Ideas that didn't work out (good thing)

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Leerah, Nov 25, 2020.

  1. Leerah Augur

    1. Luck
    2. Different wizard familiars for different spell focuses
    3. Three spires of AAs

    Add your own.
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    What's wrong with luck?
    Fenthen likes this.
  3. Downtoplow Journeyman

    1) Breastplate Emblems
    2) Monster missions
    3) I really disliked having different tiers of raid armor within the same xpac (SoF, SoD, UF, HoT, VoA, RoF, COTF)
    4) Powersources that require progression and raid progression to unlock/use
    Laurana, Leerah and Skuz like this.
  4. KrakenReality Augur

  5. Bigstomp Augur

    They merged the spires.

    For stuff that did not work:
    Level based augs for group gear (TBM) where you got a junk group drop then had to buy an aug to actually turn it into gear that wasn't useless.
    Elyssanda, Svann2 and Skuz like this.
  6. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    Ship-to-Ship Combat
    Fenthen, Bigstomp and Leerah like this.
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    1. Scaling up HA from older expansions to match the level of a newer expansion - utterly stupid idea that persisted despite a large pushback from players until the TLP reached those and the devs finally had to acknowledge the problem and begin rolling those back - something they have NOT completed as it was left unfinished when Prathun left DarkPaw.

    2. Monster Missions - I am not normally a hateful player but I hated monster missions with a passion, there were a handful that were tolerable once but even they got old fast, I will probably never complete the Coldain ones.

    3. Item speech - items that "talked" to you, the idea was sound, the implementation failed to deliver on the promise in disappointing fashion.

    4. Project M

    5. PvP - Sullon Zek's ruleset which was as close to RvRvR as EQ ever got was pretty fun but the world, zone connection layouts & design really never supported PvP properly or well.
    EQ3 might be able to learn a lot from the mistakes made in EQ PvP, but should take more from DAoC & W.A.R. I am a big fan of RvRvR but I detest 1v1 PvP especially with a class-based system like EQ uses.
    Accipiter and Fenthen like this.
  8. trakk Lorekeeper

    And just what is wrong with drakkin? Other than an opinion on appearance(I personally almost always make drakkin because I prefer the appearance of the toon and the armor)
    Jbur likes this.
  9. trakk Lorekeeper

    I think the poi
    point was that 3 spires didn't work out, so they merged them
    Leerah likes this.
  10. trakk Lorekeeper

    Not sure what the issue was with HAs as I was gone MOST of that, and idk what Project M is, but agree 1000% on the rest
  11. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Drakkin just have the most awkward melee animations EQ has, Luclin models generally had less "iconic" animations than the originals had but a few of the beta models were better than the ones that went into the classic version on launch.
    If I were a billionaire EQ player I'd definitely pump enough cash in to let Tom Tobey run rampant & overhaul all of the models & animations giving him a mandate to recruit a small team to focus on that.
    Leerah likes this.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    The devs took all the level 105 HA & scaled them up to 110, meaning they had higher level mobs, with later era spells so they did much more spell & melee damage.
    on TLP Level 105 Raid tanks in TDS gear got one shotted by level 105 TBM group content as a result and groups of raiders were struggling with the HA for a while, even after the spell damage was reverted they kept & still currently have all of the other scaled up features.

    Project M was a feature that allowed players to take control of a mob, so you could "be" a grass snake etc. it was the precursor to the ill-fated Monster Missions that came along later with Depths of Darkhollow.
  13. Leerah Augur

    Don't forget the Breath Weapon fiasco.

  14. Leerah Augur

    Ooh I just remembered another. Epic 2.5 pages. As many times as I've been to Dreadspire, I still don't know wtf I'm doing there.
  15. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Most of these things aren't fundamentally flawed as concepts, it is almost always an *implementation* issue and not a concept issue and could be fixed with tweaking, even now.

    • Luck
    Luck was implemented backwards. You get a ~50% chance to get lucky which then gives a very small bonus. It should have been a smaller chance with a higher bonus. I'm not saying it should be super large since obviously they wanted it to have room to grow over time, but it's so low no one but the completionists care about maxing it.
    Additionally, they screwed up the formula for lucky defense skills so you can never get more than 1% chance of a lucky defensive check no matter how much luck you have.
    And finally, the whole idea of fusing 2 of the same items together is bad. It was supposed to help solve the problem of what to do when you get 234 of the same item, but it really doesn't.
    Adjust the chance and damage, fix lucky defense, and change the fuse system so that instead of combining two of the same item, you "crush" unwanted items into a single "+luck" item which you can then fuse to any other item to increase it's luck and the whole system would be MUCH improved.
    • Separate Element Wizard Familiars
    There was nothing fundamentally wrong with these when they were implemented. They were added in Gates of Discord which was back before the spell system revamp when Wizards used to just chaincast a single spell. Spell weaves didn't exist, and there was usually no reason to switch elements unless resists. It was only after the game changed and we started needing to use multiple elements in a weave to get the best results that they became a problem, and then they were fixed some years ago into prismatic, and then a couple years ago THAT was merged with improved as part of the consolidation.
    • Three spires
    Again, there was nothing wrong with the idea. Having to choose between different abilities isn't bad design. The real problem was that virtually every class had 1 GREAT spire and 2 "meh" spires so that they always used the good one. They could have revamped the other spires to be better, but for many years the old AA designer refused to touch spires at all for any reason so they never got upgraded/fixed until they left.
    • Breastplate Emblems
    This actually was a bad idea. I mean the concept of a "set bonus" isn't itself bad, and many other games use this idea, but specifically in the context of EQ, where variety of gear used to be a thing rather than everyone being a clone with the same items, it was not a good concept.
    • Monster missions
    Again, there is nothing inherently bad about monster missions. A lot of them are actually pretty fun to do. The issue is that they work best as a "specialty" thing. That is to say they need to be used sparingly. Don't make a ton of simple kill quest monster missions. Make special one off things like the Veil of Alaris mission where you can shroud as a god and mass kill hundreds of mobs at once. Or the Talendor one where you get to fight off a "raid" of attackers. THOSE are fun.
    • Tiered armor
    EQ has had tiered armor since PoP. Earlier items weren't designed as part of a "set" but were made individually, but PoP started the concept of "sets" as well as tiers. Timeless > Elemental > Ornate. They played around with the concept in various ways over the years but it has existed in some form for almost 18 years now. Even prior to PoP, Risk Vs Reward is a core concept of EQ and harder content is supposed to drop better items, thus tiers exist even if they weren't called that.

    Where they started to go off the rails was SoF. SoF was the first expansion to REQUIRE you to do the lower tiers to make the higher tier armor. You had to farm T2 armor, then add a T3 drop, then add a T4 drop, which sucked hard, and they eventually changed it to allow you to use a template pattern in place of the lower items.

    But, as much as that sucked, the reason why they attempted it was understandable. SoF is when EQ switched from 6m to 1y expansions, and they were trying to find a way to stretch out the content to last longer. They knew that once progression was done you could skip doing all the lower content and just do the endzone, so they made it so you had to do the lower ones.


    SoD they flattened it a bit (T1 and T2 were not required to make T3, but T4 needed T3, and T5 was a group drop), and by underfoot they gave up on the concept of needing lower tier to upgrade. (Though they brought it back in EoK/RoS).

    • Locked powersources
    Again, I'm not really sure why you would say this is a failed idea? Powersources from the beginning (TBS) were locked behind progression. We can debate about whether items that decay are good for EQ or not, but I'd hardly call them a failure.
    The main issue with powersources was that of the 10 or so designs, only about 3 of them were any good. The others went unused except to pad Magelo profiles. The other issue was that the procs on the infusable weapons weapons were bad and didn't scale, but they "solved" that by not making weapons infusable after TBS and making proc augs instead.
    And the final issue was that they didn't upgrade them for many years until after a concerted effort Chandrok (old item dev) was convinced to make a new one that didn't suck (Xorbb). It was rare, but powerful and popular enough that it finally convinced them that the system itself wasn't a failure, it just needed a little TLC.
    I'd actually point to powersources as an example of how to take a system that was widely considered a failure and left to languish and revitalize it into something good. But I digress, you said locked powersources, but with the exception of the Xorbb one, all of them have been locked behind progression. The TBS/TDS/RoS/ToV powersources all require some form of progression to attain, either group or raid.
    • TBM Gear
    I'd hesitate to call this a failed idea since my understanding is that it wasn't intended to be continued ad-infinitum but was a one-off. That is to say it was intended as a "catch-up" mechanism along the same lines as Old Man McKenzie gear, or Underfoot's "Boomerang" mission gear. The idea being that your level 85 friend could group with your level 105 character and actually get gear they can use, and as they level all they have to do is swap out the augs instead of needing to farm a whole new set of 22 items every 5 levels.
    The biggest problem is that they made it way too complicated. There are so many different sets and slots and the vendors are in different zones, etc. New/lower level players had a really hard time managing that system. I guess maybe that could be enough to say it failed? Idk.
    • Scaling HAs
    I'm just repeating myself again but this wasn't a bad idea either. The problem, once again, was the implementation needed a little tweaking to get it just right.
    The TLP issue arose because TLPs weren't even a thing when HAs were designed. Fippy came out in 2011, and HAs were supposed to launch in RoF (2012) meaning that the actual design would have been 2011 or earlier. (They didn't make the cut in RoF due to time iirc, so they got bumped to CotF). It isn't unreasonable that there would be scaling issues related to a thing that didn't exist at the time.
    The TLP issue aside, the problem with scaling HAs was that there wasn't a point in doing them outside of the expansion they were designed for: You didn't get higher level currency/gear from an older scaled up mission, and there was almost always a better place to get EXP (not counting the stupid gribble missions that should have been nerfed sooner).
    It basically comes down to, if you want older content to stay relevant, it needs to BE relevant. Getting L100 items/gear when you are L110 is not relevant to anyone's interests.
    • Intelligent Items
    This was actually a failed idea. It's something that sounds cool on paper, but it is always going to be impractical outside of an extremely niche use case. The only time it was ever useful to turn item speech on was for the Rusted Locket, which was actually a really cool and unique thing.
    While I'd be sad to lose the Rusted Locket thing, they really should just rip out all item speech.
    • PvP/Project M
    Does it count as failing if you never were expected to succeed? EQ PvP was always an afterthought / unwanted stepchild.
    • Drakkin
    Yep
    • Epic 2.5
    Not a failure? https://articles.eqresource.com/demititles.php
    Metanis, Skuz and Grove like this.
  16. KrakenReality Augur

    Implementation is more important than concept thus they’re failed ideas.
    Skuz likes this.
  17. Velisaris_MS Augur

    The whole "item fusing" thing is utter crap.

    The luck stat should have just been rare Type 3 aug drops, with a random "+X Luck" stat on them. Make them no drop and people could decide for themselves how they wanted to upgrade things.

    I understand that "fusing" items together was a way to make people spend plat on the reagent, but there's much better ways to get plat out of the world.
    Skuz likes this.
  18. birdsong_pawn Augur

    I'm glad the Ogre rogues were scrapped.

    Omgrok shouts "ME SNEEKING. HA!"
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  19. Jbur New Member

    My preferred races are Drakkin (anything a Drakkin can be) -> Froglok (Shaman) -> Vah Shir (Berzerker ~ Beast Lord)

    IMHO all melee combat animations are pretty lame so that doesn't bother me at all. I'll use Drakkin breath weapons for the debuffs any time it's safe to do so.

    Of course I also run StickFigures=1 regularly so I frequently see only Drakkin. That setting is as close to deleting Ogres and Trolls as the game will allow :D
    trakk likes this.
  20. birdsong_pawn Augur

    Monster missions were great! They just needed better experience tuning. Here are a few good things about them.
    • They encouraged grouping for a little quick experience. Some of the most rocking times for grouping in EQ were LDON and MMs. The MMs just needed to be tuned down, not nerfed into oblivion.
    • Decent gear rewards for the level: I remember doing the Fairy monster mission for some dagger, then helping a bunch of people get it. I think I used some gear from the SolB and Lower Guk MMs for a short time.
    • Fun (and becoming a better EQ player): It was cool to learn how to play a monster mini-class or three in order to best contribute to your MM group.
    Leerah likes this.