Plane of War (maybe or Maybe not)

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Nyni, Feb 28, 2014.

  1. sojuu Augur

    Not for spite all the caster has to do is move in closer. And gives melee a chance to not have every named caster friendly.
  2. Cicelee Augur

    Should probably just give everyone a chase item from this zone. The amount of complaining and bickering that will be coming from this zone will be probably close to the amount from the Heritage zones and their chase items: meaning a lot.

    If you want to give a chase item based on time spent in zone, that is easy to do-

    Slayer Achievement: Kill 15,000 Plane of War mobs. Reward: chase item.

    Or you could create a partisan quest. Or a collection quest. Complete 15,000 kill task slayer achievement, collect four shinies from mobs, complete six in zone tasks. Reward: chase item.

    Of course, we all can just wait for the zone to be released and see what happens...
  3. Obiziana Augur

    The amount of whining going on in this thread is just ridiculous. We're over 5 pages with roughly 90% of the posts being complains and NO ONE HAS SEEN THE ZONE YET. Perhaps we should all relax a bit and wait until there is an actual problem before losing our cool and complaining on the forums....
  4. Vlerg Augur

    How about making this actually hard for groupers? a sort of end-zone for them, sepulcher-like?

    right now, CoTF heroics offer very little challenge to a 3 + 3 group ( heck, I did all of t hem with a 2 wiz + 2 cleric merc setup, including all the hunter achievement). Why not have one zone, a single zone, who actually provide challenge for the grouping crew, something to look forward to ( and if stuff could be hard enough as to make merc undesirable, that be great... bring back grouping by making content that merc can't do).

    Glorig the underdog isn't a 2-group name, it's just a long fight... ( and isn't pet-tank friendly at all).

    Huge mistake isn't a 2-group named, the adds can be snared-rooted-mezed-stun-feared and they don't summon... any form of crowd control will do ( oh and, you don't have to fight him where he spawn, there's a big, wide, open, grassy area nearby)

    -----

    One thing I wouldn't like to see is the zone-wide super rare chase item. I slaughtered over 10 000 mob in mistmoore castle to get my ring, the first 1000 was fun, the last 9000 not so much.
  5. wingz-83 Augur

    http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
  6. Orbital101 Augur

    I personally feel left out for a long while having some hard content... some crazy long progression/quests that test your patience and dedication to the max. Until you are done with it and told your self I did it!
  7. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    It's not so much complaining as it is fine grooming. This zone was not part of a beta, it's going to go from test to live. The devs released their ideas/concept of the zone and we are simply just elaborating as to what the community likes/dislikes. Better to make changes now rather then wait 11 years to find out the zone bombs entirely
  8. guado Augur

    [IMG]

    Devs, you got some splainin' to do!

    This is a screen shot from Rallos Zek's war room.... Um... Can I get some of the stuff Rallos is smoking or: What is that huge landmass on the left globe? Is that even Norrath!? !!! Interesting!!! (found this while trying to find the secret POWar zone in )
  9. Vlerg Augur

    As a side note about melee VS caster friendliness... can we get something other than spell reflect / spell immune to even out melee and caster balance?

    neriak 2 shade
    DH2 Larenzo + captain
    Bixie 2 ( is that new? yesterday some of the bee had a 85% spell reflect chance, didn't notice it before).
    Neriak 1 golem have a passive chance to reflect spell
    WK1 deathmaster
    ...

    mechanics like Velishan or Synarcana work ( altho, i'd hate to see them used in every other encounter...)
  10. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    That would be Alaris, upside down.
  11. Axxius Augur

    And for some reason much larger than it actually is.
  12. guado Augur

    I agree that it IS Alaris upside down.......... It's exciting that it APPEARS Rallos' map is a "complete" map of Norrath, including anything us dumb humanoids have yet to discover.
  13. Dzarn Developer

    This supposes that the majority of the zone's basepop could be monopolized by less than the intended number of people to be playing in the zone.
    Between the difficulty differences of this zone and the HH zones and the population spread it should be able to support more groups of players than HH zones did.


    At this time we're planning on having 11 rare NPCs in the zone.
    I'm unable to comment on what their mechanics will be at this time.


    While I appreciate that you are passionate about a topic, the discussion here is about the Plane of War and not a crusade against raiders or boxers.
    There are more than enough threads dedicated solely to those topics, derailing this one is not constructive.


    That is the plan we have discussed going with at this time, yes.


    Excellent questions:
    1. There is no plan to require you to have COTF to zone into the Plane of War.
    2. The zone will be tuned for level 100 players, so it is likely there will be a minimum level of 95 to zone in.


    The problem with the rare global drop being no-drop is that it could be any 1 of 11 items, which would result in more bad experiences than obtaining something the group could trade/sell for a droppable version of the item that is of more use to them.
    With the rares, you're able to know what drops they will have, which is why we arrived at the ideas presented.


    Negativity appears to be a deeply ingrained social norm here, but it does help keep the discussion on topic if people bicker less.
    At this time there are no plans to limit the use of mercenaries in the base zone.


    The zone's style, use of objects, and texture rendering methods are all in line with zones of the Planes of Power era.
    One of the most obvious differences between zones prior to Omens of War and modern zones is the use of normal maps which add detail to the zone based on light sources.
    There are no normal maps set up for Plane of War and the majority of the textures used throughout the zone are unchanged from the ones originally created for Planes of Power. You'll notice a lot of the textures are shared between this zone and Plane of Tactics.

    The only textures that needed to be updated were the ones used for the ground because the shader technology used for zones from Luclin through Gates of Discord is not in use anymore.
    A good example of this shader can be seen in Dawnshroud Peaks. If you look at the ground from a distance it is a relatively low quality texture that increases in detail the closer you get to it.
    The original Plane of War made use of this shader tech and blended a grey rock and white sand texture. The version of the zone that will be released now will use a rock texture similar to the one used in Pillars of Alra and a ground texture pulled from Brell's Rest.

    Bonus Dev Trivia: Both Pillars of Alra and Brell's Rest were created by artist Allen Bond who was the one who helped teach me enough about 3DS Max to complete the geometry fixes on the Plane of War. Fixing the bugs in the zone geomtry is among the first times I've ever done anything in a 3d graphics program, so the whole experience was a fun chance to do something new.


    Though we always strive to do more, I believe the amount of content the team has been able to plan and finish in the time allotted is still quite admirable.
    This isn't to say more won't ever be done in War, as we can always revisit older zones and include new content in them in the future.
    I do hope you find the content that does go live fun and interesting though.


    I understand your reservations on the issue and hope some of them will be alleviated when the content goes live and we have more to discuss than theory and projection.
    The team has been discussing making some of the rares targeted at one group and some for two groups. The reality of doing this of course is that the one group rares will not drop the best pieces of loot.
    Part of the intent of the zone is that it harkens back to some of the principles of the content in Planes of Power where not everything was soloable and some not even one groupable.


    It is an inherent advantage of obtaining better gear that you are able to accomplish more in EverQuest. This has been true since the game's inception.
    The challenge of the rares will not be entirely in raw numbers but in the ability of players to react to the mechanics they use; which is a better equalizer than raw numbers when presenting challenges to players regardless of their gear.


    The content may end up being too difficult for a group of 3 players and 3 mercenaries but I don't see that as the team being out of touch with the game.
    The zone may require players to enlist the help of their friends and guildmates and that is simply a function of the rewards being balanced against content difficult enough to warrant them.
    On the topic of 'being in touch', I cannot speak for every developer, but as a raid geared play character I do not expect that I will be able to molo or even trio any of the rares and I accept that fact in the same way that I accept that I have cannot solo some of the missions in COTF.
    As time goes on and gear/levels/spell power improves then the content will become beatable by larger and larger sections of the population with fewer and fewer people, just as all content does.



    It will certainly come down to tuning of the rares and their mechanics as to the actual number of people that they can be beaten by.

    There is certainly some miscommunication that occurs when developers say 'group content' because of the variety of power that any group of 2-6 people could possess.
    For example, 'most but not all' of the heroic adventure 'group content' in COTF is balanced around a group of 3 players and 3 mercenaries.

    The majority of the 'group content' in the Plane of War is geared more toward 3-6 real players and 3-0 mercenaries.
    Saying that the rares require 'two groups' could possibly mean they're beatable by 3 outstandingly powerful classes and 3 mercenaries, 6 players in two groups of 3 with 3 merceanries, 12 players in a raid construct or 30 people in a guild coming together treating the spawns as mini raids. It will all come down to tuning and the tactics employed by the players.

    The best analogy from EQ's history I can come up with to liken what our intent with the rares is, are the Squires in Crystallos during the early days of Secrets of Faydwer.
    The squires were exceptionally difficult at the time, to the point where I would consider them 'two group rares'. Certainly they 'could' be beaten by less, but often times more than one group of my guildmates would work together to take them out because the rewards were worth our time to work together to obtain.


    We are aware that there are situations where pets are more capable of tanking content than actual players and discussions are taking place regarding it.
    This is a separate topic than what we should keep the thread focused on however.
    As it regards to the rares in Plane of War, it is something we are aware of.



    1. The relative difficulty of the Plane of War content will be handled slightly differently than the basepop found in other zones. This relates to not only hit points but damage, spell choices, immunities and social behavior.

    2. 2.00x experience for 1.20x hit points is not a likely scenario. As a spoiler, the ZEM of Plane of War will be a value appropriate for a Planes of Power era zone (much less than modern zones.)

    3-4. The likelihood and locations of the rares will hopefully end up being 'fair'.

    5. This will be something that we pay close attention to. Currently the spread of rare NPCs is such that it would be surprising if a single party could control the camps of more than 1, possibly 2 of them.

    6. The quests that require killing NPCs will be tuned around the intended time to complete the quests.

    7. That is the current plan at this time.


    From my understanding of the items being created at this time:
    The rares will always drop an item or items that are superior to COTF group level items.
    They have a percentage chance to drop an additional item that is an augmentation, a right click utility item or a piece of gear of (~RoF T3) raid level quality (at this time I believe only 4 items fall into that final category.)
    The difficulty of the NPCs will be based on the quality of their additional percentage chance item.


    It does make me a bit sad that people aren't more interested in asking questions about the history of the zone, the design process in general, what the original design documents may have had written in them, etc, but here we are.
    It's good that people are passionate, but being passionate and constructive is a better use of everyone's time than being passionate and bickering about topics covered in so many other thread on the forums. :)



    Not entirely related to the comment, but upon last check there were 32 people serverwide that had completed the Hero's Journey.
    Just a few people are fans of the 'crazy long progression' and I salute the ones that are.
    One of the principles that the team working on the quests in the Plane of War are trying to stick to are quests that are in the spirit of ones that would have actually taken place during Planes of Power. We're avoiding using the task system for the quests that take place in the zone so that they will better resemble 'classic quests'.


    Unfortunately the in game atlas is not to scale nor does it represent every land mass in their 'correct' location.
    Cartographers have had to deal with representing a sphere on a plane for many years in both Norrath and on Earth.
    However, if you cross-reference the landmasses seen on the globe in Skyfire you can see that they line up as follows with the Rallosian globe (please forgive the bad image compression):
    [IMG]
    Mykaylla, Obiziana, Yinla and 11 others like this.
  14. Kelefane Augur

    Likely one group of raiders in raid gear. I seriously doubt 2 groups will be 100% mandatory across the board to kill one.
    Elricvonclief likes this.
  15. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    Burrpole and undiscovered islands??? hmmm



    I will say i remember when i was "forced to be a skeleton" i could sit down to med (cause we had to) and i was able to see what looked to be "other zones" through the floor that were NO WHERE near where we were. Crystallos is a perfect example of one
  16. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Easily solved.

    Announcing EQ's twenty first expansion: EverQuest: Discworld
    Coming Soon™

    [IMG]
    Iila likes this.
  17. Kelefane Augur

    Very disappointed too. I was hoping for a little more raid content to bridge today's current monotony in the raid game to the next staggered one night stand.
  18. Iila Augur

    Waiting on Velious 2: Freeze Harder. With the south(north?) pole zone where your compass points towards the center.

    Mostly bits of geometry that the artist was hiding down there while constructing the zone or that got cut for whatever reason. Sometimes it's subsections for instances. Rarely it could be an actual secret world, but it's mostly boring construction leftovers.
  19. Axxius Augur

    You have to understand that there is a very limited window of opportunity to express concerns and make points that may make you rethink and revise some of the potentially problematic decisions, before the zone is released and it's too late to change anything that's not game-breaking. There will be plenty of time to ask questions about the lore and design history of the zone after we actually experience it. But it will be too late to try and change anything then.
    Fanra and Sinestra like this.
  20. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    2 players 2 mercs is what was said during beta iirc

    Squires were awesome, their spawn rate was not



    I would like to know all these things if you remember from my PM last year!

    Only 32? Really?


    DO NOT HAIL THE PLANAR PROJECTION UNTIL EVERYONE IS REZZED!!!!!!!!!!!!

    The buried Sea Islands are above Odus, but very tiny