The Warts Under the Emperor's Clothes
by Loral on October 18, 2004
A month passed since the release of Omens of War and there is much to love. Excellent graphics, useful and fun zones, great hunting, and many new directions to progress all build one of the best expansions we've ever seen.
In previous articles we talked about the strengths of Omens. This week we look at some of its problems in hope that SOE considers them for change in Omens itself or considers them in the design of future expansions. Let us begin.
The Hollows, Sewers, and Catacombs expeditions in Omens include instanced content between levels 45 and 70 filled with experience mobs and the occasional rare beast holding a bag of shiny loot.
One thing lacking in these expeditions is any sort of plot, story, quest, or purpose aside from general hunting. These dungeons could have included plots and story lines, boss mobs, point-based loot systems, or even Kael-like armor quests instead of simply being more experience content. Add a quest, add a story or purpose, or add a new loot system and these dungeons become a lot more fun. And please, no more rats, bats and spiders.
The Omens task system could be the future of quests in Everquest. All of the tools are there to help players accomplish quests and travel across Norrath. While the current quest options are limited, scripted encounters and continuing story lines could take players through exciting quests far different from what we're used to. Add scripted and locked encounters, add an overarching story line, add more rewards than just cash and experience, and you will create a strong new quest system in Everquest for all levels. Include quests for level 68 and above. All players should have the option to perform tasks.
Omens brings a much improved spell system over Gates of Discord and Planes of Power. The Muramite Rune system ensures players never receive duplicate spells. Players may trade and sell level 66, 67, and 68 spell runes and already the obnoxious prices in the bazaar plummet. I predict rune prices will hit the reasonable10k mark by the end of November.
While players can reach level 70 in dozens of areas, they must now travel to either Muramite Proving Grounds or Riftseekers, two very difficult zones for non-raid equipped players, and hope they get lucky on a drop and lucky again on a roll.
SOE can improve this in two ways. Add in a quest that lets players receive their first rune at each level. Make the quest more than just rare drops on rare mobs. Remove the no-drop flag on 69 and 70 runes so players can sell these runes in the bazaar like the others.
When the whole focus-item quagmire hit a couple of months ago, we heard that Focus 5 items would be more available than the focus items we saw in Planes of Power. While decent focus gear seems to drop regularly in Wall of Slaughter, the drops in Ruined City of Dranik and Muramite Provingrounds, both harder zones than the Wall of Slaughter, drop few items with focus or combat effects. Add more focus and combat effects to equipment in Ruined City of Dranik, Muramite Provingground, and the Ruined City expeditions.
Now lets talk about a larger problem: Everquest's time requirements.
Lost Dungeons of Norrath changed the face of Everquest. Instead of spending four to six hours at a time sitting in one place pulling the same mobs over and over, we now had adventures that forced us to crawl, gave us a goal to accomplish, and a time limit to accomplish it in. It was not uncommon to get a group together, start an adventure, finish it, and camp out within a two-hour period. The game went from camping the same spot for six hours to a game of fast and furious adventure.
With Omens I hoped to see an improvement on this. More quests, more adventure types, perhaps a new point based loot system that doesn't remind us of a cigarette vending machine ("Innoruuk curse it! My +40 hitpoint augment is stuck again!" *bang bang*). Omens had the potential to combine our favorite overland hunting from expansions like Velious and Luclin with the powerful dungeon and loot system of Lost Dungeons.
Instead we took a step backwards. We have expeditions but they are simply instanced hunting zones. We sit, we pull mobs, we kill them, they respawn, and we repeat until we fall over into our own four hour old bowl of mulchy Coco Puffs.
In order to have any shot at new spells or gear in Omens, you have to hunt for at least four hours. In that time you may see two to three named mobs and may have a 50% shot at winning something. If you don't win, you are no closer to a new item or spell than you were when you started. There is no loot or spell progression option other than random luck or spending cash in the bazaar.
More important than the loot system, however, is a sense of an urgent adventure, one that requires us to fight fast and hard towards a single goal. These exist deeper in Omens with the Muramite Provinground trials, but few will see these Ikkinz level expeditions any time soon.
Omens is a great expansion with a lot of excellent content and features. With a little more focus towards quests, events, and goals, and a 90 minute duration per adventure this expansion or future expansions will step outside the traditional Everquest four hour camp and into a more time-friendly and exciting game.
Loral Ciriclight
18 October 2004
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: FurryCrew on October 18, 2004 04:18 PM
I would just like to say, The trials in MPG are far easier than Ikk single group expeditions, take 20mins MAX and drop way way better loot. Infact some of them are sooo gimp It might as well be a PoJ trial >coughcough<
Comment Posted by: FurryCrew on October 18, 2004 04:23 PM
Ok my prior post stuffed up.. Trail I was talking about was Efficiency
Comment Posted by: 2sleepy on October 18, 2004 04:25 PM
The huge aggro range of mobs, frenetic competition over rune drops, and senseless placement of kos mobs in areas that you HAVE to travel through, thus creating crazy huge trains as invis drops has made this expansion about as much fun as a root canal.
Instanced zones had potential but are regularly hit with the ninja nerf bat to make sure no one gets much of anything from them including experience or rune drops.
The task system is the joke of the year, they had to have been thought up during crunch time "ok boys you have 15 minutes to dream up a task system"
As far as I'm concerned this expansion is more of the same poorly thought out content as GoD was. Dr. Sony why do you so hate your player base?
Runes 10K by November? hmm must not be on Torv as of October 18th they are 80-120k in the bazaar. And I don't even want to think about lvl 69-70 runes doubt if I will ever see any...
Comment Posted by: Percrucem on October 18, 2004 04:31 PM
Loral, interesting article, but I think you're missing the point of the expansion. It isn't LDoN 2. If someone wants to bore themselves to death doing the same zone everytime with a different turn or a new cobweb or pile of bones, that's fine and dandy. OoW gives us some really interesting new things. It gives different options if planar progression wasn't/isn't your thing.
Four hours to get a drop? I was in MPG the other day and we had 9 nice drops (2 of which went to others in the zone and 2 that rotted). Also, the instanced zones do have mobs that drop some nice loot including runes and such. And in some instances you don't even need to fight to them, you can just invis and camp a named if that's your thing.
If quests are what you're looking for, check out VP now. With some faction work, there are some really cool quests there. Not to mention the new epics. (please, everyone, let's not get into the "wah wah wah, my epic needs more than 3 people to obtain it." thanks)
OoW is a great expansion for everyone that isn't elemental flagged. I admit it, I was a bit peeved by the fact that gear that was nicer than my planar progression stuff was being sold at the bazaar for anyone to buy, but it also meant I could upgrade some of my less than lovely slots.
It also has all of the new augs and from what I hear they can be tradeskilled somehow and made really nice, but I have yet to hear or read anything about how that is done.
Well, the article was well written, but I think you really just wanted another LDoN. I, for one, am relieved that we don't have another one of those as well as another PoP. This is new, fresh, rad, and gnarly. WOOT for OoW!!
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 18, 2004 04:42 PM
I wish to take nothing away from the expansion, I think it is the best SOE released. I do, however, think that some areas could be more time friendly, I think it could use more quests, and I think parts of it could use more of a purpose or story.
I don't want another LDON, but I do want to see an expansion that uses some of the best parts of LDON with the best parts of other expansions. Omens comes close, but no point system and no goals for the expeditions hurts it.
I would like to see SOE focus on quests, 90 minute duration events, a progressive equipment system (like LDON points but not so vending-machine like), and improvements for LFG folks.
In three days I will release "Loral's Evil Halloween Agenda", the article I plan to bring with me to the Fan Faire. Expect to hear more about these topics then.
Comment Posted by: daehron on October 18, 2004 05:18 PM
I think SOE needs to look at how they handle features and expansions.
LDoN and adventure points for example. Because each expansion is viewed as an expansion of the original Everquest (not Kunark, Velious, Luclin... etc), there can be no interdependance between expansions.
Only recently they allowed Kunark and Velious to be downloaded for free as part of the basic EQ:classic expansion.
They cannot use LDoN's adventure point system in Omens or gates, because that assumes every one who buys Omens has bought / has access to the LDoN expansion.
The same fate will befall the Task System. It is Omens specific content, so it only will work on Omens content.
SOE needs to consider Adventure points, Tribute, and the Tasks system to be core aspects of the game, and develop them as they do the rest of the game.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on October 18, 2004 05:57 PM
Loral, I agree with everything you said, up until the time requirement part.
Even there I agree with you in part, but I feel like you've lost the bigger message by focusing so much on the time involved. Or maybe we just see it differently.
Sitting in one spot pulling the same mobs over and over again gets old, fast. The longer you have to spend there to get whatever it is you're looking for, the more it makes you question your sanity and whether you're really playing the game.
Now, the SOE team has had collectively over 5 years of experience in which they should have been able to recognize and understand this.
Players want to crawl dungeons, not camp them. They want to have a meaningful theme to their adventures. They want to get moving quickly and finish so that when their wife/husband gets home they can catch their favorite show on tv.
However, players also want to be able to advance their character at a comfortable pace. (side note, that varies a huge amount depending on the person). They want to get loot fairly frequently, whether it's cash, or neat new items.
Balancing these two sets of requirements is a tough thing to do. In my perspective, the expansion that did it best was Scars of Velious, followed by Legacy of Ykesha. But even those had problems and lots of room for improvement.
The place where Omens has screwed up the worst is the itemization. Unless you are going to go camp a named mob, there is next to nothing in Omens for you, unless you just really enjoy the scenery. You might as well go do your exp somewhere else, away from all the crowds.
Omens needs more items. HUNDREDS of them. They don't have to be great, but they need to be good enough to be useful to the level 50-65s who have don't raid, and who have maybe only picked up a few things from LDONs or the bazaar. These items need to drop (uncommonly) from the NORMAL mobs in each zone. This would help to make the expansion worth it for the majority of players.
Apart from that, they need to seriously do some work on the depth of the Omens zones, and add a lot in terms of backstory and quests, along with the other things you mentioned.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 18, 2004 06:31 PM
There are thousands of other ways to do a LDON-like point based system without tying it to the LDON point system. I want to see a loot system that lets people progress in shorter time spans over a longer time instead of having to camp all at once.
Comment Posted by: Gruffus on October 18, 2004 08:27 PM
There is too much story line as it is. More mobs less B.S. thats what we need. We have way too many quests for mundane stuff and not enough drop rates on decent items in our level range. Example " 9 named mobs I've killed in LDoN that droped crap less than half as good as items you have to already have to live in the adventure" with , i might add , a suggested level twice as high as what someone of that level should already have
Comment Posted by: Gruffus on October 18, 2004 08:47 PM
A P.S. I didn't buy this expansion for my 4 accts and won't buy another expansion that does not include higher value LDoN point items. The high end LDoN items at 1492 points are buyable from one weekend by a 65 that plays steady. IE 28 adventures Friday Sat. and Sunday. We need some 2k+ items that are on par with elemental or Time gear. For us folk who can play 4 to 6 hours at a time but sometimes have to leave for an hour and therefore can't raid. Or the player that can do 4 to 6 LDoNs on a weekend that over a month can earn their way to a time quality piece by playing a couple hours a night and more on weekends. I earn my stuff the old fasion way, I 3 box for plat and buy it.
Comment Posted by: Dirty on October 18, 2004 10:04 PM
Too much story line? Are you kidding me? There is practically no story behind the last few expansions and what little story there has been is unimaginative and dull. Original EQ gave a great background story for all the races and their rivalries. Kunark and the whole Iksar empire story I thought was great. Velious' background story with the wars between the different factions may have been the peek of EQ lore. After that it kind of went downhill. Cats on the moon, yay! PoP some people are going to beat up the gods yay! Froggies taking over the trolls, I kind of liked this one but I remember a lot of people complaining about it. LDoN, was there even a story here? Same with GoD.
I think it would be great if they focused more on lore and artwork, I think character graphics and animations have gotten worse looking with time, but I think they are more worried with just making more phat lewtz for the geeks to persue and mobs with 5 million HPs. For better story it's best to look at other games.
Comment Posted by: Coray on October 18, 2004 10:32 PM
What you describe is a fundemental problem with EQ, that is simply not likely to be solved, because Sony designers don't view it as one.
While LDON was better than anything previous for people who don't have a ton of time to play all day, it still was not fun, and those two things are not mutually exclusive.
Other games in the past have come far closer than EQ to not requiring a ton of time to progress and more, to feel like you've made progress whenever you play, and one will get extremely close to hitting the mark coming up soon, and no it's not EQ2.
Comment Posted by: on October 19, 2004 05:40 AM
"With a little more focus towards quests, events, and goals, and a 90 minute duration per adventure this expansion or future expansions will step outside the traditional Everquest four hour camp and into a more time-friendly and exciting game." Or we can just migrate en masse to World of Warcraft. From what I understand of it, you don't exp by killing mobs, you exp by doing quests. Now since the quests generally involve killing mobs you might think this is a pointless distinction, but it makes a world of difference in terms of having a "focus towards quests, events, and goals." And then as for the time thing, I don't know how long the average WoW session is, but I do know that they actually limited the number of hours any one character can be played per day. That's right, they basically tell you to go to bed and get some sleep after you've been playing all day. Evidently Blizzard realizes there is an unhealthy level of gameplay, and that it is bad for both the players that engage in it, and those who feel they can't compete because they have jobs and real lives, and so they have made an effort to prevent it for the greater good of the game. I seriously doubt we would ever see this, or quests that give more exp from their completion than from killing the mobs it took to complete them, in EQ; the SOE developers game design philosophies are just fundamentally different (how long did it take to fix Ragefire?). But who knows, maybe everyone will jump ship to WoW, SOE will panic and copycat Blizzard (not that they would ever copy ideas from other MMOGs ....), and then if it turns out that WoW has no clothes (or more likely no content, as with most new MMOGs) people will come back. Guess we will just have to wait and see.
Comment Posted by: on October 19, 2004 08:11 AM
"But who knows, maybe everyone will jump ship to WoW, SOE will panic and copycat Blizzard (not that they would ever copy ideas from other MMOGs ....), and then if it turns out that WoW has no clothes (or more likely no content, as with most new MMOGs) people will come back. Guess we will just have to wait and see.
"
They have already copycated WoW, CoH, Lineage II, FFXI and rolled it all into one thing called EQ2.
Being in the beta for EQ2 I can see that people who over the last year have said that they are testing EQ2 in Everquest have been right on the mark. It is so painfully obvious if anyone pulls their head out of their ass. That alone will explain a lot of the "disjointed" content and battle systems in Everquest's latest expansions (PoP, LDoN, GoD, OoW) They are all in EQ2.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 19, 2004 08:37 AM
I guess everyone has its pet peeve and you, Loral, have yours with points.
Repeat after me: points is anti-immersive, fake, shallow, "unheroic", in one word: BORING.
Don't wish more boredom for EQ when there is already enough grinding as is.
Other than that, I suspect that SoE has purposefully made some zones, train stations. And I have to say, I don't mind that much. Epic trains through zones is what we recall from places like guk, solb, karnor, bot. It's an annoyance but it puts some life into the game. While points, don't.
Comment Posted by: Coray on October 19, 2004 08:46 AM
EQ2 tries so hard, but fails miserably (yes I'm in the beta, although I wouldn't say I beta test because I DONT PLAY THE GAME AT ALL), whereas WoW (which I do play), succeeds.
To the blank poster, I just want to clear up some info. First, you do get exp by killing mobs, but quests give good experience also, and generally you combine the two. Most quests are relatively simple, kill x of these, collect y of those, but you're constantly making progress. If you kill 15 things, and then go complete a quest, you might have half your level complete, and feel like you actually made progress.
I've logged in for an hour before going to work, and gotten half or more of a level (under level 30), and a number of very nice items, and you always feel like you accomplished something after you play it.
They don't limit you how much you play, like there isn't some point where it goes you can't play more, it's more that they give you a bonus for time you're not playing. Just camp out for the night at an inn or in some towns, and you become rested, which means you get 200% experience from monsters for a time. Once you get past your rested state (I have about 12% each day where I'm rested), you gain experience at 100%, and you can play like that all day long.
EQ2, and WoW have both taken tons of ideas from other games, even in my opinion some things were clearly taken from WoW and tacked onto EQ2, that's how things go. What it comes down to though, is which one not only collects the best ideas, but executes them, and the numbers will illustrate that soon.
Comment Posted by: Zarros on October 19, 2004 09:56 AM
Things EQ could do (or I wish they would) to make it fun, interesting, and friendlier to the time-constrained player.
1. Change the loot paradigm from "named mob only" to "named mob more likely." The big "win" of points is not needing to camp a rare-spawn and frequenly highly-contested named. If any mob had a chance to drop a level-appropriate item of loot based on its zone, then there would be much less advantage or need to "camp" stuff, although the named mobs could have better chances or a chance to drop multiple good items as a reward for the greater risk.
2. More instanced dungeons, perhaps all dungeons should be instanced and without respawns. Make them group-only like in LDoN, and with an LDoN-like scaling of levels (although a level 70 Clan Crushbone defies common sense perhaps *wink* so perhaps a limited form of auto-scaling to level). Make dungeons the best place for xp/loot again, places where swarms of monsters are the norm, giving a real bonus to having crowd control, but with other CC options being viable like using root, pet-mez, or off-tanking.
3. Change the functionality of the graveyard zone to allow someone to have their most recent corpse called there in exchange for it becoming unrezzable. The experience loss being permanent is still a pretty powerful penalty.
4. Review the classes and the intended role they have in a group. Make sure they are equivilently able to fill that role in groups. While the means can and should vary (in terms of effect) the ability of two ranged/fuel-based DPS classes to deal DPS should be equivilent in terms of raw numbers.
5. In tandem with #4, some classes will need to have additional abilities given them, scaling backwards through levels as necessary. Groups shouldn't look at "tank" vs. "tank + more" or "healer" vs. "healer + more."
6. Expand on the task and expedition systems, but with an attached plot and story with them. This is the one area that CoH really shines in, although they don't have nearly the variety of missions/quest-sequences that EQ could have. By making use of instanced zones, quest difficulty can be tuned to be appropriately challenging and to ensure that quest mobs cannot be "farmed" or end up becoming a source of *player* conflict.
7. Focus content design around allowing a group to form up, adventure, and be finished in an average of two hours. Less time-constrained players can do more, and those with time issues can still make progress in 2-3 hours blocks here and there if grouped, or use a better-tuned and balanced task system for shorter time periods.
8. Allow "respeccing", the ability to change a character's class and/or AA without losing levels, AA points, keys, flags, and so on. Obviously this would need to be done through a series of challenging quests, although it should never require more than a single group. Players unhappy with the direction of their class should have an option to change that without having to redo what most would consider the worst aspect of EQ: flagging/keying.
9. Allow players to list any character on their account as LFG, and allow (with confirmation) the ability to add an *account* to one's friend list (without actually sharing the station name), so friends might better be able to stay in touch.
10. Look into means of allowing new players with friends who have high level characters to adventure together. Essentially the inverse of the "divide the community" effect from PoP. Some methods include temporary level-buffs, or the ability for higher level characters to intentionally "pull their punches" and temporarily fight at a lower level. Similarly, allow any number of unflagged/keyed people to accompany someone who does have the flag/key into otherwise locked zones for as long as they remain grouped (like "piggbacking" only without the % cap.)
Zarros - ex-EQ Cleric
Comment Posted by: Scott Adams on October 19, 2004 09:57 AM
Talaen wrote:
"Players want to crawl dungeons, not camp them. They want to have a meaningful theme to their adventures. They want to get moving quickly and finish so that when their wife/husband gets home they can catch their favorite show on tv.
However, players also want to be able to advance their character at a comfortable pace. (side note, that varies a huge amount depending on the person). They want to get loot fairly frequently, whether it's cash, or neat new items."
Ok this problem really has been solved. It is called EQ2 and like the previous poster I am playing it in Beta.
I am totally loving it and have canceled all my EQlive accounts at this time. EQ2 is the game I always wished EQlive was.
Is it perfect for everyone? No!
If you enjoy 8 hour raids 3 times a week, then stick with EQlive. If you love to crawl a dungeon with friends, do quests (it really is Everquest now!) instead of XP grind and love to have crafting that means something useful then check out EQ2!
Wow was fun I did the beta stress test. I played it for 3 days and quit logging in. It was just a bit too light for my tastes. EQ2 seems to have hit on a good mix of complexity and casual player.
Comment Posted by: Siriln on October 19, 2004 10:39 AM
I agree with you on several points about OoW Loral. (*gasp* I AGREE with someone, the world is coming to an end!) I was really disappointed in the complete lack of plot for this expansion. My first night in WoS we're killing things that give us negative faction with Murmam, yay! He's a bad guy, good. Then we start pulling dragon men. "Uhh, guys, this thing just gave us positive Murmam faction, are you sure we should be killing them?" "Yeah, they're kos to everyone anyway, and you have to kill them for some epics too." At that point having factions is pointless.
This expansion is also not very friendly to explorers, something that always gets a low grade in my book. I was wandering invisible around OoW while LFG just to see what it looked like, carefully conning mobs as I went. Oops, random mob in the Causeway is named the same as the type that can't see invis but jumped me, I'll have to be more careful. On the CR, con mob, con mob, LOADING PLEASE WAIT... Silly me, another mob with the same name as the rest somehow snuck up on me from behind. These random see invis mobs combined with the fact that some can even see thru a rogue's SoS make this an expansion that can only be explored in groups. And how many groups really want to waste time poking around the far ends of zones as opposed to getting where they're going?
The fact that non-elemental upgrades drop off of trash mobs in WoS is something I like a LOT. Most of it isn't an upgrade for me, but it's really nice seeing people get items off a mob that they can actually USE as opposed to farming it for the Bazaar (ala ornate and LDoN drops)or letting it rot (ala elemental drops). I would prefer it if spells were made more accessible, so there would be less fighting over named camps and fewer groups in Time gear farming for cash. That's not to say everyone would get along, but it might help a little :).
I also like the idea of the task system, but having used it many times with characters of different levels, I'd say it needs some fine tuning. Sending a non-gater into Nurga is fairly cruel and sending a caster after an sk mob is somewhat questionable (66 wizard donating for Virtue...). I'm not saying make tasks easy, but if you need raid buffs to do the task, it may need a little work. The low end is just as bad. Sending an 11th level after faerie maidens is all well and good, but when the only spot in the zone to find them also has 20+ social NPCs with a horribly large aggro? (*cough* Gearheart *cough*)
I'm happier with OoW than I was with GoD (aka why did I waste $30?). But I think that a lot of things were thrown together at the last minute in response to consumer outcry, and it could use some polishing.
(btw, why is all these people who have beta for EQ2 are wandering around in WoW instead? I can understand it may be more fun for them, etc., but it's waste of a beta slot. The point is to improve the game before the rest of us sheep buy it (bahhhh, I admit it, deal with it). If Sony had any sense they'd yank beta positions from people who don't bother to log on and give it to the rabid fanboys/girls over on the EQ2 boards. They'd quit whimpering, the game would get tested, Coray, etc. wouldn't have a game they hate.)
/ramble off (btw, if this comes out without spaces between the paragraphs, sorry, my browser is being weird)
Comment Posted by: Earl_EMarr on October 19, 2004 10:46 AM
Redcloud wrote - "Other than that, I suspect that SoE has purposefully made some zones, train stations. And I have to say, I don't mind that much. Epic trains through zones is what we recall from places like guk, solb, karnor, bot. It's an annoyance but it puts some life into the game. While points, don't."
I *EXPECT* trains to some extent in dungeon zones (guk, solb, Karnor's, etc.). I should not have to train an exp zone to travel to another exp zone. I have not spent a lot of time in Omens zones, but I have bought some nice upgrades in the bazaar. I have also had a guildie who could not use an item give me a HUGE discount on it.
I would like to see more of the LDoN-type of exp/loot systems in place. I like an hour of my time to get me closer to an item upgrade. I *LOVE* LDoN for this very reason. I can grab 5 guildies/friends/strangers and knock out an adventure in an hour and earn 51-105 pts toward a nice item or augment. And with the ability to sell LDoN stuff back, I'm all the happier!
Comment Posted by: Snoww Silverhammer on October 19, 2004 10:59 AM
With the Factions finally getting to a workable state. The drops are finding uses. Armour quests. While not an outside points system, You get a few different drops all the time. And over a few weeks can easily get enough for sale or trade. for an upgrade or three.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 19, 2004 11:29 AM
Zarros, you have some excellent suggestions and I think you will be pleased with "Loral's Evil Agenda". The agenda will be posted here on Thursday and contains a lot of the items you mention.
Siriln, the beast you encountered is known as a "Zone Sweeper" (I prefer to call them "Ancient Ones" or "Sweepers"). They spawn every few hours for about 30 minute to an hour and wander over the zone. They are high damage low hitpoint mobs designed to remind us about the days in Oasis getting trained by spectres. You can still go around invis to most places but you better watch out for the Ancient ones.
I think people, including SOE, misunderstand my talk about point-based systems. I am not asking for additions to the current LDON point system. I am not asking Omens dungeons to somehow work in the same system as LDON. I'm not even asking for a traditional "adventure point" system.
What I want to see is a progressive loot system. I want to be able to work on 1/20th of an item in 90 minute sessions. This can be done in quests with lots and lots of common drops (collect 40 un-brella brains for a rune) or with some other yet unheard of system. What about getting a weapon that earned experience as you use it? The weapon grows in power the more souls it devours, earning experience like characters do.
Right now, loot, even quest loot, comes down to rare drops on rare mobs with a /random 200. The only way you have a chance at winning is to spend a LOT of time in one session instead of a little time in a few sessions. Point-based systems help people with limited time earn loot progressivly instead of simply spending six hours hunting at a time and being lucky when its time to roll.
Comment Posted by: soru on October 19, 2004 12:17 PM
-
Right now, loot, even quest loot, comes down to rare drops on rare mobs with a /random 200. The only way you have a chance at winning is to spend a LOT of time in one session instead of a little time in a few sessions.
-
This is absolutely backwards. At the moment, you can log on, clear to a named, kill it, loot an upgrade, and log off again within an hour.
Under your proposed scheme, an hour would be guaranteed to get you nothing, an exploration trip would be guaranteed to get you nothing, only excessive repetitive grinding of the same thing over and over and over and over and over again (one person on my server has ober 1500 LDoN wins) would get you anything.
soru
Comment Posted by: on October 19, 2004 12:29 PM
Agree with soru, points type loot system leads to *MORE* grinding, not less.
Comment Posted by: Snoww Silverhammer on October 19, 2004 01:28 PM
There needs to be options for all of the above.
Dropped loot from named in adventures. That you can turn in for Bonus adventure points. Random drops from the zones that are rare but upgrades for the intended audience. Quest based loot dropping with identifyable clues towards origin.
And tradeskill based loot that is both dropped, plat purchased and Adventure point purchased.
The best system would be an Adventure point cost that is 100/1 ratio over plat cost. With plat able to be transferred into AP. Sell a cash drop to the AP merchant and work towards the goal of that new armour. Or find a shiny trinket that is worth something to the merchant as AP cost. And he keeps it there for resale to another adventurer at plat or AP cost.
If something would cost 1000 AP Then spending 100K could buy you the same object. But the money would go out of the economy. All items bought with AP or from these vendors are No drop. And only able to be sold back to vendors at 75% like augments.
Then you get all of the above. Cash sink. Random rares. But when the gear is no longer useful you cna get a bonus towards AP. and incremental rewards for time invested as well that is not transferrable off the charecter.
There should be multiple ways to get every level of item in the game. Be it raiding. Farming for plat, Grouping. Tradeskilling. All of it should be viable even if not always equal. That way all bases are covered with your playstyles. And you avoid the haves and have nots like in todays game.
To have a proper carrot and stick system The mule cannot figure out they are on a tradmill else the whole thing can be ruined.
Snoww Silverhammer Bashy RABID bear E marr
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 19, 2004 01:37 PM
I've spent every night in Omens since it came out and never have I logged in and killed a named within an hour. Worse, on the nights where I never killed one, I was no closer than when I started.
I think I'm being misunderstood again. I'm not saying REPLACE current systems, I'm saying augment it with another system as well. LDON had both dropped loot and point-based loot. A lot of gear can either be won or sold. I just want more options for progressive loot. If you like the random chance shot, go for it. If you want steady but clear progression, go for that.
While Omens includes a lot of droppable items (the bazaar is a much larger point system than LDON, really), it would be nice for more progressive quests as well.
Comment Posted by: Zarros on October 19, 2004 02:58 PM
No good deed or, in the land of the net, idea, goes unpunished.
Restricting needed loot to named mobs with fixed spawn points is an invitation for inter-player squabbles and frustration. It also disproportionately favors those who can play for long periods since each time the mob is killed there is the same chance for it to drop the item, and then the same chance for the player to win it.
Point-based loot, which Loral correctly compares to the bazaar, functions as an alternative form of currency and I likened LDoN to going to work for that reason. Go in, get my project (adventure/mission) with my team (group) and accomplish our objectives (kill/collect/rescue/assasinate), and return for our paycheck (adventure points) to buy our groceries and other necessities (LDoN gear) from Wal-Mart (the adventure merchant.)
Neither is really satisfactory as I see it, but EQ consistently suffers from a game design that might as well require large amounts of online time in uninterrupted blocks. The former is fine, but the latter is an issue, particularly since gaining experience and advancing to where this gear is needed is not subject to that restriction.
There are all manner of alternative approaches, and I can't really comment on which would work since I don't know how things are coded under the hood. That will make some things work and some not.
Ideally loot should not be associated with any spawn that can be player contested. Named mobs that can drop items should only happen in instanced zones if that's the restriction you want, with some kind of 'cool down' timer to prevent repeated farming of it. Even better would be to completely decouple items from dropping exclusively to bigger/named mobs and move to the system that we saw partially in place in Kunark and dungeons like Sebillis.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a completely revamped loot system where the game engine randomly selected players in a group that killed a mob for non-dividable loot and assigned it based on class and level, and then have all such loot be nodrop or have strict required level tags.
Zarros
Comment Posted by: Teremar on October 19, 2004 03:13 PM
Let's think through the time requirements to get a named. The DS expeditions are a good place to discuss, since they're easy enough for most people and drop runes.
Now, no fair complaining about how long it takes to get a named unless you're doing everything you can to get them quickly. So I'll assume you invis, run to the first PH, kill it, invis, run to the second PH, kill it, invis, run back to the first, and only then kill trash until the PH (or named) pops. You can fight your way between them in some zones, but killing the PH or named as soon as it pops is the whole point. Note that if you're organized this doesn't hurt xp as much as you might think--it's taking ten minutes to invis everyone and move every time that hurts.
Let's assume 30 minutes to form your group, invis up and get to the first PH. So at 30 minutes into the adventure you've started on killing the first PH (probably including some mobs around it), and soon after that you go after the second.
If the spawn time is 20 minutes (I think that's the case but I must admit I've never timed it) that means at 50 minutes in or shortly thereafter you've got your first chance at a named. Further opportunities come every 20 minutes, or three times per hour.
So, a four-hour camp gets you 10 chances at each named (20 total), while two two-hour sessions get you 8 chances at each named (16 total). Basically there's a startup cost and that does work against people who have to play in shorter sessions. But you start getting chances at loot after less than an hour. I'm not thrilled about the start-up costs, but I think it's an exaggeration to say you have to play for at least four hours to get anything.
In WoS you don't have that guarantee that the PHs are up first. So you start getting your chances at named the moment you get a group and start killing. And I have actually gotten some very useful focus items from the NW caves in WoS (where the assassin lives). Not MP5, but very useful. And yes, one of the two runes I've gotten came less than an hour after I logged in.
But I do think there's a pretty big gap between what's possible and what seems to happen in a lot of groups. Having people that either know what to do or listen to instructions, don't panic when invis starts fading, stay close to the group during fights, etc. can make all the difference in how many chances you actually get at a named mob. I suspect in another month or less we'll see groups become much more efficient as people figure these things out. Which is another reason rune prices really will plummet. OoW gear too--in fact I think we're going to see a major drop in prices for all but the lowest level twink gear.
I heartily agree on the lack of story. Dragorns and Muramites living peacefully side-by-side, the Dragorn Grand Historian sending you off to kill his own kind...SOE seems to have given up on creating any kind of consistent world at all.
Comment Posted by: Tdog on October 19, 2004 03:15 PM
Most of you are missing Loral's point.
He likes Oow, I have hunted with him in Oow.
What he is looking/hoping for is another way to get the loot/runes other then name camping... Not LDoN 2.0 but a system that allows a player with 2 hours on any give day to advance towards the same loot/rune that a player that spends 10 hours a day gets.
I think something like an expeditions that says you have to collect/kill/save/escort for x amount of exp and points in 2 hours and after lets say 10+ of these expeditions you can get a rune. Or something like attack this army and kill the leader and the leader drops x loot/runes.
He is not asking for another LDoN or even say he doesnt Like Oow. He just wants another path add for players with less time to get spells and gear up.
Loral loves Oow and I dont think he has left since its release.
Comment Posted by: Teremar on October 19, 2004 03:41 PM
"...a system that allows a player with 2 hours on any give day to advance towards the same loot/rune that a player that spends 10 hours a day gets."
I heartily agree with the sentiment, but I'm not sure we're all THAT far off. By the same calculations I gave above, a single ten-hour session in a DS expedition gets you 56 chances to get named mobs. Five two-hour sessions gets you 40. Fair? Not really. Crisis? No.
I suspect what really makes Loral unhappy is that it's all random. Loral seems to like knowing he made progress towards getting a neat item every single session. Personally I like knowing I could get a neat item from every single spawn cycle. And I see no reason why they couldn't both be the case (random drops plus some sort of progression with or without "points"). All it would take is some effort by SOE. But that's a separate issue from how long people can play in one session.
Comment Posted by: soru on October 19, 2004 03:53 PM
--
It also disproportionately favors those who can play for long periods since each time the mob is killed there is the same chance for it to drop the item, and then the same chance for the player to win it.
--
Simply, mathematically, not true. It, precisely, _proportionately_ rewards the person who plays for longer, but, apart from some small rounding effects that don't particularly favour either side, it doesn't matter one whit if you play in 6 1 hour chunks or 1 6 hour one.
Back pre-Kunark when some drops were on simple very-long timers (24 hours or greater) then you would be right, as 24 hours guaranteed you a drop but 8 hours wouldn't, but I don't think that kind of system has been used for single-group named mobs since.
soru
Comment Posted by: Zarros on October 19, 2004 05:29 PM
You miss the point. In a large group that stays together it is common practice to roll-till-you-win-then-out-till-all-do. A person who plays enough once a day to get a single named mob kill has a 1 in 6 chance each drop and that never changes. Conversely, someone who is in a group for 3 mob kills has a 1 in 6, then 1 in 5, then 1 in 4 chance to win.
Player #1: 1/6 * 1/6 * 1/6
Player #2: 1/6 * 1/5 * 1/4
Somoeone in a pure pickup group that gets into a named camp and can *stay* will get better rewarded assuming that rather common practice is followed. Groups of friends or guildies, who follow a "NBG" system of course work differantly.
Zarros
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 19, 2004 06:13 PM
"I suspect what really makes Loral unhappy is that it's all random. Loral seems to like knowing he made progress towards getting a neat item every single session. Personally I like knowing I could get a neat item from every single spawn cycle. And I see no reason why they couldn't both be the case (random drops plus some sort of progression with or without "points"). All it would take is some effort by SOE."
Exactly.
Comment Posted by: Siriln on October 19, 2004 06:26 PM
Adding a point based system to OoW and GoD while keeping current drops would be a very nice feature, kinda a something for everyone deal. The person who is only on 2 hours a day and didn't win any drops doesn't log empty handed, and the folks who can hunt for 5-10 hour blocks don't lose any loot potential. I alternate between both playstyles depending on my work schedule, so I can see the appeal of both.
I'm also noting a lot of people don't like LDoN. Have to say it is by far my favorite expansion. I bought EverQuest expecting to well, quest. Most quests I've run across involve a lot of camping and hassle, for very little reward. Going thru the levels doing primarily quests seems difficult if not impossible to do. I like LDoN and tasks for the simple reason that it resembles a quest, but gives an actual reward. Having a slightly better storyline, more LDoN dungeouns and tweaking for the tasks would be great, but I have to say I like them better than almost anything else in the game.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 19, 2004 11:14 PM
Four hours, three named, one rune, lost the roll by 180 out of 200.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 20, 2004 04:25 AM
As it should be, Loral. It's called socializing. You get to group with people you trust and like to avoid being always on the loosing end.
Work out options to some form of steady grouping that takes into account everyone's needs.
I repeat, you have a problem with the socializing aspect of EQ, as the game should be, not the downside of immersion and randomness that keep attention up. Randomness is an integral part of it, a large psychological factor against boredom and a portion of the immersion in the game.
Comment Posted by: Loramin on October 20, 2004 06:29 AM
All the math nerds who insist that two hour players have the same chance (proportionaly) as ten hour players to get phawt lootz are right ... sort of. If there is a 1 in X chance of a mob spawning every 10 minutes, and a 1 in Y chance of it dropping Teh Phawt Lewt, then everyone has a 1 in XY chance to get phawt lewtz for every ten minutes they spend. However, there are issues that complicate these nice simple equations, such as startup time. If it takes me an hour to get buffed, restock food supplies, run to WoS, etc., and then wait LFG until I get a group, that's a whole hour I can't get phawt lewtz. Now if I play for two hours every weekday, I waste half my time, whereas if I instead play the exact same amount of time in a ten hour frenzy on the weekend, I only waste 10% of my time (of course sometimes whole groups break up, but the basic point remains the same). There are a bunch of other factors that go in to it to, ranging from the ways groups distribute loot giving longer session people an advantage, to the fact that some people have constant connections and can sell loot they don't want for plat (and others can't), to many other things I can't think of off the top of my head. To be fair, I suppose short session players have some advantage, though again I can't think of it. But ultimately, any sort of cumulative progress system, point-based, faction-based, common-drop based (I remember when Sebilis gems were sort of this way, as they dropped often enough for everyone to have one, and could be redeemed for several hundred plat!) or otherwise, can help address a lot of these issues. Short session players will always be behind of course, unless SOE actually balances classes to the point that groups are formed in minutes not hours, but at least a cumulative reward system would screw them less than the current system, and since the two aren't mutually exclusive it could be added tomorrow without hurting anyone.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 20, 2004 08:52 AM
I'm not actually worried about spells between 66 and 68 so much. Eventually most folks will have their spells and when the runes drop they wil immediately go to the bazaar or to the most needy player (which looks like me based on my l33t rolling skillz).
The prices on runes will plummit as soon as supply outreaches demand. I don't know how many runes drop a night but I bet its a lot. While a lot of us are starting or finishing up our spell lines with those runes, eventually they are going to drop and no one is going to need them. That will send the price down fast.
What frustrates me is that after four hours hunting, I am no closer to a rune than before I started. Tonight when I log in and play for another four hours, my odds are the same. Thats really ok for runes because eventually I can just buy them, but additional quest-based loot that requires many common drops off of difficult beasts instead of one or two rare drops off of named beasts would give us a little of both. We'd get some nice random rare loot and we could work steadily towards other quest-based loot piece by piece.
Comment Posted by: on October 20, 2004 12:18 PM
Everyone seems to forget or ignore the whole 'point by point' progression of levels and aa that occur even if you don't progress with any item or spell upgrade in the time you spend playing.
Comment Posted by: Elizor on October 20, 2004 12:28 PM
I dropped in today for a bit of nostalgia, and all this reminds me why I left EQ. Sony does not understand *fun*. I played EQ for three+ years, SWG for about four months, and now I'm in City of Heroes--and having a ball. There are some designers who have a clue. They just don't work for SOE.
I can go to a contact and get a mission. It's not random, bland, generic junk like LDON or all the SWG missions. It's not loot-centric like all of EQ is. It's not standing in one place pulling the same crap over and over. The first mission will lead to a second. The second to a third, and so on, in a linked story arc. After your contact trusts you, he or she refers you to other contacts; you can get missions from them, also. Eventually, you could run out of missions, if you played enough, but they are constantly adding new ones (free).
As I said earlier, it's a SOE problem, not just EQ/EQII. For instance, last night I logged in to SWG to disburse my cash to other players, and set up my vendors to sell off all my remaining goods before canceling the account. The thought is if I ever come back before the character's wiped, I'll have funds from whatever sold to grubstake me. So what did I have to do? Spend over TWO HOURS doing nothing but re-listing over 500 items on my vendors. After 30 days, they automatically "drop into the storeroom." So there I am methodically clicking one button to see what the old price was, another button to re-list it, typing the price back into the blank (no, it couldn't POSSIBLY list the item's original price automatically, it has to list the price of the previous item instead), and then clicking a final button to put the item back up for sale. This is incredibly STUPID, to the point of asking "what the hell were they thinking?"
I didn't mean to go off on a long rant, but this is my point: there _are_ game designers out there who understand we play to have FUN, and neither the interface nor the game design should require us to stand around waiting on 71 other people, ships/boats, a super-rare spawn, the one rare drop, or for that matter, waste time punching buttons for no reason other than poor design.
None of them work for Sony. They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
Comment Posted by: on October 20, 2004 04:08 PM
Loral, you clearly don't understand probability. Yes, if things are random you can spend 4 hours and have nothing to show for it at the end (besides exp). But you can also spend 4 hours, and have two or more items to show for it. Over time, even with the quirky RNG, you will ultimately wind up with the same amount of stuff as if you had a point system. The only difference is that with a point system every night you progress the same amount (unless you fail of course) whereas with a random system you have good nights and bad nights. Switching systems won't get you loot any faster, unless the new system actually hands out more loot (ie. if you can get enough points to buy a rune in less time than it takes to get 6 runes to drop).
Comment Posted by: Teremar on October 20, 2004 05:10 PM
I'm not sure that's the case:
"What frustrates me is that after four hours hunting, I am no closer to a rune than before I started."
That's a completely accurate description of an IID random process (as presumably rune drops are). And it's completely legitimate for him not to like it.
The article was off-base, granted. But at this point the debate is about psychology, not probability.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 20, 2004 09:42 PM
I understand probability and I understand the strengths of a random loot system.
Some people prefer random drops, rare spawns, and /random 200 loot systems. Some prefer steady progression where everyone on a hunt makes out equally well at the end. I ask SOE to continue to support both systems.
Comment Posted by: Bahlzaq on October 20, 2004 11:36 PM
I also have to take issue with the idea that loot will all "even" out under either system... there are those who play a more aggressive playstyle, have better guild support, have better raid access and those are rewarded with Disproportionate loot opportunities in our current system...
With a point system the only variable is time put in. In the current system there are many otehr variables although the main variable is time. I think the reason I like points more is because if I am going to put in the time, it really distracts from my experience if I can "lose it all" on a bad roll, or more importantly to a bigger force getting tehre first, KSing, or what have you...
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 21, 2004 08:09 AM
As long as SOE doesn't put anything we would care to want based on bean countering, fine.
Yet it's SOE: the prereq isn't true and WE all have to regret that some people had spent some much time hammering the same subject while being so totally one sided.
If you are a public voice and a favored contact with SOE you are expected to be just a little more objective about loot or content design when knowingly blaming randomness instead of social skills.
That's not very ethical from a public figure if I may say so.
Comment Posted by: Marrgill on October 21, 2004 11:43 AM
My point is simple: no artificial Adventure Point systems, no camping, more QUESTS. SOE can't seem to separate camping from quests unfortunately; the closest thing to quests that are interesting in Omens are the "progression" trials.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 22, 2004 08:24 AM
It looks like I spoke too soon about the Focus 5 effect. There appears to be two class-armor sets including a lower end class armor available from drops below MPG. You need warmly Dragorn Loyalist faction to complete them and the drops appear random off of various mobs. Here's A few spoilers:
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=9208
http://eqcleric.gameglow.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19980
Examples of the armor:
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70809
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70824
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70746
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70749
Exciting stuff. I actually passed on one of the items before I knew what they were for =(
So it would appear I was wrong on my assessment of a lack of focus items. Now if I can just find out how to get warmly with the loyalists. Any tips?
Comment Posted by: on October 22, 2004 12:12 PM
Uh kill everything in oow.
Comment Posted by: Talaen on October 28, 2004 06:33 PM
Here's what I have observed on Omens Factions. Keep in mind that I have not raided at all in the expansion, and haven't really gone past the Wall of Slaughter or the Ruined City for single groups, so I might not know about some.
You start off at maxed faction with the Riftseekers. Whether that can change, I'm not sure, I haven't looked. The Riftseekers are supposedly beings that have the power to bridge time and space, and they were the ones who helped Mata Muram build his army by conquering other worlds. For some reason though, they seem to hate Mata Muram - maybe they themselves are enslaved?
Mata Muram conquered and laid waste to the dragorns after Dranik's disappearance. There are two Dragorn factions - the Children of Dranik and the Dranik Loyalists.
The Children of Dranik have supposedly been tainted by the essence of Discord and are essentially violent psychopaths. They hate Mata Muram, but they hate everyone else too.
The Dranik Loyalists are those that hold true to the original teachings and civilization of Dranik. While they're not too happy about yet more otherworlders in their lands, they hate Mata Muram, and ultimately, anyone who proves themselves an enemy of Mata Muram will be a friend of the Loyalists.
The final major faction that I've found so far is the Discordlings. The Discordlings seem to be demonic entities - perhaps the power of discord made manifest. They don't really seem to be on anyone's side, and the other factions pretty much ignore them, which seems odd. My theory is that if the power of Discord grows strong enough in any world, the discordlings are going to appear to help it along. Which means they could show up on Norrath too if things get much worse.
Anyway, if you want to increase standing with the Loyalists, kill Muramites. This would be any monster type you saw in Gates of Discord, PLUS any dragorn that have signed up with Mata Muram. Such Dragorn can be found in the Noble's Causeway and beyond.
Comment Posted by: Stonehewer Forkenbeard on November 12, 2004 08:31 PM
In re: raising dragorn faction, it's quite simple. Don't kill dragorns. Even the ones that attack you, killing any of them makes the collective dragorn factions unhappy, and make Mata Muram happy. Killing any Muramites, however, make the dragorns happy (huvuls, ikaav, nocs, kyvs, ukun, etc...), while discordlings and murkgliders I think are neither here nor there. Pyrilan and Gelidran are anti-Mata Muram, but have no effect on the dragorn.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.