Sinkholes in the Depths
by Loral on October 08, 2005
Depths of Darkhollow included some of the most innovative features in any of the ten previous Everquest expansions. The creativity of this expansion shows us how far this game has come and how far it can go in the future. With monster missions and spirit shrouds, Depths offers the most content to the widest range of players since Lost Dungeons of Norrath.
Yet no expansion is perfect. This article outlines the three biggest problems in Depths of Darkhollow and offers recommendations to help fix these problems. Let us begin.
Problem 1: Disappointing Rewards
The mission system in Depths of Darkhollow moves away from the point system found in LDON and Dragons of Norrath to a new mix of both dropped rewards and rewards earned for the completion of a mission. Unfortunately, the loot on many of the non-monster missions is well below the power of equipment required to defeat the mission. Those who need the loot cannot defeat the mission and those who can defeat the mission often have equipment far better than the reward. Here's an example:
The third mission from Kelliad in Stoneroot falls, "Building a Disguise", sends you off to kill 10 Witherans, 25 drachnids, 10 more drachnids, and a final boss. While the base mobs themselves are not very difficult to defeat, the boss hits for over 3,000, harder than most of the gods in Planes of Power.
What was our reward for defeating this magnificent foe?
Rippled Cape
AC: +11 Str: +12 Dex: +6 Wis: +12 Int: +12 Agi: +6 Fire Resist: +20 Cold Resist: +20 Magic Resist: +20 HP: +120 Mana: +130
This mission was harder than any other fight I have ever faced in Everquest. The reward, however, was less powerful than the rewards found six expansions and three years ago. Here is a cloak I picked up as rot loot in Plane of Time over two years ago:
Cloak of Ferocity
AC: +25 Str: +18 Sta: +20 Wis: +18 Int: +18 Agi: +20 Fire Resist: +15 Disease Resist: +15 Cold Resist: +15 Magic Resist: +15 Poison Resist: +15 HP: +145 Mana: +145
Vengeance III
Fury of Druzzil
From Dragons of Norrath I can purchase this cloak doing any of the missions in the expansion. This takes a lot less work than the battle against the Chamber Guardian:
Cloak of the Red Dawn Augmented with a Glittering Demantoid Stone
AC: +16 Dex: +11 Sta: +11 Cha: +10 Wis: +9 Int: +9 Fire Resist: +13 Disease Resist: +12 Magic Resist: +13 HP: +115 Mana: +135 End: +135
Strikethrough: +2%
This is only one example of many. In-game chats and forum postings all complain about lackluster loot rewarded for exciting and difficult missions.
How can SOE fix this? Improve the loot drops from the non-monster missions in Depths of Darkhollow. It is time that single-group players meeting an appropriate challenge can have access to the type of loot found six expansions back in Planes of Power. Single group hunters require this gear to progress through the Illsalin missions and to hunt in places like The Nest, the MPG trials, and Riftseekers in older expansions. Replace 120 hitpoint and mana drops with 150 hitpoint and mana drops and add focus and combat effects.
Problem 2: Unbalanced Difficulties on Missions
While many of the new missions in Depths of Darkhollow offer exciting and appropriate challenges for those who seek them, some of the missions found in Depths are far harder than many groups are able to defeat. Let's go back to our previous example, the Chamber Guardian of the "Building the Disguise" mission.
The Chamber Guardian is a powerful drachnid with an AE knockback snare that steadily grows in power as his hitpoints go down. In the final 10% of the fight he can hit for more than 3000 in a single hit. Our Time-geared fighter died in one round. We defeated him our second time through, after an hour of clearing back to him, only when I used Staunch Recovery, the veteran reward ability that fully regenerates mana. It took me over 13,000 mana to keep our tank alive during this fight.
What content was this tuned around? What non-raider could ever be expected to burn 13,000 mana? What would have happened if I had a DON-equipped paladin instead of a Time-geared warrior?
This is a mission in the middle of the expansion. It isn't a final mission and the end reward for this and the four other missions in the series is a level 68 spell. No level 68 player can withstand the Chamber Guardian's power.
Again this is only one example. In the "Preemptive Strike" mission on "Normal" difficulty the party faces post Riftseeker level trash mobs and ten shades that hit above 2000. Had I not done this mission with a Qvic-geared tank, I don't think I would have completed it.
Monster missions face some of the same problems in both directions. Some monster missions, like the original Griffin mission, ended up being too easy to finish. Others, like the "Defending the Grove" monster mission seem impossible. No doubt there should be a range of difficulties but the difficulty seems to shift from trivial to impossible very quickly.
This problem can be fixed with better and more accurate testing. Single group "normal" difficulty missions, and those missions with no difficulty should be tuned around players with single-group acquired equipment. "Hard" missions and some of the more powerful missions in Dreadspire should be tuned around those with Time+ raid gear.
Problem 3: Spirit Shroud Power, Progression, and Experience Gain
Shrouds above level 60 have a very difficult time coming anywhere even near the power of a regular level 60 or above player. With the high difficulty of content in newer expansions, shrouds cannot meet the needs of any high level player.
I had hoped that shrouds could be used to switch from one archetype to another in case the group could not find that one last required class type. However, in nearly all cases, one is better off playing one's main character even if one isn't of a desired class type. For example, as a level 70 cleric I am much more suited to tanking than a level 70 shrouded warrior.
This problem shows off the much larger problem of the power spread across the highest level. This has been a problem for some time but as our power grows overall, the gap becomes wider. As long as that gap remains as wide or wider than it is now, things like spirit shrouds will never meet the needs of anyone at high levels.
Shroud progress is also very slow. After an entire LDON as a level 50 rogue shroud, I earned less than 10% towards the next unlocked shroud. Add this to the very low experience I earned for my main and Monster Missions end up looking like a much better way to hunt with my friends.
These problems can be fixed in a few ways. First, increase the amount of experience earned while in a shroud. Second, speed up shroud progression. Three, increase shroud power at level 70 and begin to take a longer look at how to narrow the power gap at level 70.
Last week I announced my Mobhunter Spirit Shroud Contest. Send me a screenshot showing that six level 70 players using only spirit shrouds defeated the Creator mission on Dragons of Norrath and you win a free unopened copy of "God of War" for Playstation 2. The screenshot must show six spirit shrouded players, a "/who" statement or inventory screen to show levels, and a dead Creator corpse. Send this screenshot to loral@loralciriclight.com.
The problems above do not fully describe every problem in Depths of Darkhollow but from a content focus, they are the three biggest. These problems are solvable. Better mission testing, balancing the difficulty of "normal" missions, increasing mission rewards, and increasing rewards while using spirit shrouds would go a long way to help improve this expansion. The shroud power problem is much more difficult to solve since it is only a manifestation of the larger power gap problem at the high levels.
All of these issues came up at the last EQ community summit and I have faith that we will see them addressed in the near future.
Loral Ciriclight
8 October 2005
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on October 9, 2005 10:27 PM
The way I see it the power gap is made up of 4 seperate/ independant parts.
1)Player skill
2)Level
3)Equipment
4)AA's
While equipment is an issue I feel it is AA's that really make 1 player Superior to another. What I would like to see is some defaults built into the game. (this will be unpopular) Like automatic granting of all general AA's at level 60, all Archtypes at 65, and perhaps all POP AA's at level 70. This would narrow the gap alot and would be similar to the removing of flags to access zones. If you want to use a AA's within 2 years of it's introduction then grind out the experience. If you don't want it then again it will be granted at a later date.
This is not a case of wanting something for nothing (well it is actually) but want I really want is to be able to stay in touch with the content the dev's are putting into the game now and in the future.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on October 10, 2005 01:01 AM
Mulling over this further, I look at how we evaluate the strength of a Mob "we con it". With the massive spread of power in the 60+ game this is useless as dark blues in one area are easy and in others they hit worse than a freight train on steriods.
If there was a better way to evaluate to power of a mob before engagement reletive to our own power position then it would, I believe remove some of the angst that is created.
Comment Posted by: Jyve on October 10, 2005 01:04 AM
Shrouds. Hmm, as stated, they just don't deliver, and you'd be best using anything else and accepting the loss.
The main thing these things miss is gear. Simple as that. Now, this COULD be resolved easy enough, and I suspect it will be eventually. The devs have said Shrouds won't get gear, they're tuned without it, but it's interesting that they've left the slots in when they could of been removed easily enough (see the inv window in the werewolf missions for zero slot characters). I suspect time was running short to release and gear was dropped for now, but I'd hope that later, something could be done. Doesn't have to be the best, but something that I can work on to stand a chance to be viable isn't all bad.
The Rogue shroud appeared to get the most usuage with everyone doing the slipgear quest whilst in rogue form. Shows that there IS alot of functionality that can be achieved, but apart from that, the tanks/healers/nuker shrouds just plateau out. It's only right that they shouldn't be as powerfull as the class they're impersonating, but a little narrower a gap ONCE you've put the time and effort in wouldn't go amiss.
Monster missions are great, really great. Took a bunch of guildees who'd done all the DoD spell progression but not a single Monster mission into the werewolf missions this weekend for something different. Ended up spending the whole day going through everyone we could find. Freeport appears to be the most popular/fun one, and it's great to have revenge. The difficulty/tuning of this one is spot on perfect. Just needs the rewards to be a bit more in line with the effort, in that a group should get different rewards with the amount of plunder, make groups work hard for it.
Werewolf missions, post fix/nerf are still great fun. Seeing the fight from both sides is quite clever.
Naggy rocks of course, didn't take long to sus the method on how to use Naggy effectively. First time in naggy is always a failure while everyone sets up their abilities/buttons for the first time, doesn't take long to get the swing of it. Great stuff, the emotes from the attackers always get a laught to start with.
Hivemind is certainly interesting. Never ever had been to runnyeye before, makes me wish I had, looks to be a great dungeon, really interesting. Glad I get the chance to explore it in a monster mission.
The Ork one is a little slow, but we did it and it was ok for a change. Doubt we'd go back to it though, the pacing of it feels a little slow.
Overall, everyone who's been in the Monster Missions appears to love them, a great game mechanic and hope to see alot more of them.
XP gaining.
Shrouds didn't bother me too much on the xp rate eventually. True, it started off incredibly slow and ended up just slow, but they should be seen as another progression line and something that not everyone should get too quick. They should be a relatively rare thing to see.
Intelligent Items, kinda a jester syndrom, the jokes do get tired quickly, but the xp crawl on the pants from CCreep make the Shroud xp look like a PL'd toon in Paludal. 2 days of hunting, 1 and a half levels earn't, and it's only just moved to 1% xp. Might be bust, but if it's not, it's going to take around 200AA's worth of hunting to make them evolved up into just the next level, not the final.
As someone who's only done one DoD spell progression mission (Preatorian Guard), I'm loving it so far. I'll get round to the proper missions once the other stuff is sorted, but still having too much fun in them.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 10, 2005 05:02 AM
All that and the damage increase through spells and AAs for some caster classes is totally fubar.
Comment Posted by: Bunion on October 10, 2005 08:20 AM
I like Sunshadow's idea about AA's. I have been tempted to go back to EQ several times, but the biggest thing stopping me is how far behind on the AA's I would be. The last thing I would want to do is have to grind hundreds of hours just to catch up on AA's let alone trying to get decent gear. It must be frustrating to the new players to when they finally get to level 60+ to realize they are still well behind the curve in power due to all the AA points they are lacking.
Comment Posted by: Anon on October 10, 2005 12:41 PM
Loral, you should note that you're basing your review of the power of shrouds based on Tier 1 of each of the shrouds available. One has to assume that each Tier is more powerful than the one before. By Tier 5, might we not see shrouds every bit as powerful as DoN equipped players? Of course, the shroud may still be more limited in scope; a healer may be JUST a healer, not an off-tank and/or buffer too.
Granted, the progression has been slow through these shrouds, but we might want to hold off saying that they need to be tuned upwards until we get some experience with the good ones on higher tiers, eh?
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 10, 2005 01:02 PM
"Loral, you should note that you're basing your review of the power of shrouds based on Tier 1 of each of the shrouds available. One has to assume that each Tier is more powerful than the one before. By Tier 5, might we not see shrouds every bit as powerful as DoN equipped players? Of course, the shroud may still be more limited in scope; a healer may be JUST a healer, not an off-tank and/or buffer too."
My understanding is that they do NOT go up in power by very much or not enough to make a difference.
"What I would like to see is some defaults built into the game. (this will be unpopular) Like automatic granting of all general AA's at level 60, all Archtypes at 65, and perhaps all POP AA's at level 70."
One of the designers had the idea for AA quests that would grant you a set of AAs for completing a certain quest. Others disagreed with the idea, however, saying that AAs are now far easier to acquire than they once were.
You can now farm AAs at the rate of about 1 per 30 to 45 minutes in a monster mission that anyone can do. That's a lot faster than most people.
I don't really have an exact number but AAs usually matter more in the first 100 than beyond. AAs are diminishing returns overall. You can probably get to all of the best and most useful AAs for a class within the first 150.
The problem with the gear gap is that gear is buried behind specific content. A shaman can't earn a Time's Anthesis style item anywhere but Time. Wizards can't get concussion pants anywhere but Time.
I can't hunt anywhere and eventually get a 200 hitpoint or mana item - I have to hunt in very specific areas. Right now that place is the MPG single group trials.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on October 10, 2005 03:49 PM
I>> don't really have an exact number but AAs usually matter more in the first 100 than beyond. AAs are diminishing returns overall. You can probably get to all of the best and most useful AAs for a class within the first 150.<<
I am not so sure that base number is accurate anymore, maybe forteh POP era but not DODH or Post Omens. Just Lightning Reflexes and Innate Defense line alone is 187 AA's to max. I think the baseline number per class is more like 400-500 specific AA's to have minimum viability in all exp groups.
Comment Posted by: Cognac on October 10, 2005 06:31 PM
Interesting statements regarding AA's. I'm not going to complain for a change, just make a statement for comparison perposes.
I'm an infreaquent player, so my mage just hit 60 with zero AA's. I'm in a small guild that don't raid, all my gear is bought.
At 60 I can get about 70% of an AA per night (about 3 hours). Which is acceptable. The prospect of doing 100 - 400 AA's to be viable is not.
The gear I have on is equal to what was available from raids in the velious era.
I realy feel eliminated from any of the new expansions.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 10, 2005 07:36 PM
I did a quick Magelo calculation on the AAs I thought were critical for a cleric at 70. I came up with about 200. That's the number I would expect for a level 70 cleric. I imagine the others vary but I bet they're close.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 10, 2005 07:37 PM
"I realy feel eliminated from any of the new expansions."
There are twenty monster missions that should give you decent loot and good experience. Those are available to everyone of any level.
Comment Posted by: Sunshadow on October 10, 2005 08:48 PM
Loral, of your 200 AA's that you deem a priority, how many are General/archtype ones. The reason AA's cause such a problem is they are invisible within the game. You have no effective way when selecting a person for a group to measure how effective they will be until you get into the thick of things. At least with the level based system you have a fair idea what abilities and spells a character would have. So if your level 70 cleric has no AA's cause he wanted levels as a higher priority. You don't know until your 2 mobs into a MPG trial and he calls out "OOM need to med"
However I wouldn't like to see quest that just gave a set amount of AA's that could be used on anything. What would be good is specific quests for specific AA's, like capture "Road runner" to learn the secert of faster runspeed. After all this is "Everquest" not "Ever kill lots a mobs to grind XP"
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 11, 2005 01:58 AM
"However I wouldn't like to see quest that just gave a set amount of AA's that could be used on anything. What would be good is specific quests for specific AA's, like capture "Road runner" to learn the secert of faster runspeed. After all this is "Everquest" not "Ever kill lots a mobs to grind XP""
This is something I've wanted to see for a while. I think quests that reward you with specific AA abilities would rock.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 11, 2005 08:02 AM
Here is the profile I set up:
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1255494
147 points got me the following AA sets:
Runspeed 3
wisdom 3
Spell Casting Mastery 3
Healing Adapt 3
Mental Clarity 3
Celestial Regeneration
Mass Group Buff
Advanced Healing Adapt 3
Celestial Renewal 2
Divine Arbitration 3
Expansive Mind 5
Healing Adapt Mastry 3
Gift of Mana 3
"What would be good is specific quests for specific AA's, like capture "Road runner" to learn the secert of faster runspeed."
That was the idea that was proposed. I am sort of neutral on the topic. AA set quests would be nice but I still don't think it's that hard to earn them these days.
A bigger problem is that there is no game mechanic to see the difference between a level 70 with 10 AAs and a level 70 with 1200. I want to see an in-game mechanic or statistic or something to differentiate between low AA low geared players and high AA high geared players. This way balancing content becomes less of a crap shoot.
Comment Posted by: Aethn on October 11, 2005 09:14 AM
Well playing a cleric for so many years I would have to say at level 70 in RSS I would not take a 147 AA healer given the chance to see what AA's they have. No way.
In your 147 aa's you list nothing from the healing gift line, this is essential imo as much as healing adept. You list nothing in the Radiant Cure line, again, essential in post POP play. Finally wisdom 3?? Metabolism out weighs any stat increase general AA if you even consider using a mount for mana regen in outdoor zones. Max Wisdom is insanely easy to accomplish given todays bloated stat gear.
So that would put you well over your 200 mark, again I contend that if anyone was going to be an average player in the post POP era, 400 AA's is a logical target for bare minimum. Anything less then that ewuals alot of downtime or deaths.
Comment Posted by: dslkjfd on October 11, 2005 09:36 AM
Gear and skill can help make up for only 200ish aa, but I do agree that 300-400 can/will give a player much more power and abilities than a bare minimum of 200ish. That said, the same geared/skilled person with 400 aa vs 200 aa, will have more tools at their disposal and effect use of some of them just be the difference between a wipe or challenging win.
Besides, thats just clerics, many other classes have a wider variety (and sometimes higher cost) of aa's before they truely become the most powerful. It all depends on the player, the class, the gear, and not least... the skills and attentiveness of the player.
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on October 11, 2005 10:03 AM
I didn't agree with Loral on 150AA's, as I believe mudflation has introduced a number of aa's that have become assimilated into bread + butter (must have aa's). As more expansions are introduced, the more likely it is that the magic number will increase; as they contain new, harder monsters/enounters and new abilities (often with increased prices per ability! 9 aa's for druid rez)
sure you don't NEED the aa's to experience the new content but they can make a helluva difference!
I like the idea of getting a set number of aa's per mission/task - ONLY for the big ones. like completing a PoP flag, or the 2 aa's received after completing a DoN tier. This is a very welcome bonus, especially to me as I haven't reached my magic number of aa's yet.
Comment Posted by: Endy on October 11, 2005 11:51 AM
Loral,
Your article is SPOT ON!!! Thank you!
I hope SOE takes heed.
One issue I'd love to see you look at is XP in the new zones.
I was beyond disgusted to set up an XP group in the Hive, have trash mobs hitting us for 1500 dmg a whack, and only get 2.5-3% AA per kill.
Additionally, the drops from these 'tougher than RS' mobs were +100 ish type drops...Can I use the 'slap in the face' statement? heh.
Anyways, there's something wrong. The difficulty of the zone is fine imo, however the reward is just ridiculously low.
I'm hoping that Dreadspire yeilds different results. I am hoping that it is the true successor to Riftseekers in difficulty, XP, and drops.
Keep up the good work.
Comment Posted by: Tiesiaan on October 11, 2005 10:06 PM
I did like the challange and difficulty of the missions (spells), and I liked HOW loot was distributed with chests/named drops/end of mission reward aug. However I didn't like the reward amount. Im not going as far as Gemdiver who wanted +220 gear to be dropping, but I would say 170-180 would not be unwarrented given. Its harder than PoTime content, as hard/harder than top end OoW stuff, really would be better to have nice stuff about PoTime lvl drop. The level 69 spell missions are fairly straight forward, but even a group of time geared people were having a challange on normal difficulty. Loot starting at 150 and ending at 170 or 180 is my call.
On the AA's thing...I do like the idea of questable AA's. This already exists in some form for the DoN progression AA. However these would have to be new AA's rather than old ones. Im in favor of the ability to show your AA's along with your level when your lfg (so don't have to put it in comments section) along with your mana/hp if you want.
Comment Posted by: coolio on October 12, 2005 05:18 AM
Put on my spirit shroud. Went to click on my Veteran's Reward Lesson of the Devoted for 1/2 hour of double experience. WTF?
Comment Posted by: fauzt on October 12, 2005 05:36 PM
SoE should let players "rent" shrouds. How this could work is:
1) for $1 you get a blah lvl 70 shroud of your choice
2) for $5 you get a better one
3) for $10 you get an even better one
etc etc etc
for $100 you get an uber one.
Since they are only "rented" they will eventually go away but the groupers would be able to fill out the group with a needed class to get done whatever it is they are doing (i.e a cleric that can dump 10k mana and a tank that is uber equiped).
Just think of all the money SoE could make with this idea. I want a 10% cut. SoE email me I'll send you a mailing address for the check.
Comment Posted by: coolio on October 12, 2005 09:30 PM
Put on my spirit shroud. Went to check on the progress of my evolving item. WTF?
Comment Posted by: Skuz on October 12, 2005 09:38 PM
Great article Loral, the rewards versus the effort needed to obtain them are simply ludicrous, far from being a reward they are insulting!
The power gap does need addressing and I honestly think that the posters giving figures of around the 400aa mark as being an "effective" amount are pretty near the mark as of the current expansion.....In future that will rise, Unless the developers somehow find a means other than AA to develop your character.
The "group" missions are in my view totally designed for raid-geared players in time+ gear, ok now there are open time raids on a good few servers by now, but not everyone that would like to be in such a raid gets in, there is almost certainly a large segment of the playerbase who are level 70 have a good few aa yet are in below time gear....
I was hoping that there would be plenty of Raids in this expansion that were possible for ep-level, time level, kind of a spread, seems only one that my guild have found that was* doable at a pre tacvi level "lair of the Haru" though i read the spore king was around the same level of difficulty.
*i say was as it appears to have changed,as of the recent patch(not todays) we beat haru twice with 30-35ppl on 3rd attempt we wiped badly, and kept wiping even having done exactly the same things as on the first two runs.The ae went off more, and the 1st wave of adds DD casts went off a lot more too, the difference was a large increase in difficulty.
Have to say i love the encounters and the zone layout, I even like the reward system.....just not the actual rewards themselves.
Comment Posted by: coolio on October 12, 2005 10:46 PM
Put on my spirit shroud. Went to med on my mount. WTF?
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 13, 2005 12:33 AM
"Put on my spirit shroud. Went to med on my mount. WTF?"
Should've been a skelly.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 13, 2005 04:36 AM
At least DoD demonstrated one thing: people don't want 6 junk items nodrop instead of one single good drop...
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on October 13, 2005 10:23 AM
My new favorite = shrouding and monster missions clears your personal tribute benefits. i was quite surprised to do a monster mission and then went to turn on my personal tribute (while in normal form) only to find my selected tribute benefits empty...
I think I saw a thread on this on soe boards but the fix has not gone live yet.
Comment Posted by: Keisa on October 13, 2005 10:32 AM
Here's the scarry part about DOD zones. Last night, we did a mission in Stoney Falls. In that time, I visited four zones, Corathus Creep, Undershore, Stoneroot Falls, and Illsalin. I was in DOD for about 2-3 hours, off and on. I saw one person other than our group in all four zones combined. In Illsalin, there was a named up our group couldn't take, not a raid mob, just one in the back and no one there to kill it. No one is playing in these zones. I have never seen any group or person exping in Illsalin, and there are often named up there. The zones in the new expansion are vacant since the werewolf mission was adjusted.
Here is the scarry part about shrouds. I have played almost nightly since this release and since the second week after the release, I have seen one shrouded person or corpse that was not a goblin rogue.
Keisa
Comment Posted by: simkine on October 13, 2005 11:34 AM
Well the new zones might make good screenshots but they are utterly useless to exp in for many obvious reasons. Players are lazy but they're not stupid.
I felt shrouds were a dumb idea before the expansion and I feel they are dumb now. Monster missions were a novel concept but if the only way to get a group with my level 70 warrior is to play a level 20 orc or fairy, I see no reason to play this game much longer.
Comment Posted by: Teory on October 13, 2005 12:47 PM
I was kind of disappointed at how underused the Darkhollow zones are as well. Took a group - kind of EP/early Time level geared into Stoneroot and the mobs are packed extremely densely and there seems to be little information on what you want to kill - should we be killing all those shilliskins or waiting to be friends with them later?
Zones are empty except for goblin rogues sneaking thru to do Slipgear. And it's a shame as someone put a lot of work into making these zones and they're visually quite stunning. Illsalin in particular would be great fun, but really dangerous. The Hive has amazing atmosphere but again, not sure it will get used by much of the player base.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 13, 2005 09:32 PM
It often takes time for people to grok the zones. I remember in the early days of Omens the Wall of Slaughter, MPG, and Riftseekers were empty and everyone was doing Dranik Hollow missions for runes.
Right now I think people stick to the familiar and haven't yet fully understood the good camping spots and loot areas in Depths's overland zones.
I also think the weak gear on the missions has people heading back to do Creator.
Hopefully these problems get resolved soon, both by us and by SOE.
Comment Posted by: Ranger Dave on October 13, 2005 10:51 PM
It amazes me how SOE obviously devoted significant resources towards developing Spirit Shrouds then decided to penalize anyone who used them by underpowering the higher levels and by taking away all the character's Veterans Rewards. I saw a few gargoyles and fairies running around the first week of release, now I see nothing but the odd goblin rogue.
On a similar note, they developed an interesting concept in intelligent items and then made the progression on the items ridiculously demanding. I've earned 2 AA's while equipped with one such item and it remains at 1/3 0%. The final stats on the item aren't even that great, I just equipped for the novelty factor.
Comment Posted by: Keisa on October 14, 2005 09:46 AM
I really wonder what the devs were thinking when they made this expansion.
They make zones full of high risk, low reward, encounters that give low experience. Three new innovations, monster shrouds that they seem to want no one to use, monster missions that are uber easy boring exp for everyone, and items that evolve so slowly that it is a detriment to equip them. All their hard work on making beautiful zones goes to waste because no one will use it. The rewards are far better in OOW, DON, and monster missions. By now, you'd think that the devs would have learned that players will flock to where the rewards are, and they certainly don't appear to be in the DOD zones.
What were they thinking? Do they actually want to kill off any interest in EQ?
Keisa
Comment Posted by: Me on October 14, 2005 03:21 PM
I am currently working on the 70 level spell missions, The Hard version. Even here the rewards suck. I have completed two and have gotten a 20 mana, FT3 aug and a 30 mana Regen 4 aug. Worthless to me. The first mission id hard as hell.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 14, 2005 07:45 PM
I love spirit shrouds and monster missions. I've gone hunting with my main once since DoD came out. The only things I'd like to see different about them:
Spirit shrouds:
Some shrouds unlocked through quests instead of just earning boatloads of xp.
Titles or suffixes for finishing a progression, and a title for getting all of them. Things like Maitreya the Aberration, Nature Spirit Maitreya, Shroudmaster Maitreya.
Monster missions:
Other than the specific ideas for monster missions that I've already posted here, what I really want to see is monster raids.
Comment Posted by: nineteenklilo30hotel on October 14, 2005 09:13 PM
Another expansion full of zones I won't be able to see for months, if ever. Yard trash powerful enough to kill a God if they could only reach the Planes of Power. Loot rewards weaker than what can be bought in the bazaar.
The only motivator I have to buy Darkhollow is to ride a Clockwork Boar.
Looks like a swing and a miss on this one, Sony. I'll keep playing, but I'm keeping my thirty bucks in my pocket.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 14, 2005 10:14 PM
If you're level 1, you have a boatload of amazing monster missions available to you, that you can do with anyone.
If you're level 5, you can put on a spirit shroud and try out another class, or just play as a monster.
And I have difficulty seeing a level 45 corath killing a god.
Comment Posted by: Naladini on October 14, 2005 11:39 PM
Personally, I like the idea of awarding some AA's as people level up. I agree that AA's are somewhat trivial to earn nowadays, but remember the goal of trying to attract new players to the game. The older and higher the mountain becomes, the less likely someone will want to try and climb it. AA's can be earned very quickly in the right situation, but that doesn't do much to change the perspective of the player who hasn't earned any AA's yet, when they start browsing this daunting screen while at the same time, mired down in a level 50ish hell level.
My recommendation would be to try awarding half of the "level" based AA points.
eg. Give 3 AA's at level 51
6 AA's at level 55
10 AA's at level 59
This combination of numbers would put people in a position where their required archetype AA's would be completed at level 59, enabling them to face a less daunting climb through their 60s, while at the same time, allowing them to focus on buying some of the "feature" AA's, rather than the just the mathematical boosters. Remember, most higher level players played through the 60-70 game with all of those Archetype AA's activated, and much of the later content (as in spell costs, mana polls, etc) seems to be based on the fact that these AA's would already be acquired.
Other blocks of AA's could be made available via quest, but I think if you get the initial archetype abilities out of the way, you start moving people in the proper directions pretty well.
Just my 2cp.
Comment Posted by: quickie on October 15, 2005 05:00 AM
After 2 decent expansions in OoW and DoN, I have to say that Sony's pulled another GoD on us. Want a spirit shroud? We won't tell you they're severely underpowered. Want a bonus gargoyle spirit shroud? We won't tell you there's no progression with it. Want an intelligent item? We won't tell you it takes the equivalent of 400AA's to reach its full potential (that's roughly 6 years of playtime for a casual gamer like me). I was so excited about DoD, now I'm just numb.
Comment Posted by: Vamirez on October 15, 2005 05:23 AM
We lacked crowd control for a guild group in the Hive (lost notebook mission) yesterday, so I went and shrouded into the level 70 faerie trickster. With malaise, slow and a short-duration mezz that works up to level 73, I could do my job just fine. The slow lasts much longer than is stated in the description. The buffs, such as haste and C, can be cast mana-free. The abilities of this shroud are useful even to a high level group that wants to hunt places like Hive, Nest and RSS. Try it out - I had a blast :)
I have also done an XP group in the non-instanced Stoneroot and had no problems with mob placement or whatever. We started off with killing basilisks and witherans near Grokui's isle. We found a good spot to camp, the shore of one of the multi-level islands near the basilisk islands. Later, we crawled up the bridges, killing shiliskin and orcs. We ended off the session by tracking a named drachnid, wo turned out to be in the drachnid outpost. We went there invisibly, right up to the mob and killed it. General mob difficulty and XP seemed to be like NC, the nameds were harder though. They dropped NC-quality items. I think they should have dropped better stuff, more in accordance with their difficulty.
I fully agree to the other posters on RvR in DoD. Mission difficulty is high but okay, rewards should be at least equal to those of the Ikkinz group trials, though. This would imho create a viable but nontrivial path to upgrade gear from DoN-quality to one step below MPG-Trial-quality.
Comment Posted by: Hemdell on October 15, 2005 05:57 AM
I love the monster missions ! But agree with most posters here that the DoD content is way to hard. I will never use a shroud nor would i if i had friends at lower levels. WEAK! I see lots of people on my server going back to OOW and DoN missions.
When doing Undershore missions you can bet the ones in the zone are there for missions and not to xp in the zone. I totally agree with giving AAs as you move up in levels it takes to long for the casual gamer to get the AAs needed. And dont give me the BS line that AAs are easier to attain than before. They are for the UBER equiped sure. Oh yea i can spend a couple hours in the same Monster missions and get some but wasnt that the compliant about LDoN and some Don missions or not??? Same Mission over and OVER get tired quick.
Some in my Guild said something the other day that kind of struck true to me. That if yer not 70 with 400++ hundred AAs then the game has passed you by and they dont want or need you.
Comment Posted by: Skuz on October 15, 2005 08:43 AM
[quote]On a similar note, they developed an interesting concept in intelligent items and then made the progression on the items ridiculously demanding. I've earned 2 AA's while equipped with one such item and it remains at 1/3 0%. The final stats on the item aren't even that great, I just equipped for the novelty factor.[quote]
Switched it on?
The thing I am seeing is a trend towards an " I want 70 & 400aa, like NOW!"
Not everyone who has that is uber, and I disagree that *ALL* content is designed with time+ geared 400aa+ people in mind, however having said that the people who have attained that did not obtain it for zero effort, to give away AA freely undermines and undervalues their efforts and hard work.
I would not see a problem though in developing some kind of "AA-quest" a set of quests designed to give specific AA sets, for example a set of quests designed to give you only general AA, or only archetype, or only class, ...why the restriction? well simply put if people want AA for reduced effort then reduced flexibility is an acceptable trade-off.
I would limit the system in such a way as the quests are done with a 3 AAPage gap, example we are on Depths AA now, Quests released for AA sets for general, Archetype, Class, PoP, PoP class
Upon the next expansion which has an AA Page's release then GoD AA quest set would be released with it, and so on.
The fine blancing would be in making the quests rewarding for casuals, but not trivial, balanced so that the approximate aa/hour is higher perhaps 4x faster on general and archetype 3x faster on class & pop and 2x faster on pop class (& GoD-once next AA containing expansion arrives), each progressive set not requiring the prior set to obtain the quest set, but designed with difficulty aimed at players that have completed the prior aa set quests.
example:
AAquest set 1 "the beginnings of knowledge", obtainable at level 51, level 51 required for all participants, 5 missions each with a 3 aa reward only spendable in the general tab repeatable but no further aa gain once full general AA obtained.
AAquest set 2 req level 55, "lessons in war" 5 missions 3 aa reward each only spendable in archetype tab
AAquest set 3 req level 59, "Strategic Insight" 5 missions 2 aa reqard each only spendable in class tab.
AAquest set 4 req level 61, "the beginnings of Power" 5 missions 2 aa reward each only in PoP tab
AAquest set 5 req level 61 "mastery of power"
5 missions 1.5 aa reward each only spendable in the pop-class tab
As the game advances and further expansions are released the rates of aa per mission per tab can be re-tuned.
Would need seperate AApoints available "banks" seperate to the normal one.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 16, 2005 01:37 AM
I was actually thinking of something even less flexible. Each quest would reward X ranks in a specific ability. For example, for innate fire resist you'd visit very fire heavy zones and battle mobs that liberally apply fire attacks. For the magician Servant of Ro ability, I'd go befriend a drake or something so he aids me in battle.
If someone had the AA already, perhaps they could do it for a few points, or just not be able to access it. Whichever.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 16, 2005 03:48 PM
Some ideas are good but the buffing up of the pre-demi-plane of blood raids was misscalculated. Now it's just another pita to go through.
For pete's sake, this game is NOT a console game. Drop the reflex, jumping loop, non sense. Vish hit the right balance and limit before it become tedious and silly.
Comment Posted by: Fred on October 16, 2005 08:51 PM
[quote]On a similar note, they developed an interesting concept in intelligent items and then made the progression on the items ridiculously demanding. I've earned 2 AA's while equipped with one such item and it remains at 1/3 0%. The final stats on the item aren't even that great, I just equipped for the novelty factor.
Switched it on? [quote]
Sony forums have confirmed that intelligent items currently require the equivalent of 400-600 AA's worth of experience before they reach their final form. Keep in mind that not all evolving items are intelligent. Evolving items typically have 7 levels while intelligent items have 3. Evolving items scale up much quicker - I'm estimating after 100-150 AA's worth of experience.
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 17, 2005 04:48 AM
Considering that the people who would probably get those evolving items have 100+ DoD AAs already, chances are that once they get to them, they will be done with any useful AA to xp for. Hence it would just be item grinding for months with nothing else to show up but some stats on a replaceable item.
Why does it look like an awful idea to me?
Comment Posted by: Armarant on October 17, 2005 07:32 AM
Redcloud wrote: Hence it would just be item grinding for months with nothing else to show up but some stats on a replaceable item. Why does it look like an awful idea to me?
This shows the extent of damage that Min-maxxing has done to everquest. granted that the intelligent items in their current form arent what I would consider complete, they certainly show who wants to min-max and wants it right now and is not willing to wait. :
Comment Posted by: Tuppet on October 17, 2005 11:09 AM
why blame min-maxing when you admit that the xp on evolving/intelligent items is whacked?
it's not min-maxing's fault, it's just a design/implementation flaw. if they were going to make the items have this gigantic amount of exp, they might've considered an alternative way for displaying its progress rather than copying+pasting the existing exp bar. Players are saying that the exp bar doesn't move but devs say that the amount of exp needed is so large, that you won't see progress until a week's worth of exp is made?! how were the players supposed to know that, if the exp bar (how we judge progress) doesn't 'move'?
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 17, 2005 02:50 PM
I leveled my toon to 60 when Kunark was young and that the level 59 took three solid weeks for most people.
That kind of grinding was very tedious back then. It's crazy now. At the time they introduced the smaller blue xp bar to show for minute xp increases.
Nothing should ever cost more than 20-30 AA xp.
Comment Posted by: Cognac on October 17, 2005 10:50 PM
I know I'm flogging a dead horse, but I think it's good for comparison purposes.
Refering to my previous post about avering 0.75 of an AA level per night. I'll use an average of 2 AA's per 3 nights as a usefull benchmark which represents a practical maximum for a level 60 in a family guild, or unguilded.
At that pace it'll take 150 night to gain 100 AA's. It's impossible to keep up such a gain, so I'm going to add a slack night every 4th night, an alt night every 5th night, a tradeskill night every 6th night, help a guildy/tradeskill farming on the 7th night.
Now I have a practical real advancement of 2AA's per week. So it'll take a 'casual' / family guilded, non-commited level 60, 7 days per 2 AA's. Which is nearly exactly 1 year per 100 AA's.
Now my question is, how many expansions come out in a 1 year timeframe while I've been gaining 100 AA's.
Comment Posted by: Maitreya on October 18, 2005 12:37 AM
2. However, that rate will not remain constant for a year. At the end of that year, will you still be level 60? Will your still be at the same point in the progression of whatever expansion they're on? Will still have the same spells, or will you have found new ones? Will you still have the same gear, or will you have upgraded? Will you still have axcess to the same zones, or will your slow but steady AA gain eventually grant you access to a better one with faster xp?
Comment Posted by: Redcloud on October 18, 2005 10:18 AM
2AA per week looks awfully low to me.
Even with light blues in an old zone shouldn't people be able to crank out more than that?
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 18, 2005 05:29 PM
On upcoming updates:
The next scheduled update is planned for October 26, 2005. Here are some of the things that are currently planned:
* New Default UI Skin
* Modifications to DoD Missions & Loot
* EverQuest will now use the Operating System's mouse so players can easily go between applications while in windowed mode
* Take a look at Kithicor for some holiday fun
* Players will have the ability to make their helms invisible
* Improved controls in the guild bank
* New command for opening a web browser from the game command prompt
* New Audio Triggers command
* Fix for the Pet HP for items
* Fix for the loss of mana/HP while zoning
Please join us on the Test server to see some of the changes.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.