The most common factor for a good dungeon seems to be true threat. My wishlist overlaps with a lot of the feedback here: Faster base spawn times that push you forward through the crawl. Difficulty increases as you progress. See invis mobs. A good mix of undead. Traps of varying lethality. Maybe triggering it causes temporary ailments like silence or melee slow. (Something that pisses you off just enough that you prefer to avoid it rather than something that you can either completely ignore or completely wipes you.) Holes in the floors like howling stones/guk that restrict movement. (Nothing like locked doors that block content and require rogues or bards.) Tight quarters. Randomized dungeons would be fantastic. Wandering mobs that can show up at the worst possible time. (Wandering mobs should be on a different timer than base pop.) Groups of mobs. Packs of 5-6 that require splits or CC. I actually really miss trials. PoP trials. God Ikkinz Trials. Omens of War Trials... These smaller types of events could be incorporated into various wings of a dungeon. Accordingly, dungeons should have chaser items. Some of the best and most interesting items in the game came from old dungeons - Tolan's Bracer, Truncheon hammer, fungi tunic. Some of the recent clickies are very creative (twincast, blood magic, etc.) these would be adequate rewards for a challenging dungeon, and incentivise the difficulty. (Not the standard Defence XVIII type clickies - that won't cut it.)
instanced and a goal, camping mobs is good for outside zones and relaxed grouping. A dungeon is a great place to grind good xp with an active group. Make it have penalties Higher XP gains Better rewards be instanced random have goals Would love to see another ldon type expansion, we have so many outside zones now, a few instances off those zones would rock.
Why not locked doors? Locked doors and chests is an integral part of a true dungeon. They could make them destroyable objects with high HPs for melee to destroy. Add a Knock spell from old D&D days for casters. But using these methods would be loud enough to get adds, so you would still prefer to have a bard/rogue to pick the lock. Also the key could drop off of the mini-name to proceed deeper into the dungeon. (i.e. Howling Stones) Every locked door can have an alternate path also but kicking down the door would save time with the possibility of adds I really miss having a purpose to carry my lock picks.
I'm all for what you are suggesting. I just don't want to revert back to a point where two classes hold the entire experience hostage with a secondary ability. As long as the group can proceed at the cost of more difficulty, by all means - add them! LDoN introduced unlocking spells for many other classes. Those could always be revived to meet such a purpose.
I actually think the whole 'illusion through' is an appropriately balanced, if unintentional penalty-mitigating mechanic. Just the right amount of time/inconvenience for each player for not having a rog/brd.
For me, a great dungeon is the one where you become so immersed in the crawl that you lose track of time. Unique mechanics, strong storyline, strategic and logical mob placement, and good environmental effects make that happen. My two favorite dungeons are Kedge Keep and PoWater (and yes, I'd kill for another underwater zone). I think there should be one or two key pieces of loot in the dungeon, something like the Accursed Grin of Malevolence or Wretched Skull Ring which are ultra rare drops in the zone and evolve into really nice items by killing mobs in that zone only. It should go without saying, but good pathing is essential. I don't mind hard pulls, as a matter of fact, excellent pulling skills should be required for survival. But wiping due to a z axis bug or mobs running off at bard like speeds in the wrong direction completely spoil it. As far as difficulty goes, I see dungeons as "end zones" for their tier. The content should require a single six person group, already having FULL gear/spells for that tier, at appropriate level and max aa for said tier.
Sweet baby jesus no! Ain't nobody got time fo dat! Anyway, I can't stand zones like that. Mobs being on a differant timers irritates me. I think its my OCD lol but I'm sure im not alone. I also don't understand why recent zones spawn timers adjust to how many people are in it. Just make it a standard timer please.
A modern version of LDoN couldn't be more perfect. Somewhat random map layout, dungeon crawl with traps, random bosses. You are timed and have a clear goal to meet when the mission is started. At the end, everyone gets rewarded with currency, some get rewarded with nice loots as a bonus. Zone wide rares that excite people, not zone wide rares that people ignore and let rot (common gear with sub par stats like the zone wide rares in current content zones). To be implemented correctly would mean EQ would need to break out of it's current way of doing things. There needs to be -unique- and (even slightly) powerful loots available from the missions as forms of drops. The currency rewards need to purchase something more than just regular gear. A new addition to the game would be a perfect choice, maybe a new aug slot. Make the augs for the new aug slots only available from the currency. Leaderboards are very nice too. For those of us who grind and grind and grind far after we've collected all the gear and AA's we need, and completed all the quests and missions - we need a reason to continue playing. Glyphs get pretty boring at the point you've spent more on glyphs than your class even has available for regular AA's. Edit: Multiple difficulties is great as well. There's times I'd prefer to just group with 1 other person in an easier version (with lesser rewards of course), then there's times I'd like to bring the absolute beefiest group I can put together and still be challenged.
Some of these ideas are good, some i am not sure about. LdoN style instanced dungeaons are great. Mind crushingly hard and fast repops aren't. A lot of people nowadays don't have the time to play like in the past, we are all grown up with families and jobs. Hard no repops is ok, not so hard with fast repops is ok. Too many difficulty increasers and it would end up being a headache that a lot wouldn't be able to do. I have no idea the kind of randomizer it would take to do this but would there be a way that you could select multiple factors before your dungeon instance like amount of mobs = light medium heavy. Mob difficulty = light medium heavy. You could even do a mob ability checks named have mez, stun, rampage, whatever else. As many factors as you like. Each level of selection has a value. Total value selected determines loot quality. Could even make loot randomized. Level 10 difficulty has 10 total heroics, could drop loot with 10 str, or 5 sta 5 cha. Make it all random.
I came here to suggest LDoN v2 and find many have beaten me to it. It needs really random dungeons so we can't just download maps, several levels of difficulty, and the ability to scale into the future. A cross-server grouping feature would be nice too!
Without challenging the opinions others hold, I couldn't stand LDoNs, Coldain Missions, OMM missions, or the more advanced GoD trials (sewers was OK, but boring). I think some of the reasons why" too easy. is wasn't much of a dungeon crawl there were a couple of OP items and the rest was useless for me. A couple of the monster missions (pirates in Freeport) were kind of amusing the first time I did them but there wasn't a lot of action/variety in what you did moment to moment. I might come back and post again if I can think of any group content dungeon crawl that I thought was exciting and had replay value.
Not sure what you're getting at comparing group content (LDONS) to raid content (TOV, Hate)...but good try nonetheless.
We're never going to have the rush of entering Hate or Fear again because there isn't even the remote possibility of 13-hours of trying to recover all the corpses lest someone lose everything permanently.
I love Veksar because while you are inside the zone, you still get the feel of where it is, relative to the world. I'm talking about the water leaking in, the decay feel, and flooding of several areas. Lots of zones these days don't seem to be relevant what they connect to, since you can mostly skip through to the zone. I know its a low level connection zone, but you actually have to swim around to the door and such, as opposed to me running to the grey to zone through to the new zone, and never return once I get it connected. I hardly even register where the zones fit anymore, because it all just hubs through portals. Besides that, it was always a great place for me both solo and grouping as a necro. Before mercs, when you solo a named, it was a much bigger accomplishment, and you often had to whip out all the tricks or even use a charmed pet, and plenty of risk still. Its pretty far past the classic era, I was 65 I believe when it was opened, but the whole place was progressively harder, better loot, and even had a creepy feel to it sometimes. It also had some interesting lore, and great loot for many. It came out pretty much all by itself, not attached to anything, but I couldn't let a dungeon thread get by without a mention at least. I wouldn't mind an extension to it for the high end some day, but I don't think I'd want the copy paste treatment such as kael, EW, and CC, more of a related or deeper place in the same line.
LDoN was the best. LDoN 2.0 -- with about 4 themes and at least 20 random maps per theme would be extremely nice. Achievements for completing all these and maps for great items. Sounds like a winner to me.
A few of the RoF missions that used older content (CC for example) were pretty decent except they were quest checkoffs rather than the crawling through the zone (you could Invis, campfire, etc.), the basepop, the lieutenants, the boss mob being the challenge. I also enjoyed the level 85 version of Cazic-Thule except that there was not the group equivalent of a raid - it was all camps. I do want there to be a reason for the dungeon existing and the barebones of a storyline. But I don't want to be a slave to some kind of narrative/quest - Dorothy says, "Save my dog Toto." The fact that there is treasure and you have to survive moving through dangerous ground to get to it is motivation enough. I quess I'm saying I want story to be flavor/background music. Really what I'm yearning for is a group version of VT with less yardtrash, harder hitting mobs, fast repop, wanderers so you have to roll forward and not wait for safe pulls, no locked doors requiring a Rogue, ,,, ...and while good group gear (perhaps the best group gear), a nice sprinkling of utility items - fixed duration Invis, instant shrink clicky, a couple of illusions, All/All upgrade of Symbol of the Planesmasters. Something that takes 6 players giving it their full attention 4 hours to complete. Not 50 people sitting at the least difficult LDoN waiting for a timer to expire so they could do a path of least resistance get tokens for completing it 30 minute adventure once again. Something you devote an evening to like seeing a movie, playing Monopoly or D&D. Something without an easymode setting. Not a complete yawnfest for raiders and challenging for endgame non-raiders. A 6 person mostly linear raid/crawl. I understand being busy. But IMO you can't do epic in 30 minutes. THAT was my point Explicit.
There is no reason we can't have elaborate break-ins. Corpse summoners ensure there are no 13 hour recoveries. Plus, you die with you gear on now. Not really sure what you are getting at.
