Overseer going forward

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Wyre Wintermute, Jul 23, 2021.

  1. Wyre Wintermute I'm just a butterly dreaming I'm a man

    Overseer is "ok" in the current state. The rewards are mildly useful, some XP, Merc AA until it's full up, older crafting mats, collection item, etc.. Eh... it's "ok."

    I say that, in that there's no real drive to work on overseer, as a part of EQ. It's a side game with some minor rewards for those looking to complete a few things, help recover XP loss, and maybe get some ornaments, unattuners, rez clicks, and luck crystals.

    However, Overseer could be so much more.

    Forget about what Overseer currently does. What it is now is just fine for that, but what else could it add?

    On the reward side, I'm not going to delve too deeply. I believe that is best served by community input to the development team. I don't want the idea to get instantly "shot down" simply due to a specific loot issue.

    So what can be done going forward to enhance the viability of Overseer? What can draw in more raiders and casuals alike? Well.. appropriate loot rewards of course!

    (But you just said you weren't going to delve into loot deeply!.... I'm not. I'm going to go into how to obtain said rewards.)

    Right now, Overseer is a single player (account per individual server) game. What if there was a way to expand upon that?

    Open up a new tab on the Overseer interface for "Raids." (I'm going to break a bit here, just to provide one possible example of raid progression, prior to getting into mechanics.)
    Have a set of "basic" raids which then unlock further raids. So let's say:
    Lord Nagafen and Lady Vox

    Completion of these "raids" on a server would then "unlock":
    Cazic Thule
    Innoruuk
    Eye of Veeshan

    Completion of those raids would then "unlock" Kunark era events, following a similar metric.

    Ok, rewinding a bit...
    An "Overseer Raid" would last for a set duration. That duration would be determined by the Dev team, to limit the amount of this new loot from entering the game. Let's just say 1 week for a baseline (Since many instanced events have a ~6-day lockout and old-world bosses had a 7d +/- 12hr respawn originally). Again, this would need to be determined by the Devs and 1-week is merely being selected to enable discussion.

    During the course of 1-week, any number of raids would be active. This would be dependent on each server's progress and how available the Devs would like the content to be. Any player with access to Overseer would have access to the raids, but they would need to have the appropriate agents to participate. Each successful completion would move a server-wide counter by 1. The number of completions needed would be determined based on the difficulty of the raid. Exceeding the number would increase the chance of a "Critical Success" of the raid itself. An individual failure would not exclude a person from additional attempts, however, failures would subtract from the counter, where individual success would add 1 and critical success could add 2.

    In addition to that, each "tier" of raid would have a currency tied to it. Sticking with the status quo, There would be a max of 4-5 tiers. Copper, Silver, Gold, Plat, and possibly Diamond? With Copper through Plat being guaranteed for a successful raid, they could add Diamond in at a small chance from the top raid events, or from "promoted" raids.

    This currency could then be used to purchase items that the players have provided input to the Devs about. The main reason for currency division is to easily limit/control access to items, with all of the TLP action these days. They can easily say item X is too powerful during Y expansion, so (starting at SoD) only Copper currency will be available until Z expansion, etc.. Higher level currency could be split downward, and lower level currency could be exchanged for higher (except Diamond), thus opening up the whole system easily.

    I wouldn't propose being able to purchase raid loot. Every expansion from VoA onward has some form of raid currency to manage that and people get defensive about what they've earned. There have been may things asked for on the forums, over 20 years... and I think this would be a unique way to trickle some of that into the game.

    Getting back to the raid stuff a bit, in order to avoid "abuse," there would have to be no "finish now" for a raid mission (However, a "refresh" button could be added to force change the required agents). There would have to be a "replay" timer on a successful mission. The missions would need to require agents of multiple rarity, not just Elites, etc..

    To increase the draw for Overseer "regulars," a "raid agent" could be a one time reward for successfully completing a mission. So let's say the first raid is Nagafen. On a successful Nagafen raid, a Nagafen agent would be rewarded one time. These could be utilized later for special event/promotion "raids" and would not impact or be useful in the existing Overseer system.

    What about this "Diamond" stuff?
    I tossed that in as a means for the Devs and the players to come up with something special. I suspect that the other currency items would be more... utilitarian or expendable, so as not to get completely made obsolete as time marches on. Diamond stuff, that could be strictly controlled by DPG's (or whomever owns EQ at the time) discretion. Again, I don't want to delve too deeply into the matter, as I feel that is it's own discussion requiring multiple levels of input.

    I thought about this possibly being a heavily involved, single-player thing, but there are so few server-wide "events" these days and it seemed like a way to pull that involvement together. It also levels out the playing field for rewards a bit, so long as one participates.

    If they did decide to entertain such an idea, however, at least a 3 month notice would be about the required time for those who've avoided Overseer to get up to speed. (Plus, some extra time on the test server wouldn't be such a bad idea)


    I'm certain that this is immediately going to be "attacked" by all of the "I think this other issue needs dev time not spent on stupid Overseer" comments. Fine. Whatever. It's been 22 years and I still can't see past a leafless shrub. I can't pull a mob standing 10m away and be positive it won't run halfway across a zone instead of straight at me... EQ has lots of problems that need fixing and new (normal) content that needs to be produced regularly. It doesn't mean there's no time at all for other things
  2. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    There is only 2 things I'd like to see them added to Overseer as rewards
    1. AA
    2. Older TS items

    As long as they add those, they can do what they like with it, currently I have no reason to do it until next level increase.
    RPoo, Winnowyl and Wyre Wintermute like this.
  3. Scila Augur

    I'm with Yinla at this point ... either fix it or toss it right now. There are more important things I'd rather see worked on with the game than a side game.
  4. Tucoh Augur

    Port to android / ios, add motivation to p2w to scoop $$$ from all us old whales. Use revenue to hire more devs / designers to create more content.
    Metanis likes this.
  5. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    Thumbs down trying to put raid stuff with overseer. If they were to take a poll you will find alot of eq players DONT raid! sure on these forums you think everyone raids there just the most vocal. I like overseer how it is maybe they can make it so one can get aa's besides doing collection quest but overall overseer is good not perfect but good.

    Andarriel
  6. Wyre Wintermute I'm just a butterly dreaming I'm a man

    I don't think you quite grasped the concept I was presenting. It would be a "raid" in that it would be something multiple people would have to participate in. Functionally, it would be no different than a solo player assigning agents to a solo task (as it is right now) for individuals. What it would do, is require multiple individuals to contribute and thus yield different rewards.

    People wouldn't have to meet at specific times or places, the only "limitation" would be participation in other "raids." Time zones wouldn't matter. Availability wouldn't matter. Gear wouldn't matter. Level would only matter for Overseer's lvl 85 requirement.
  7. Velisaris_MS Augur

    I think things from past expansions should be made available as rewards via Overseer, such as currencies (both group and raid), drops used to make gear (like the little orb thingies from HoT), and spells (like dreadmotes from RoF). Limit it to say 5 expansions back, making it useful for people leveling up or people that wanted a specific raid item from previous expansions (like armor ornaments). I don't see how any of that would be considered game breaking.