When daybreak releases a new expansion on live I’m assuming they tuneit for the current power level of our characters and any new gear, levels, aas etc etc....there has to be some kind of mathematical figuring going on that considers power upgrades versus mob power etc etc, that’s probably pretty close to linear each expansion and I pray I never see those equations for personal reasons. Anyway, if this REMOTELY accurate then could they not just release an expansion and tune it for say, level 50 or 60 at whatever they thought maxed stats and power should be at lvl 50 or 60 using same math? It would in effect be a new Everquest beacause each expansion would be like an alternate reality(first xpac could be literally SG2.0 if they chose it to be) not following the pasts expansions, all new content but we start over. Would be like TLP servers but no special rule set AND new content. Each new expansion would be like new content and taking us into a completely different timeline or story? Any interest in that?
There would have to be a massive interest to make it worth the expense. I can tell you everyone I know would not be interested in buying an expansion that their level 115 characters would find of no use.
It not just a simple scaling of the mobs to X level. Char gain AA over time and new spells / abilities. Events are tuned around the current stuff so to back date and exp to say level 60 you would have block all of the abilities that would cause the content to be broken. A quick example would be OMM events. if you ever wonder why they picked level 50 it is because it was pre AA so they were able to bypass the need to re balance. but even with keeping that in mind people were able to complete the OMM mission solo. That because of new QoL improvements to the game as well as the skill set of player. You can see the same thing on TLP. as much as people want to believe tlp are going back in time to the way it was before the changes to the game make it impossible. No one when the game 1st game out was able to level from 1-50 in a day or even a week and yet with TLP you see it happening. As much as we like to think they could just down grade the level of the mobs and make it work, it would offer no challenge and in turn no interest.
They tried to work scaling content into EQ. The TBM heroic missions and the TBM raids plane of hate/plane of fear all scaled from 85 to 105. The problem with that scaling content was getting the balance correct. When the level cap went to 110 they over scaled the raids and ended up making them incredibly more difficult than they were at 105. When they finally decided to cap the level scaling to the level they were released at the raids were still over tuned for TBM. So the answer to your question, they could release an expansion and retune it to a particular level, but it would likely not be a straight forward script they could run to mod everything up/down.
1. Streamline the pipeline to create Hardcore Heritage zones with mobs that spread in difficulty from current expansion's T1 to above the current expansion's difficulty. Re-use the same loot and mob abilities from current expansion. No quests. Minimal effort. 2. Create Hunter achievements for these new zones. 3. Create a new and very powerful augment that gets ugpraded when you complete those specific hunter achievements. 4. In the months between release (~March to October) release a new HH zone every month, or every two months. Make it only available for a month with no definite time that it'll be available again. Now players like me that only sub for expansions have to choose to either stay subbed year round (or slum it and go f2p) or miss out on a significant power increase. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
And where are they going to find the extra man power from to do all this? Outside of the anniversary I don't recall seeing any new content for years other then the usual once a year expansion.
CROWD FUNDING I've suggested this many times. When we want fancy stuff they should put a price on it. Open up a kickstarter and see how much support we can raise.
EverQuest is a for profit entity. It already is crowd funded by selling client software, subscriptions, virtual shop sales and Krono deserves it's own mention. How much more are we supposed to "invest" in a damn video game? Edit: I didn't even mention the multi-account ownership of near all EverQuest players. No thank you. We pay enough.
A game that cannot afford to invest in content would do very little with crowd funded cash. It would be the worst investment one could make, ever. You may as well buy stock in coal.
Is it time now to spread the rumor that coal and ice cream will be in extremely short supply owing to Covid 19? I am just thinking of investment opportunities.
We get new expansions every year. That is new content. I have never suggested crowd funding so dunno what they would be doing with it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding_in_video_games Just because you don't to do it doesn't mean it's not a thing.
They've actually tried this kind of thing before, it was called Legacy of Ykesha, and while the content was okay it was not really relevant to most or enough players at the time - but that was before TLP servers existed - the features / tools and the one or two spells that it brought were the only relevant things that it had. It has it's place as offering a few new places to go & a few items that you can't get elsewhere at the levels it was designed for but it wasn't really all that memorable due to it arriving as a mid-level experience. The fact that it is now bundled together with PoP on TLP tells you something but I do not think that type of "sideways" expansion is a good value for money proposition for the game right now & would detract from the work for the next live expansion far too much, any sidegrade would have to have just 3 zones and mean that the next live expansion would end up with just 3 zones...nobody wants that kind of dilution and it would be bad for the game's future. If at some point in the future where EverQuest has had prolonged growth of player numbers & has been able to expand the dev team back to a point that the title had in it's heyday than perhaps we could start seeing this sort of thing appear, for the forseeable future it would not be good for the game. That all said, if the TLP server community continues to grow & grow & eventually becomes big enough to fund the kind of sidegrades you are talking about we might be in business, at some point the revenue those much bigger TLP numbers could bring in could warrant a bit more investment in the earlier levels of the game & see some more content developed for it so that the future TLP experience is even richer in content - as in an extra zone each year added in to one of the existing expansions - but I think we are a long way from that at the moment, maybe when they have to open 2, 3, or 4 TLP each year to fulfil demand.
They've already done a pseudo-crowdfunding thing a little while back, it was called "Lifetime Memberships". To this day, I don't think anyone knows precisely what they did with the money.
