Thought come to my head. Revolving updated zones for Exp. Once a month a new old world zone is put up to be played in. Much like exp potions but this time you are able to enter this old zone at your current level. Lets just say 70-80,80-90,90-100 level of the zone all the same zone but with different level mobs. Not new graphic or anythign like that but open up the zone and put a great ZEM on it with SC you can access the zone for so long. These zones wont allow mercs and would have increased exp for full groups. Noticeable jump for full groups. Each month or so this could change. Could be as easy as the guild porter, just buy a stone and your wisped away to your new wonder land. Bad idea? Instead of updating old zones could just bring them up to level so that people could enjoy. Could possible put a few good new quest with some great reward to promote people wanting to go into the zone. Just a thought so they could let us play current characters in old zones with same level mobs for experience and still make a little money to boot. What about making a 6 man group mission out of old quest that give up to date loot and experience. Buy a stone give it to vender and your group is instantly in Tipt running the trial from the past. I would love to see a duengeon finder like this. In general announce. 2 looking for 4 more to run level 100 Tipt run. Ranger with ws needed. Bonus experience and bonus loot for the zone and it will have a time limit. Have it so that each person is rewarded loot for the run or if only one person pays to go then only one main loot item. Just a thought, trolls not welcomed here either. If you do not like it that fine but if you just want to troll please move on.
Better idea make it so that these places drop all the hats and hero forge stuff so it doesnt clutter our corpse on normal server
There are already zones (all zones) which give increased XP for a full group of real players over a group of players and mercs. While the rest of the idea is nice in theory, I think that the implementation would be a bit more difficult than the OP thinks. Dynamic level range zones have not been updated for several years for a very good reason; they pretty much require each to be tuned as if it is a new zone of mobs/quest/mission. I think that the Dev's are going to be of the mind that they would rather spend the time on an actual new things instead of the time to tune a bunch of existing content to a new level range each time an expansion comes out.
As far as I can tell, mercs do some funny things with the group exp. They do NOT count as members when deterigthoup's exp bonus. My typical "group" consists of me, my bo, and 2 cleric mercs. This group has two toons and two mercs; the two toons generate a bonus of 20%, and the entire group gets 120% the solo kill exp. However, mercs DO count as group members when it comes to the exp split. My normal group, thereore, splits the exp 4 ways. So, when I two box and something gets killed, both my main an my box get 30% of the kill exp (120%/4=30%). Swapping those two mercs for real people, or even just one real cleric, would increase the per-kill exp tremendously. 4 real people = 60% bonus, or 160% total; split that 4 ways for 40% per kill exp for everyone, an exp rate gan of 33% over two toons and two mercs. Just replacing the two mercs with one real healer would be a 40% bonus, or 140% total, split 3 ways for 46.67% exp/kill per toon, or a gain of over 50% per kill compared to the two toon, two merc setup. And these do not even take into consideratio any increase in kill rate. There is a huge difference, over time, between using mercs and not using mercs. The only time when using a merc does not cutinto your exp at all is when you already have 5 real people in your group; the sixth person gets his own exp magically out of nowhere, remember, and the same is true for a merc. Given this, I see no reason to exclude mercs from the dynamic zone idea presened here. I happen to agree with an above poster, that it would not ever come to pass anyway due to tuning, but I just thogh I would clear the air a little bit regarding mercs.
I suggested something similar to your idea a bit back. Instead of remaking an entire zone and balancing it, they should make dynamic level mobs. They always con the same regardless of YOUR level. Its YOUR level that determines their level - you tag it and the mob instantly becomes the yellow/white/blue version of itself. This way you can have groups of all levels in the same zone all killing the same types of mobs and every mob is level appropriate - no zone revamps needed, just a monster overhaul.
Limiting content based on micro-transactions is a difficult balance. Adding in different experience mechanics, and excluding game features like mercs complicates things even more. If we redo a whole zone, it makes more sense to make that content available to most players, and keep it available more than a month. Just a few challenges we'd have to face if we implemented something like this.
I can think of too many problems... How would you handle a powerlevelling group for example, a level 70 character grouped with a level 100? What happens if you tag a mob with the level 100 toon, drop from the group, and let a lower level kill it for bonus xp. If the mob's level is based on anybody on agro, that's the most amazing griefing tool ever invented.. run around a newbie garden, and tag everything that other people have engaged, and they're suddenly fighting vastly overpowered npcs... Sure it would mess up other dynamics too, in events when one NPC is fighting another.. Not saying I'm against the idea, but there are a lot of issues around it =/
I would be totally cool with SOE selling ONE revamped INSTANCED zone every 3 months or so if there was a XP benefit, or multiple worthwhile gear (aug ?)drops, and the price was reasonable (1000SC ish, like Hero's Forge.)
My idea of dynamic level mobs certainly isnt without difficulty. Powerlevel abuse, training, within group level differences (ie is the con based on the monk's level or the clerics level), mob stealing, Namers (and loot), and length of time before reverting back to "neutral" all need factoring. It would open up so much of the world if it could be done - think of all the empty zones, all our old favorite zones that we are too high level to do now. The major benefits of course would be that everyone could go to every zone and all new content would work for every existing player. A pipe dream maybe, but I could see this being the wave of the future - everything open to everyone all the time.
