You think splitting limited dev time across two code bases is going to do anything besides reduce the amount of work each one gets? Sure more could be done if the split the code base but with a limited team size that just means less work is going to get done.
True, but can you imagine how advertising EQ would go over? People would point and laugh at our poor old game.
The worse thing they ever did with hot zones was to listen to the players constant request for changing them. The ones that cycle round now are horrid and no one knows without checking with Teek first what they are. The other problem is after level 105 there is nothing to give bonus exp. Hot zones were upto level 90ish then they went over to the HA dailys, but HAs only go up to level 105 so for the last few years there has been nothing to help players catch up. Yeah we have Overseer now, but exp isn't that great (but better than nothing) and doesn't award AA.
XP as a system within EQ is in an inconsistent mess imho, it currently has at least 4 main phases Pre-Luclin - no AA pre-EoK - no XP nerfing in old expansions EoK to TBL - XP nerfing in old expansions ToV+ - XP nerfing in old expansions + massive increase in XP required per level to make killing mobs for level XP almost entirely pointless. Maybe there is some mathematical problem the devs are trying to resolve with all the messing about with xp nerfs and amplifying XP required per level out the wazoo and tying it up into progression. If there is some grand plan they forgot to explain it to the players but what it has resulted in is that the game feels like it is more "on rails" than ever before, EQ now is the most linear it has ever been and that has been at the loss of the game feeling like a place you play a game and more like a game that tries to imagine itself as a place, coupled with the loss of scale with each expansion and it feels like EQ is going down the gullett of the Sarlacc, it used to feel like a gradual curve now it's a steep wall we are descending and the pipe being traversed is narrower than ever but we are being spun through more revolutions per hour in that small pipe than before.
Exp for quests at least were nerfed in HoT when VoA went live and RoF when CotF went live. Next expansion being a level increase leaves me curious as to how they handle exp for killing and missions/quests. A lot weren't happy with the lack of Exp for grinding and the large amount for doing missions and quests.
Without making impossible alterations to levels, stats, AA, and gear I believe they could most easily just adjust the Mercenary code to make it easier for returning characters to catch up. The possibilities would be nearly endless. They could: ) Add more quests just like the J5 quests to make your Gold account mercs more powerful. ) Explicitly add a whole level beyond journeyman. Expert mercs anyone? ) Add ADPS and/or hybrid mercs. ) Allow you to purchase the ability to have more than 1 merc active at a time! (Game changer!) ) Adjust the user controllability so you can customize your merc's operation. ) Auto grant Merc AA just like player AA. Yes, they could -relatively- easily give returning players a crutch to help them get to the end game. Sure! Some of these returning players might like using mercs so much they never want to group with real humans. Oh well, they'd still be Gold accounts! Heaven forbid... they could actually release the source code to just the mercenary modules and the community would WRITE the new scripts for them free of charge! I might even write a new healer merc if my name were to be immortalized as the "Healer Merc, Metanis, 2021 Edition".
This is a super intriguing idea! In the past, in the context of Planetside2 code (overall), they said they could never release it public because there is too much licensed middleware. I'm sure EQ has much less middleware, but back in the day winzip license was so cheap and almost ubiquitous. Point being, there may be many issues to them releasing the entire game code. But just a portion, that may be in some scripting format without proprietary code concerns? Very interesting!
That one following along the same pattern as autogrant would be a big help for catcher-uppers, seen it suggested before once or twice but its a solid idea that should be refloated often.
I think this would be awesome (although, so much funny irony in this idea's similarity to the much-maligned M Q community), but I don't imagine this is any more feasible than releasing the entire game's source code. I don't generally like to speculate at what it would take internally, but I think it would take a LOT of initial development and ongoing maintenance to release something like what you propose. I think it's well beyond the existing skillset of anybody currently there - they don't exactly seem like experts in NPC AI scripting (quite adept with their tools, but their tools are 20 years old), let alone creating an environment where public, untested scripts could be integrated safely into the existing game. On the other hand, maybe the mercs do everything the game handlers want you to be able to do. This vid is from when they buffed mercs 3 years ago. They were really quite OP at the time...players literally didn't have to do anything but pull mobs to them: I don't know how they hold up now?
How about ads for attorney's in EQ. Did they steal your spawn? Were they mean to you? Did the top raid guild on your server refuse to recognize your "greatness"? Was your chosen race/class combination shortchanged in some vaguely defined way? Let us sue! The law firm of Huey, Dewey, and Suey will represent you and be pleased to take 40% or more of whatever you win in court.
