Plane of War (maybe or Maybe not)

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Nyni, Feb 28, 2014.

  1. Randragon Augur

    Dzarn;

    When you say challenging, I hope it is a challenge and not a time sink as is the current content in CoTF Release 1B Raids.

    Those Lich's in Neriak and mobs in Bixie 2 are not as much a challenge as they are a tedious kill fest with no apparent meaning behind them. Give us a challenge please, not a bore-fest.

    Throwing tons of mobs at us is akin to watching paint dry.

    Thanks and keep up the good work.
  2. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    No it isn't, most "groupers" don't like to do things outside of their box army because that would mean they would have to share. If box armies weren't such a plague in eq I could see it being fun.
  3. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    His axe was in market place
    Leerah likes this.
  4. Sinestra Augur

    It sounds like a replay of hardcore heritage. Hopefully at least they learned a small lesson and all the items will be no drop.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  5. Stubar Augur

    Raid designed by Dzarn are traditionally challenging and are usually a set time (ish).

    Pillars of Alra---generally always a 15-mins ish
    Memories of the Faceless---15 mins ish
    Bixie 2---while not time locked, some sort strat needed and not long at all.

    I very much look forward to these events.

    Neriak B was a Chandrok raid IIRC.
    Edrick, Beimeith and Yinla like this.
  6. Phrett Augur

    No it wasn't... it was a bastardized wannabe version of his axe. It wasn't THE axe.
    Aeonblade and guado like this.
  7. Trajet D'Or Augur

    1. State desire to provide more content for players
    2. State one of main impediments is Dev time
    3. Spend Dev time to create instanced content for players
    4. Plan to make the content inaccessible for ~80% of the year
    5. Underpants
  8. Orbital101 Augur

    exacly that will force people to share again... I personallly do everything alone in most time... doubt I wont be able to box most of it but if not well I know how to setup a team to get what I want untill I get it.
  9. Saroc_Luclin Augur

    I wonder, will Plane of War have Heroic Adventures in it (perhaps for the Anniversary content) or is it just contact and 'standard' instance versions?
  10. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    Any time i have ever tried to "share" with people who run box armies it usually ends in them trying to either say "I get first dibs because I worked harder" or just them trying to straight take over from me. So you may share but the majority of the anti social boxing crews really ruin static zones for me. For the record I'm not talking about the people that box an extra toon. I am referring to the people who play 6-8 toons at the same time and split the group and pop mercs for this sort of content.
  11. Axxius Augur

    The Plane of War was designed in 2002 for the Planes of Power expansion, but never went live. I'm not sure how old Dzarn was in 2002. ;)
  12. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    And it was never finished, someone finished it! Was that person Dzarn? That SS also makes it look like the original zone may have been made larger to how it was first created.

    I may have worded my original post incorrectly, but I knew what I meant. :p And I'm getting old!
  13. Edrick Augur

    Approximately 80,000 years old. Young in Efreeti years.
  14. Falos Augur

    Not really looking forward to the 2 group content to be honest, mainly because my faith in its tuning (even for 2 groups is a bit low). Certain mob abilities can make an encounter challenging but sometimes for dumb reasons (pre-nerf succesful mistwielder, and that tier 1b neriak named, etc) I don't really know of too many people that enjoyed those 'challenges' they were merely gear checks and not skill checks.

    2 group named mobs that drop unique clickies and such do have some potential but I foresee this being a candyland for raiders / alts and potentially frustrating gear checks for groupers.

    I'd be surprised i won't be able to do this content but at the same time I know they tend to go from one extreme to another pretty frequently. CoTF has been too easy and i suspect this will likely be too hard. We'll see soon enough.


    Oh and another mild observation i've made over the years. Most people that beg and beg and beg for challenging content over the years tend to be people that do not even go out and partake in most of the challenging content we are granted. I'd say there is a very very small handful of people that beat the undefeated blade or assorted other 'hard' mobs over the years. Just because these plane of war mobs will add more reward does not mean that eq is a game that can really bring 16 random strangers together anymore in group content.

    Overall i am weary of how this zone will be tuned and how it is aimed at 2 groups. I see a lot of people (not necessarily in this thread but i mean over the years in general) beg for similar content like this and then never trouble themselves to do it, then there are people like myself (and several others) that will beat it no matter how it is tuned yet feel that this type of content has no place in the EQ of today.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  15. Phrett Augur

    Here's the deal guys... they've already said that the gear from these '2-group' encounters will be better than the other group content available...

    Why the hell wouldn't it be a little tougher to acquire? Less easy-button requests please. Until they change their mind and say that the drops will only be equivalent to current named drops, then you've really got no valid argument for this stuff not being more difficult.
  16. Prathun Developer

    No age spoilers (a designer never tells!), but to put things in perspective, he was still in high school. :p
  17. Iila Augur

    It should go live with PoP and beating it should be a required part of the PoTime flag.
  18. Sinestra Augur

    Please make all this gear entirely no drop. Don't even make it heirloom.
  19. Edrick Augur

    Sounds like someone is having Hardcore Heritage SolB and Mistmoore flashbacks.

    Don't worry, I agree with you.
    Sinestra likes this.
  20. Dzarn Developer

    I'll see what I can do about ensuring people in a raid get kill credit for these rare NPCs. Can't make any promises either way yet.
    The rares of Chelsith Reborn did come up when we were discussing making the rares take two groups.
    I'm under the impression that those rares were not particularly well received because their rewards were no better than what was available from easier content.
    I liken the experience of the Plane of War rares closer to the Crystallos squires in Secrets of Faydwer.
    While legitimately challenging at the time, their rewards typically made finding enough guildmates or friends to take them down worth it.


    The anniversary raid is the only one planned at this time.


    It's difficult to determine who the original author/authors of the design document was/are and which designers specifically did work on the zone before it was removed from the release.
    For example, the original design document lists Rich Waters as the author, but that is likely because he was the lead designer at the time.
    Looking through the logs of who created NPCs in the zone it looks like all of the following created at least one NPC that would have been found in the original zone: John Troy, Paul Carrico, or Jason Miller.

    Ultimately the answer to the question is no, I did not design the Plane of War, though I did take the lead on finishing the geometry.
    Once the geometry was completed and management agreed to make this an anniversary release the team as a whole began working on various parts of the zone to get it ready for release.


    Like everything in EverQuest it is a group effort. As a player, I'm more excited to experience the content that the other designers who are working on the zone implement than I am my own.


    There are two levels of challenge in the zone right now. The first is completing the in-zone progression to access the various parts of the zone.
    The progression will be 'somewhat' slow and will try and keep in the spirit of quests of the PoP era.
    Completing the in-zone progression will allow you access to the areas where the rare NPCs spawn.

    The second challenge will be in defeating the rare NPCs. The rares are intended to use mechanics and force players to apply strategy to defeat them.
    I feel that fights like that are more interesting than something that simply hits too hard to be traditionally tanked.


    There are a few ways in which we hope to alleviate some of the problems that players ran into with the rare drop situation in Mistmoore and SolB:
    1. Respawn in the zone will be faster than the average respawn time of modern zones. Ideally there won't be a shortage of things to fight.
    2. The zone is not a limited time affair, so there is less incentive for all players to immediately rush in and contest each other over spawns and drops. Not to say it won't happen, because much of human nature is 'I want it now!'
    3. We've discussed but not committed to the following idea: Each rare will have a 'chase' drop that would be no drop, but in addition to that there is a low percentage chance for anything in the zone to drop one of the chase items in droppable form (the duplicate items would be lore to each other.) The idea there would be the ability to camp specific rares to get the drop you want, but also encourage people to kill basepop apart from the rares for the off chance they get something they could trade/use.


    The anniversary raid isn't one I designed, but it was one that I consider a highlight of the expansion it took place in, in terms of difficulty.


    I believe the anniversary mission will make use of the scaling technology of the Heroic Adventure system, but will be designed as a traditional mission.
    The benefit there is that we can create the mission once and it can scale for various levels of players so that people who are not at max level have anniversary content in the Plane of War to play through.
    Apart from that there are no specific Heroic Adventures planned for the zone at this time.


    In my teens, raiding PoP, wondering what could exist behind the mysterious broken stone in Tranquility. :)


    I wholly understand peoples' reservations regarding our plans with the rares.
    I do hope we can keep the thread on topic and not dissolve into arguing over it for now though.
    We will monitor peoples' response to the situation and adjust them if needed.
    What we're striving for with this release is challenging but fairly rewarding.