You had to raid to get the original epic and you had to raid to get your class Possessed Dreadstone weapon. Not everyone got them when they were current. So yes even locked behind a raid drop they were still considered available to everyone because nothing stops people from forming a pickup raid.
can the epics be the reverse of the dichotimics? Those who got good ones have epics with lvl caps and straight bonus. Those with crappy ones get no lvl cap % increases? There is a huge problem with "something" for every class. You get huge winners and losers. Just compare ber dicho with paladin.
I agree that things should be available, but all of these items that have been described as well as previous epics have always required things in the latest expansion at the time. Hard to grow an item over time out of old world things.
True. It is a continuation of Epic as a label or a name, not a quality, and quite explicitly so. It is important to communicate, to set the right level of expectations.
At which point you should call it something else because otherwise you're being disingenuous about it, advertising a feature that carries with it certain expectations you have zero intention of meeting. This is something that was done time and time again by SOE/DBG and every single time all it does is piss people off.
Important to communicate? Like, with labels that are words? So stop using a word that connotes wildly different expectations? Maybe don't title your thread with that word? It's like "hey guys, I have an idea for Coca-Cola 3.0" - body of post / substance of content "The problem with coke is synthetic sweeteners and carbonation are difficult, so we take some oranges, and squeeze them into a glass..."
I still like the idea of an epic weapon augment. Have all the effects of the original epics in a type 4,8 aug that is also on par stats-wise with say the artisans earring.
An Epic aug would be nice, they couldn't have the click effect on them but they could make the focus effects work on modern spells.
But Sir, I can't go back now and change the title, and when I made it, this thing that you emphasize was not evident to me, I did not see it as important at that time. I looked up Epic on Wikipedia, and I can see how it is a misnomer. I don't like Epilogue 3.0, it has some undesired connotations, but maybe Aftermath 3.0? (Bear in mind that I am not a native speaker). Other suggestions? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres It could also be Legend 3.0, Something that started as Epic, and now is a Legend... I also like Saga, being from the Nordic countries . Saga has the connotation of being a succesion of stories, often short, often about the same hero, so "the Saga continues" fits quite well. The Saga of <class name> in <expansion name>... or The Saga of the <Epic original item> of <toon name>...
Class-differentiated rewards for high level quests are excellent if done right. They're just not connected at all to epics.
Well, obviously my intent is to build a connection, because I believe in the value of binding the gaming narrative of old and of today together, and I believe in that such a connection, if done correctly, avoiding the pitfalls as we have been debating in this thread, would strengthen an experience of continuity. Also, I really liked wielding my Epic x.x, and loved my Epic pet. I would very much like those moments of achievement, that are among my most emotional, to have a link to my current play. My guild spent a whole night raiding Plane of Air for the Crown, they came with me and killed Phinigel (oh did we drown in those days), and the day when I finally got to smack QUILMANE for the cloak (said with a fair amount of resent, perhaps with a tinge of hate) was pure elation and catharsis. The guild is no more, some of the people who played in it passed away, and it is only when we discuss this topic on the boards that I find myself remembering this stuff. Today I play with 2 dudes and some boxes. My Epic represents emotions and experiences, and it is part of the "human experience capital" (not really social capital) that is an untapped asset for Daybreak.
Yeah, see I don't buy that the experience of Special Side Challenger Of New Expansion /achievement, that happens to reward a slightly better 6th pet for magicians (other stuff for other classes, but by the same means), is going to generate/evoke the same sorts of memories at all. Facing particular challenges in PoSky, Kedge Keep, endlessly clearing the wild population of Karana - were all highly out of the ordinary things done specifically for you in pursuit of furthering specially constructed class story quest. Ditto expeditions to various other locales to face & fetch, for the other 13 classes. If every one of your companions in that time had each needed a Quillmane drop, so that the whole guild just lived there for two months /randoming the Magic Pegasus Spleen every couple days -- my call is that you wouldn't now care about it. The Experience was getting folks to go out of their way in service to your goal because you're so special and so was the item you set as your goal. They didn't always know why the eff they were fighting a shark in front of a barbarian in Lake Rathetear for you, but you did because 17 little episodes had guided you along a class quest to get there. That was Epics. That takes, by the word of the professionals, a developer a year of work to arrange. Who knows, though. These haven't even been seriously spit-balled in the past decade; it may take even longer with so much higher expectations regarding content. A 31 item laundry list that happens to include out-of-the-way stuff (ahem, the mage epic) probably wouldn't cut it for modern gamers. Do you recall epic 2.5s? Basically no one does, because except for keeping the items "alive" for another year, there was nothing Epic about them. It took a group effort to get a rare drop to extend the epic 2's usefulness. The same drop for every class, the same "quest" for every class - no one cares now. They could have been more accessible and at the same time taken more rigmarole. The upgrades could have kept going expansion by expansion. But ... why? Why wield epic2+7 instead of an item with current stats that actually fits the expansion's theme? I think we're still not together on what it means to be a class Epic, and what it means to call your new thing one.
My opinion: 1. I mostly agree with Brohg here. Unless the quests are similar to epic 1.0's in scope, uniqueness per class and effect, it's not an epic and shouldn't be called epic 3.0. 2. With today's limited designer budget and output, spreading the content over the many classes in EQ would make each quest pretty shallow. 3. Even if the quests were amazing, we're never going to get back that new-EQ feeling of completing our 1.0s. We're too grizzled, too competent and too well geared to care. In those days there were only a handful of actual "cool " items in EQ. Now I drive a pickup truck overflowing with cool , and walk around like a peacock where every feather is something amazing. 4. I think the Artisan's Aug is a good path to follow, sans all the crafting. Not that the crafting was bad, just, that we did that. Just leverage an older quest by making it a pre-req, Ex: coldain ring or Breakdown in Communication, and build off it to make a new aug. I actually think making an aug that grows in power with Slayer progression, or achievement point count, would be a good way to reward players for content that they otherwise wouldn't do (and would really annoy players with some of the achievements in the game) 5. You don't need anything fancy for us to have fun. I don't know how the rest of you feel but I was mostly annoyed through the entire warrior epic augment process, where I had to perform some chickenshit mockery of combat on a chessboard where even after completing it I feel like I don't know if I did it right or just bugged my way through. Just put 10-20 named NPCs that are a fair bit harder than EoK T2 named into random parts of the world, add some flavor text, maybe some ground spawns if you want and you've got a sizable chunk of content. Nothing fancy, but enough to challenge people. 6. If you include a raid, make it a new one that can be triggered only by completing the previous steps, is fairly simple and relatively easy, and make it a decent source of loot such that it's an amazing conclusion, but isn't something you have to drag unwilling people too. It should just be a massive loot pinata. A key consideration here is that unless you severely gate the quest (ex: add cragbeast queen or stormfeather's loot as a requirement), everybody and their alts are going to be plowing through this quest. So if there's a culmination raid, we'll be doing it a lot for a long time.
oh man, this. SO much of the "magic" of early EQ was leveraged on player ignorance / incompetence. TLPs show it - with nearly nothing more than an enhanced base of knowledge, the entire first year of EQ content can be crammed into under a month by those so inclined
It is like life, if we all started over from birth with our current knowledge, it would not be the same. We would probably all be much richer though Also, most of us came from text based muds or Ultima Online and our 3D gaming at the time was Doom or Castle Wolfenstein. EQ blew all that out of the water at the time and hooked many of us in its clutches ever since.
No. Do you know why "they otherwise wouldn't do" it? Because most people find those achievements and check boxes beyond boring. Forcing people to do a bunch of time wasting trivial crap for big rewards does not make the game more fun. Yes, those obsessed with completing any check box put in front of them enjoy it, but far more of us prefer doing other things on our own accord that actually entertains us. For me, I enjoy playing several classes once I've topped off my main. Allows me to play the game from different angles and try new things. I don't want to be endlessly running errands with no challenge.
