Idea for saving Zek

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Tutankamen, Oct 4, 2017.

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  1. Tutankamen Augur

    Zek has almost no toons. I have an idea I'd like to propose to increase the fun factor and bring people back to zek.

    Some feedback could be appreciated.

    My idea would be something like a /zekcopy where you could copy your blue toon onto zek. Obviously to keep people from cloning gear you could put a timer on this action for something like 6 months. That way - you don't have to exp your way up, but you can bring your bluetoon over to Zek for free, or maybe for a charge. It would be a fun way to re-introduce some new blood to the server. The idea is that you wouldn't actually be 'moving' to the server, just copying. Obviously you'd have to put a flag on a char like that, and anyone native to zek could transfer off, anyone who copied couldn't.

    Any thoughts?
  2. Duhbeast Augur

    My thoughts are that this idea has been tossed around before. I come from Vallon Zek, and then Zek, and then I came to Cazic back in 2010. I would totally be on board with a copy over server to play around in and cause grief and have fun!
    Sokon likes this.
  3. Redrum_Redrum Augur

    [IMG]

    Found the issue with Zek
    Brovaar and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  4. eqzekisdead Augur

    It is not worth dev time to set that up. EQ pvp is so broken i think it is impossible to fix or balance.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  5. Scorrpio Augur

    I played from launch till Luclin on Rallos. On PvP server, focus is still character progression which is still 100% PvE, be it xp or camping for gear or raiding or questing. With an added side of constantly watching your back. Reputation mattered twice as much, you kept a list of bad guys. People in zone would mobilize if an undesirable popped in. Griefers tended to keep just out of range of level capped players, so once you hit level cap, you rarely had to worry about bad apples and PvP was mostly in form of guilds contesting territory. But for the mist part, people focused on PvE and advancement, PvPing only when necessary. That was back then. Not really sure what people on Zek do these days.

    Now enter your scheme where anyone can copy a toon to Zek. With all the levels, AA and gear. Now if such player logs on and wants to work on his progression/gear/tradeskills/AA, where will he do it? On the home server of course, where he is invested in, and will continue playing afterwards. One would log onto his Zek copy for one reason alone: to go pick up some fights. They will not care about their rep cause they don't need the courtesy of being left alone when they do PvE stuff. They will also soon discover that going against other copied toons who are ready for a fight is not as entertaining as harassing the locals who are just going about their business.

    So, you think that opening server to raid-geared maxed out players who come to griief and have zero incentive to play nice is a good idea?
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  6. Lily Augur

    I was about to say it sounds like fun, and I would likely give it a shot, but Scorrpio makes some really good points.
    Evye likes this.
  7. Reval Augur

    You could fix pvp if people cared enough about it, but far too many of the ones that do now don't pvp anymore because it kept dilapidating over and over. Let's look at this scenario:

    original eq through to luclin: pretty healthy pvp.

    Luclin: one shot kills introduced. pvp diminished due to manaburn.

    PoP: pvp diminished due to super harm touch, another one shot kill. Diminished further due to sk ability to kill themselves to repop super harm touch.

    Lost Dungeons of Norrath: pvp diminished HEAVILY due to instanced zones. Now that people can run into instances, it's a lot harder to find people to fight, and a lot less reason to make a stand and fight.
    This situation wasn't fixed like manaburn and super harm touch. It remains in the game today.

    Secrets of Faydwer: pvp diminished heavily again due to gyrospire clicks. Now any super offensive class will ALWAYS have the ultimate defense in that they can try to kill someone and then immediately click gyrospire. If I were a dev, I would have taken the da while zoning out of gyrospire beza and zeka at least while gyrospire was bugged, which was literally until the last patch.

    Underfoot: Berserkers made basically into gods due to axe of rallos. I remember a berserker that quit because it was "too easy".This ability was so one shot killish it was unbelievable and it's up every 30 seconds. Also, the setup while great overall was too faction burnish. Faction burning always makes pvp worse, and if the other side does it, the only solution is to get an enchanter or bard to faction on the mobs so that they don't die while fighting the original faction burner. Now someone else attacks this person, and THAT PERSON gets faction burned. It's a disease as soon as you allow it and one side does it. If you want pvp to go well, stop doing things like where you placed tons of mobs that can literally kill anyone at the zone in to health. The first time I zoned in there, I got faction burned immediately, and sure in this case Gyrospire is almost a balancing measure, but it's still really stupid. I'm glad that thing got nerfed, and I hope if pvp becomes popular this faction burn facilitating design stops.

    But note that even at this time, the interest in pvp was so strong despite, and maybe in part due to, the one shot kills, the twinks brought in from blue, the instances, the hacking, and brokenly powerful instant gate capability that even with this expansion being extremely difficult, the server was still strong. There were definitely fewer raid guilds than when the servers merged into Zek, but it was still going for sure.

    House of Thule: Rogues made into one shot gods. Berserkers start out with slap in the face as one shot gods. Rangers turned into one shot gods. Rangers and Druids given unresistable basically instant cast snare. Gyrospire still in full effect. I know several clerics that basically stopped playing their cleric outside of raids at this point, if they hadn't before this point. Being a cleric with so much one shotting was just dumb in pvp. Hey look everyone you could heal dies in a single hit, actually making the entire concept of healing useless. This is worse than luclin and pop because these guys while discing can one shot multiple people if they do it right.

    VoA: can't really remember any big deals about this one. I don't remember one pvp fight here, as none were memorable. Nowadays it's just Valley of Lunanyn kills on some guy pl'ing some other guy, if anything.

    CotF: tons of pvp occurred in ewtk. But the zone design drastically favored casters. You could levitate way up the high walls and cast on people at the zone in. faction burning occurred often on the bokon like mobs near the 4 portals (this wasn't a factor that balanced things out, it was just boldly a factor that sucked that any dev would put it in there). Giving wizards the faction casting robe in revamped mistmoore really took that crap into overdrive. Binding somewhere in the zone and gating was commonplace for wizards. This was honestly kind of fair since so many one shottish classes were melee. But it proves that you can balance out things at least a little bit. That said, wizards could kill pretty fast on a burn if they set it up right, and necros were monstrous with the swift dots. Sure you could just gate as soon as a necro dotted you, but that still makes necros really powerful, especially in this particular type of environment.

    TDS: Still some faction burning, still stupid (this is coming from a guy that played an enchanter for christ's sake.) Zone exploiting happened in katta by people in the opposing guild going into the wall right where the water started, effectively going in between the floors. This was drastically bad. I forget what expansion gave mages virulent talon, but in situations like that, virulent talon really "shined" because some loser could go between the floors, target you, /pet attack, and there's not a ton you could do about it. Thank god for bind sight, or this may never have been found. M Q usage was rampant in opposing guild. There's one guy who had proven it outright as time after time after time after time after time after time when he hit his burn key, an opposing wizard would always hit arcane destruction for the 300k rune exactly after a certain ability in the key was pressed (due to the speed this was not humanly possible to do with this level of consistancy). People in opposing guild that would gate as soon as a ranger cast called shots on them would just stand there and die if the ranger used no abilities and bowed them to death (because they were gating due to a third party program....). It's always going to be easier to see M Q usage in an opposing guild than in your own guild, but I can easily say that M Q has done the most to ruin pvp in this game. I wish that garbage never existed.

    Progression servers took a huge bite out of raiding guilds on Zek around this time or early TBM, I forget which. If raiding had been as easy as on blue servers, we probably would have kept going strong even with much smaller numbers, but it honestly wasn't. That fix came in too late. Honestly, it should have been in before SoD where they had that don't cure or you ae and kill people + get credit for the kills. Honestly, it should have been in before Prophecy of Ro where a guy with a well over 200 kill streak got killed by someone else on a raid intentionally and basically he quit the game that day. Honestly it should have been in before Ghost so that Zek could have been in there and completed that expansion (which if they were blue they could have easily done) at a reasonable time. Honestly it should have been in there as soon as instances became a thing. Good job implementing it. I applaud you for doing it. But at the same time, wow. Just wow. It really shows the level of ownership that Sony and Daybreak took of that server... I guess tack the death of Zek in many people's eyes to progression servers though, but if a bit more care had been taken I wouldn't be surprised if the server was still honestly not just alive, but well today.

    TBM: nice freaking faction burn mobs at the zone in. Aaaaagaaaain. I stopped caring for most of this expansion.

    EoK: By this point I'll give you that shaman and druids are viable options due to dots, which makes having more raid healers possible. The game isn't so one shottish at this point that the dots don't matter, even though they had to get pretty damn powerful to matter. pvp is neat when it happens here, due to the varied content. If you want, get rid of M Q because we all know you can, and throw in an incentive and maybe you'd get a few people. But is it worth it? Probably not at this point. Too late.
  8. Tutankamen Augur


    I know what you're saying- one of the reasons I would suggest making the copy lockout period extremely long- like 6 months or something... You know what I mean? That way, you can't just keep copying over griefing. Anyway - that beats being alone on a dead server like Zek is now. I hear what you're saying- my idea is only something I was hoping might rescue that server. All of my toons were on Zek- if I was still there, I'd prefer there be people there, to no people there. I had to transfer off because at any given time, there were literally 0 people on - you could ask anything you wanted in general and not get a single response.
  9. slayerofbats Augur

    Personally I think PVP should be migrated onto the regular servers, where you can flag yourself for PVP by talking to the Priest of Discord. You get a red name and can fight with any other red player, any time, any place. When you want to stop, you visit the Priest again and disable it. But Zek or this idea wouldn't work without more PVP popularity, and PVP wont be popular without it getting some dev time, and devs already have their hands full.
  10. Caster Lorekeeper

    I suggested this years ago - and people had the same response - missing the point.

    Yea, PvP is broken. Yea, the game is intended to be PvE. Yea, it will take too much developer resource to fix. None of that is the point. The server exists as it does now - the backbone infrastructure is there. Create /zekcopy exactly like /testcopy.

    You can move blue toons to Zek to PvP. No one will care about the quality of PvP. Devs won't have to deal with requests for PvP fixes. The point is, you move to Zek to kill other characters as a complete sidebar to the PvE function of the game. If you don't want to participate in that, or if you think PvP is imbalanced, or if you are Reval and are still under the illusion people read your 50,000 character posts after 5 years - then you just don't /zekcopy over.
  11. Stymie Pendragon

    I have no intention of participating on the server, but I think the idea has merit. Since the population is so low, what would it hurt? A sandbox for messing around with PVP might work.
  12. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    You can't unflag yourself. Requires a gm to change it back. They won't do it for you more than once (I bet they won't do it even once these days).

    Also, the problem with that has always been the issue that you can't heal or buff or be healed or buffed by other players. Otherwise, people would have gone red much more frequently if it only changed your ability to pk or be pk'd.
    fransisco likes this.
  13. Sokon Augur

  14. High Voltage Augur

    Iirc this came up in a thread recently and (because it was on TLP?) got dev attention? I was under the impression they fixed it, but might be wrong. Can't even find the related thread now.
  15. Reval Augur

    Caster: passive aggressive since 1989.

    Be mad. Or take into account the things I've said that apply here. If you're gonna make a pvp testcopy stomping ground, do it right. Don't do it stupid. Just make it zones that are conducive to really fun pvp in varying sizes (60 people could be plane of tactics for example, 30 could be ToV, 15 could be cotf or solb or ruins of old sebilis. There are a lot of potential zones. But this way, you don't testcopy over to a full on server, run through a billion zones, not find anyone, give up, and it's done. Or you find someone after 20 minutes and get a kill or don't, but why the hell did you have to look for even 1 minute for a fight? Everyone there will be looking for pvp, and some people try to just wait out in "their zone" forever which is boring, cowardly, and stupid when it gets drawn out too long. Switch zones up on people, make them pvp out of their comfort zone sometimes. And for the love of god, don't allow faction burning in it. Don't give them the option to be losers that just set up shop in their zone and wait for the other person to always go to them. Make fun things, not stupid things. If people are doing it with a toon that is testcopy, make rewards for events which can be claimed on the main server.

    Zek is basically dead, but at least if you do it now, you're only turning 3-10'ish players that aren't geared out and are trying to progress into a sniping gallery for EoK raid geared test copy toons of ex pvp'ers that have no reason to actually raid there or group there. Good luck getting support for your grand experiment.
  16. Nolrog Augur

    Agree. IMO, the issue is not that people have to level up, it's that PVP is so horribly broken that it's not really that enjoyable.
  17. Sokon Augur

    I see this as a common complaint. I'd like to elaborate on classes in pvp a little.

    Rogues, Shadowknights and Rangers are well suited for pvp kills.

    Monks, Zerkers, Magicians, Enchanters, Wizards, Necros, Warriors, Druids and Bards all having skills/assets that make them viable and fun in varying aspects to play in PvP

    Paladins, Beastlords, Clerics and Shaman could use some PvP love, a stun that works, more viable..... something, in PvP.

    Summation, PvP isn't completely unfixable, it's just been declared that and left untouched for years. Honestly, the recent nerf to gyrospire location device was a change asked for by Zek for years, instagates, particularly gyro, helped ruin pvp. Small changes like this can fix it quite a lot. A little love to those last 4 classes may fix it entirely.
  18. Yruc Augur

    Anyone remember DAOC? Make it like that. Merg Zek with another server, turn them blue, (they can go ahead and turn back to red by talking to priest if want to but on a normal server no one can buff / heal them etc) But then turn zek into a large pvp arena where people can just go to have fun. Have several different level ranges / and scenarios. So like level 85-90 / 90-95 / 95-100 / 100+ have a capture the flag type one, have a just zerg fest one, most kills in 15 minutes or something like. Have capture / defend a fort / have a kill the dragon / escort the dragon where 1 team tries to kill it and one team protects it etc....

    Just goto pok and have translocators there for each type / level and you just say battle and they "port your character over to the PVP zone and scenario you choose..

    This would put the Zek people on a server with population the could progress again. this will also give people a reason to go PVP and not worry about griefers

    While this would take some work it could also be fun and give some people at max level something to do....
  19. fransisco Augur

    This will only do 2 things:
    1. flood zek with raid geared rogues, sks, and rangers who only show up at peak times to pick fights.
    2. for a few days, the cattle (every other class) might show up to pad kill the ranger/sk/rogue kill numbers.

    In a couple weeks, it'll all go back to normal....
  20. DamnataAnimus Elder

    Tbh, it would be better to copy warhammer online pvp design. Only reason that game died was horrible pve imo. The pvp was funny.

    The company who made DOAC also made warhammer online.

    I'm all for the ops ideas but the real problem that would impede them is the fact that the game is horribly balanced for pvp. As in I don't think many other mmos would be as unbalanced.

    Add in the small development team which means no fixes related to pvp would happen (or if a miracle happened and there was a fix for pvp, no doubt all servers would be affected).

    While it won't happen the best fix for pvp would be battleground type zones which are randomised every so often. That way people who want to pvp can do so without leaving the server they are on. In conjunction with this being added free transfers off zek could be offered. However you would run into the same situation Francisco said.

    I'm really not sure that there is a fix for pvp now sadly.
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