Adding the Planes of Power in to the original trilogy

[stormlord]

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

just stay away from the red99 we ain't want no soe shit over there pals

Well, soe had their hands all over EQ by mid 2000. So regardless of what people want to think, this server is going to be touched by them (probably already has been) since we'll go up to late 2001. And another thing is that there're many things to disagree with that VERANT did, as well. But sony has a big part.

My last post covered a lot of the things I would want to talk about. I think the most important thing is that they HAD to do something. How they did it is what has caused so much grief over the years. But many people here in these forums don't understand that something had to be done. They wrongly think that sony could just sit back and do nothing and everything would work smoothly. They don't understand the reasoning.

If sony could produce expansions that do not, in sum, destroy old content, then I think my trust in them could be restored. I stuck with EQ in shifts of time from tis very beginning to 2010. In those years, I learned to not trust them. I think that they turned their attention away from EQ to other games. And, most importantly, they did not make a strong low level game. There're many ways to level up players, but the choices that were made in EQ1 were consistently shallow ones. They worked, no doubt, but they had no spirit, whatsoever.

In review, here're some of the choices I did not like:
1) Defiant gear replacing old items that you might loot or quest for.
2) Old Man Mckenzie and Boomerang instance missions replacing entire expansions.
3) Boost low level players via the latest expansion content.
4) Inconsistency between old zones and new zones being so obvious: gfx, mechanics, interfaces, etc.

The hows and whys are already answered. It's the character of what they did I disagree with. They did not have a harmonious vision for the game. They simply piled on the newest and shiniest and then they dismissed the rest. They created division. The fixes were without substance. It was shameless and bittersweet.

What they did reminds me of what businesses often do. They clean the slate. They lay off everyone who put their heart and soul into it. Then they bring in some people from asia. The new asian manager rules with an iron will. He sees the world in numbers, but is very efficient and that's how he became so successful in his line of work. What happened behind the scenes in the offices and the meetings eventually bled into the game itself. So things in the game were layed off. New things from somewhere else took their place. They saw the world in numbers, but they were efficient. The changes ruled with an iron will. Don't look back. The past is gone.

[Kika Maslyaka]

yeah Stormlord is right, this is how and why thigns went that way.

The only way to preserve old content, is not to add better zones that compete with old ones. But they did it starting with Kunark - it gave you all new 1-50 content all over and it was better than the old world. AND it had a convenient hub city right in the middle of the continent, with any level zone just 1-2 zone lines away. Velious was a bit better, it only added competing zones from 35+, and was mostly high end/raid oriented. Then Luclin repeated Kunark pattern to even greater degree. PoP again followed velious approach etc.

The way I would do it, when adding new expansions:
-if I am adding new races/starting town, only add for that specific race newbie zones, and then merge them into existing world - think how WoW added Burning Crusade - Blood Elves and Dranei got personal 1-20 newbie zones, but rest of expansion zones were strictly 60+, so NONE of the old world content 20-60 has suffered from mudflation.

Another inherited problem with old EQ - too many starting zones - people already scattered around the world way to much, yet places where you actually go to XP, quickly run out of play room.

For example Qeynos-Blackburrow-Everfrost was a good combo. 2 newbie zones connect to a teen zone, where 2 races meet up. Bb was however painful small for all those people. West Karana on other hand was a gigantic waste of a land, it was same range as BB, but hardly anyone ever went there other than for medium pelts, and bandit farm.

Faydwer was badly designed on other hand: they stuck 3 starting zones onto tiny island, 2 of which were right next of each other, and only a single teen level dungeon (CB) even smaller than Blackburrow

Some of the problems, specially zone devaluations, EQ suffered from, lie in their inherited design, that wasn't thought through very well in the beginning

[Pomaikai]

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

The problem with Luclin was all of the leveling content that made the old world irrelevant. Paludal caverns single handedly emptied out Crushbone, LOIO, UGuk, Unrest, etc., and that was just the beginning.

The best part about Luclin was Ssra temple, that whole dungeon was a great EXP and raid location, but VT had a harder key grind than VP, and then the trash was a pain and the bosses were easy (Thott's Luclin Uber Content post).

The good thing about Velious and PoP is that they did not rewrite the low-level game. Velious didn't have content for players sub-L35, and PoP did not contain content for players sub-L46. If they could make Luclin not have content for players under L40-50, then it might have worked out better. Also, while the new rings in Luclin were good, VT needs to work on the balance of trash-vs-bosses.

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.

[Kika Maslyaka]

on the subject of mounts: the only thing required for the mounts, is to have new models enabled. Then you can sell mounts in Qeynos, rather than in bazaar.
This applies to both, horses and drogmors - you don't even need to enable LoY to get drogs, only Luclin (for models).
For more advance mounts like nightmare steed, warhorses, chimeras, draconic kirins etc, you need to use SoF+ client

[Softcore PK]

The devs aren't going to want to include luclin models.

[Pomaikai]

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

The devs aren't going to want to include luclin models.

They just weren't THAT bad. It's one of those things where you weigh the pro's vs con's. Personally, the pro's of mounts (Speed of travel and medding.) outweigh the con's of how a select few races look.

[Softcore PK]

Mounts made my bardspeed on live less cool and unique [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[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.

[Pomaikai]

But see, it doesn't have to go down the same road that SOE took it. Rogean can do this like Chinese takeout. A little from column A, some from column B, and a helping from column C. He can create the world, the links between the various zones, moon, and planes any way he sees fit. He doesn't have to turn on the exp bonus for Paludal, or any other zone. He can revamp the old content using the newer high level versions of it that were later released, or even just parts of it. He can change the loot tables. He can adjust the loot. He can add in some Luclin zones, but tone down the power of the items. The possibilities are limited only by his imagination, the amount of time he has to devote to this, and the willingness of the playerbase to accept his vision. I just think that it's possible to expand beyond Velious while still retaining the "feel" of classic EQ. We don't have to maintain the look completely, and we don't have to exactly mirror SOE's decisions and timeline to the letter. I mean seriously, SOE did NOT release quests, content, or items broken on purpose. Someone just screwed up. There is zero reason that content on P1999 should be released broken on purpose. If something was fixed, or hell if Rogean can figure out how to fix something that SOE never got around to fixing, then by all means that content should be released bug free. Because that IS what Verant and SOE wanted and intended. They wanted stuff to work correctly, right from the start. They just didn't succeed in accomplishing their intended vision/task.

[Snaggles]

I'm a newbie to this shard but...

If we pick and choose content at our "greater" discretion, how can it still be called Project 1999? Isn't the intent to emulate the original game and the only two expansions worth their weight?

It's fairly obvious Sony had their heads up there asses with every expansion post Velious. Whatever good they accomplished was ridden with greater issues left unresolved. I still think just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Just my worthless .02 cents. Don't let my nostalgia (or how I remember it) ruin your fun though! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]