to med/rest/afk, constant single pulls as fast as you can kill them, wide range of mobs for different levels, low aggro range (pretty much will never get non-singles unless really sloppy), use any combo of people (solo, duo, trio), as long as you have jboots/sow no chance of death.

Sol B/Guk = need a decent group, time to set up, time to break initial camp, limited by spawns, low experience due to range of player lvls often (Need a tank..only tank available is 45 troll SK and everyone else is 38-42, well everyone's not getting much exp now) and of course chance for train/wipe, CR, exp loss, etc.

When eq live reduced exp loss and made CRs easier it actually made people explore dungeons a lot more often.