Reducing the ZEM for the most common leveling zones

[NachtMystium]

Also have to keep mind, the less populated zones where noone levels is because they're dangerous. There is high risk, low reward. Dalnir's Crypt is a badass zone and can be done, but like this zone and many others it's a challenge and will test your group.

It's all about incentive, basic human behavior. The classic experience is an unpolished one, so there will be lots of gray areas on "how classic" you want the server to be. Of course the devs could change the game in a custom way to try and populate dead zones, but is it worth straying further from the classic elements that are already being changed in other ways? Nah, I don't think so.

Just make friends and play how yall want, people were alot more sociable on EverQuest back then because online gaming was still pretty new and you'd find alot more tight-knit players who met online, irc chats, muds, etc.

[branamil]

Raising or lowering Zems won't matter And will kill the leveling experience. 90% of people just want to log in, shout for a group, fight for a few hours, and log off. The reason people cluster in popular dungeons is because you are pretty likely to find a group and you can rotate people in and out easily.

People don't want to hang out in a inconvenient zones like runneye or splitpaw or dalnir. If you can't find a group you wasted an hour traveling there.

[ghost182]

Personally I like lvling in snowflake areas, either solo or in small nitch groups. not the traditional holy trinity stuff. Kaesora, Tower of frozen shadows.. gorge of xorbb casters suck.

but your post doesnt make sense. half the zones you listed have high zem the other half have trash zem. doesnt that kind of prove people go to classic zones regardless of xp per kill?

Seems like an arrogant thread imo. its a penalize everyone who doesnt play the way you want them to kind of idea. good luck with that.

[Caiu]

Originally Posted by ghost182 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Kaesora

The zem in this zone is massive. Shame hardly anyone utilizes it.

[Caldwin]

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

I've been running around Dalnir today. Obviously, I was alone in the zone. It's an awesome, complex, challenging zone, yet nobody goes there ever.
MAKE LEVELING GREAT AGAIN

Wish nobody was there last Saturday night when me, my sister and a friend tried leveling in Dalnir. There were 15 to 20 people in there at times.

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

Those zones you posted as most popular are so because they make it easy to level in. take away the Zem or just normalize it and people WILL STILL go their. They will go to what is most comfortable and safe for them.

The zem helps but people on this server as a whole will not take risk. Zone has to many casters cazic , run eye, etc etc NO WAY to hard. They want non caster mobs that can be pulled easily and consistently.

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

Also have to keep mind, the less populated zones where noone levels is because they're dangerous. There is high risk, low reward. Dalnir's Crypt is a badass zone and can be done, but like this zone and many others it's a challenge and will test your group.

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

Raising or lowering Zems won't matter And will kill the leveling experience. 90% of people just want to log in, shout for a group, fight for a few hours, and log off. The reason people cluster in popular dungeons is because you are pretty likely to find a group and you can rotate people in and out easily.

People don't want to hang out in a inconvenient zones like runneye or splitpaw or dalnir. If you can't find a group you wasted an hour traveling there.

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

This thread reminds me of joining low level groups with some ree ree superhero insisting we should travel 10 zones away because "there's more mobs there!!!!". People often don't want more mobs, they want convenience. A steady enough stream of mobs is available in the populated leveling zones, while maintaining convenience and not being over the top difficult for the average group.

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

The most efficient use of time is all most people care about, and taking Johnny_Bronze_01 out to Dalnir sounds terrible. The reason these zones are populated versus the ones that aren't isn't because you can bind nearby, or SoW to train the zone -- it's because the alternative zones have either far too few mobs, or far too annoying of mobs to fight. Dalnir? Clerics, wizards, traps, and pitfalls. Some of the most difficult to fight, and frustrating mobs that flee.

...

The community has discovered the easiest, fastest, safest, and most efficient places to level at during the long history of EverQuest and to try to change it is insane.

Shouldn't xp reflect risk vs reward? If zones are easy (low risk) shouldn't the ZEM be low, while the risky zones have high ZEM? The zones with a lot of dangerous casters should have much higher ZEM to reflect the much higher risk. Not that it is anywhere near classic.

And while certainly not classic and I'm not sure of the difficulty in implementing it, but I think it would be great if the ZEM was dynamic based on the overall difficulty of the zone, the number of people in the zone, the average level in the zone, the overall stats of each person in the zone and maybe other similar factors to determine true risk vs reward.

All else being equal, if there are more people in the zone, that would decrease overall risk, because of PC vs NPC ratio is higher, plus players can help others. Also, the higher level players are overall, the less the ZEM should be due to less risk to not only themselves, but to others in the zone as well. They can plow thru mobs that lower level groups struggle with. But, with less mobs around due to the higher level players, the lower the risk to lower level players.

I mentioned overall stats. But, what I really mean by this is twinked players. A twinked player or duo can take on mobs that would normally take an entire untwinked group, or nearly so. Twinked players have less risk and should get less xp, in my opinion.

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

The fun of EverQuest is often doing more with less, such as holding a full group camp down with 1-2 people, or soloing things far beyond your ability to do so.. Not killing Goblins in Nurga with a 5man because "FUK DA MIST MOORZ"

This has been my pet peeve with P99 as of late, as a single twink or a twinked duo can take down a camp that traditionally required a full or nearly full group. It really ruins the classic feel for me... not to mention non-xp farmers.

I'm not sure what the solution is for twinks, or farmers, though. I'm not blaming either of them. It's just the state the game is now.

Anyway, there really isn't a non-classic solution that I can think of for ZEM, twinks or farmers.

[thebutthat]

I like these zones being empty. They're the zones you get your friends together and go run some xp. The main line xp zones are the pick up group zones. Make some friends and take the road less traveled. It's a lot of fun.

[Tetsuo]

If you want to play in different underpopulated zones make a static group for them or join a guild that is more willing to explore the game rather than leveling 1-60 as fast as possible.

[Lojik]

I don't think these are hard to implement or bad ideas, I just think it strongly goes against the "classic" that this server tries to emulate. There are some ideas from other games I think that do this pretty well, such as continually adding xp bonus to individual npcs the longer they are alive, but this is a pretty unclassic feature so doubt we'd see it here.

[kgallowaypa]

Almost none of the 'ideas' suggested on the forums (That are not in line with the timeline progression) have been implemented by the dev's since 2011-2013 on Project 1999. I doubt this will change.

[loramin]

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

Almost none of the 'ideas' suggested on the forums (That are not in line with the timeline progression) have been implemented by the dev's since 2011-2013 on Project 1999. I doubt this will change.

Technically classic ZEMs are part of the timeline progression, but yeah I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them.