I've been playing some of the competitions games, and I had a thought that might be fairly easy to implement, which might add some freshness to the game, especially in the area of the Old World Zones. I know that over the years there have been many adventure elements created as oneshots and introductory elements for the game. Many of the Competition's games have this feature as well. Everquest implements these things at Holidays, Summer, Autumn, and such, and they have been very successful. How about offering a new element every month or even every 90 days? I'm suggesting Adventure Elements, not game alterations or suchlike. Something more akin to doubling spawn rate for monsters in old world zones, adding an exp bonus beyond the standard zone bonus (similar to the zone bonus offered in POK, but only for one zone, and bigger?). You could offer a double drop bonus (or just an additional drop chance for items that are rare). You could offer additional bonuses for completing quests. In general, I'm suggesting one time one zone bonuses which can be picked up by any appropriate level character. Another option might be offering a single server contest of sorts, where you create a character and perform some difficult, but attainable goal which would be for a first level character created just for that purpose, but with the prize being an item usable by any character on that account or on that server. This might be similar to the Drunken Race from Akanon to Qeynos, but could be anything at all. I'd suggest picking things that could only be accomplished under the character's own power or a group of characters in the same contest. There might be a flag that has to be set which disallows grouping or trading or transferring items from anything but other flagged characters. Of course, this can still be abused, but I'm sure you can figure out a way to spot and disallow abuse. Well, just an idea.
I think a Year Wheel graphic would help existing, returning, and new players. I would think it takes very few hours to make, and it could be without dates (until such dates got announced).
Limited time awards I do not like. I could be afk for some time. Maybe only a month or two, but missing out on a chance for the rewards that dropped there is not fun. Waiting till next year to (hopefully) be unbusy during the time again, is not really fun.
Race should be some kind of dog, since we have cats. Class should be leather..and most likely a hybrid. Like a cross between Berserker and paladin, call it a ‘Squire’
We could compile a list of years worth of other people's ideas, and many of them are great ideas. How many would pass the "reasonable for the dev team to tackle" is likely a very short list. The OP's idea works better if the event/mission/task were on a monthly cycle where you could pick whichever one you wanted to do. Then if you miss 2 months you'd be able to prioritize which one to do first rather than wait a year for another shot. Once they got 15 or so of these monthly released tasks in the bag they could reduce the lockout to 2 or 3 weeks. Could be a useful system, might actually be reasonable for them to do. If a way could be found to use the "heritage" tab on character creation to open up other possibilities I think that is huge "keeping it fresh". Right now this tab only works for Drakkin to set their colour, setting colour restricts the classes. Imagine if Dark Elf was heritage #1, Trueborn Betrayer (no longer follow Mistmoore) was #2, Drachnid was #3 and Ghoul was #4. All of these could spawn out of Neriak, with some different class options (i.e., Ghoul Berserker, Drachnid Ranger, Trueborn Bard). They'd all wear any gear flagged dark elf as they are technically all dark elves. Drachnid is maybe too radical, but the others would use dark elf animations and such. Even if you have to keep the heritages in extremely similar skins: Dwarves, Thurgadin Dwarves, Fallen Dwarves of Rolfron Zek Iksar, Forsaken Iksar (rogues, berserkers, druids...) New Zealots of Cazic (clerics, paladins, wizards) So many possibilities for fresh replay just with this. A new class is not reasonable to develop. My guess is they would have consolidated classes years ago if they could figure out how to do it without ticking everyone off.
Unfortunately there needs to be value justification or this is a meaningless conversation. Resources are scarce and the customer base is spending less and less whilst demanding more and more. To say DBG is risk-averse at this stage is an understatement. They are putting their resources where they have a reasonable expected return - Expansions. Maybe it's time to let the community begin putting resources into designing content for what may be the game's final years. Maybe take on a team of remote internships? Fanatic-ships? You can train them in your tool sets, then turn them loose on content.
I would hope that EQ never has a "final year". I've had COH destroyed under me, and that community is still alive and buzzing with resentment over it after many years. As for EQ and players spending less money, I have been spending more money in the last three years than I ever spent back with classic. The in-game store is more than sufficient to generate revenue if they keep updating it with new stuff once in a while, which they seem to do nicely. As for game fees, I am paying for two accounts, and one of them I paid a year in advance. The other one in month to month, as I sometimes deactivate it and reactivate one of my free to play accounts as a paid account. I've been paying for expansions I will never use. I am just barely cracking content that was new 8 years ago, because I don't particularly like being on the cutting edge of things. I have my own playing style, and it does not include leveling or amassing vast magic item warehouses. I like to go at my own pace and enjoy the smell of the flowers along the way. I realize that I am an aberration in the gaming world. City of Heroes was actually my perfect game. I could reach max level, then putter around building bases or just running around doing what I liked doing. I got more groups in that game as well, simply because there were a heck of a lot of players with a similar mind set to me in that game. EQ is my second choice, and one I've been gaming in for almost 18 years. Not wanting to stop any time soon. I'd like a few things tossed toward my kind of player with every expansion, something that I could point to and say, well, I didn't waste my cash after all. The last two expansions, I really have a hard time saying that. I'm getting less and less likely to pony up my $50 plus for content I will never see. Just a word to the devs, don't forget, there are all kinds of players, not just bleeding edge players, and we all pony up our cash for some fun. Don't forget to toss a bone once in a while. It will keep us coming back for more.
Basically what I said here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...at-would-you-want.246367/page-44#post-3687377
So many people suggest adding new classes, but since the current trend among the EQ devs is AA and spell consolidation, I think the way we keep EQ updated is the ultimate gameplay streamline: Class Consolidation -Mages and Wizards are basically just nuke mans at the end of the day. Wizards get pets and all Mages are now Wizards. -Berserkers are just dumb, the game didn't need another melee dps when they came out and it still doesn't. What's the point of having Berserkers and Rogues and Monks? All Berserkers are now Rogues. -Druids and Shaman. 'Nature' and 'Spirits' are basically the same thing. Whatever. Druids get more buffs and all Shaman are now Druids. Shaman always got dog pets even though Druids turned into dogs? Well now that's streamlined too! -Bards are Rangers now. No reason. -Beastlords are also dumb. "Monk/Shaman duos are popular, let's make that a new class." Man, no wonder everybody hated Luclin. Just make a Monk you dingus. Oh wait, you are one now.
Mages are pointless delete, or just make them more useless on raids so people only use them on group content. Zeekers where the only melee dps that wasn't a warrior back in the day. Rogues and monks were not dps. Druids, see mage. Rangers, see druids/mage Beastlords as above.
There are so many ways to play this game that keeping it fresh may require more of the player than of the designers/devs.
"y'all'd've" stands for "you all would have". It's how some people say "you [plural] would have" to the south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It's an attempt to do something about the fact that the English language lost the distinction between "you [singular]" and "you [plural]" a few centuries ago. Not that most European languages are much better: even though they have a plural form of "you", it's also used when (politely) addressing a single person.
