The other dungeon thread made me reminiscent of old sebilis, probably my favorite zone of all time. I've talked to many people that share that sentiment. It's easy to summarily dismiss the draw as nostalgia, but I'm certain that isn't it. I rank other zones from the God and Omens era pretty highly too, but none have the staying power of zones like Old Seb. So, a hopefully fun question: what makes a great dungeon?
I like danger, variety, and a bit of a story hidden within. Two of my favorites have always been Najena and Befallen. If you do them with a level appropriate group, they can be quite a challenge. Another favorite is Plane of Mischief. While not technically a dungeon, much of it is. You can literally spend weeks learning how to navigate the place, find the various locations, quests and mobs. Taking a group through there somewhere between L50-L65 is one of the most interesting adventures you can have in Everquest.
Specific design elements might include false/secret walls, pit traps, tightly packed mobs, an even pace and flow (cramped, narrow hallways that may open into larger caverns), and of course a big nasty boss or two and some serious treasure to be found.
The Crawl. Not sitting in one place, but working your way deeper and deeper as you go. I would love an instanced dungeon that's not intended to be beatable when released. T1 mobs at the entrance, T8 mobs at the bottom, each tier with it's own miniboss, 2-4 hour time limit, no respawns, no easy skipping to the deepest levels. After beating each miniboss you get the opportunity to 'give up' and get a chest with loot appropriate to your progression, and maybe something like a flag allowing you to skip trivial levels in the future? (like if you clear T5, you get to skip directly to T2 in the future...)
I think it comes down to risk and reward. One of the reasons that Old Seb was so amazing in my mind was (at least when it was level appropriate) that no matter how good your group was, death was always just one bad pull or missed snare away. You were always on your toes, and the level of challenge scaled to how good your group was. You could camp somewhere easier like bugs or if you really wanted a challenge you could go for the crypt or miconid king. The other factor beyond the challenge was the loot. You could go camp your JBB or fungi tunic and be rewarded with an endgame piece of gear if you got seriously lucky. On top of that, there was always that tiny weeny itsy bitsy chance that you'd be rewarded with a Siblisian Berserker Cloak or RBG. You could literally spend months in Seb and never get bored.
I think Obiziana is onto something, the rare loots that were serious upgrades at the time. I know that they have gone to a method that the best items are raid drops (except for augs), but wouldn't it be nice for there to exist 1 item per class that was as good as the raid drops (or better) that was only found deep down in a dungeon that required a group to get. I would bet that even if the dungeon was poorly done people would remember it and think of it fondly (especially if they were able to get the chase item). For me what makes a dungeon good is 1) not having the entrance and exit at the same point (or having a drop off after only a handful of mobs) so that you don't have the "safety net" of being able to just zone out if you get to many mobs 2) having mobs packed together so that you need a puller or crowd control 3) having 1 safe hall that you can take an afk in and not have to worry about a roamer eating you (several of the old world dungeons have a spot like this, also good spot for forming up a group and then moving together deeper into the dungeon) 4) named that have drops that people want 5) I like zone wide rare drops too, thinking about shrink clicky, some clicky illusions, etc from instanced zones in DoDH (think it was that expansion) 6) increased difficulty as you move deeper into the dungeon I am sure that I am missing some, but this is a good start Szan
It's exactly how i feel about dungeons. I'm tired of zones where you just sit on your and pull mobs over and over. In recent expansions i can't think of a good dungeon zone... there's a few exception i can think of like the cliknak hive part in Arthicrex. That place was a freaking deathtrap but dam it was fun and you had a reason to crawl down there (was it for the shawl or the partisan tasks i don't remember). That's the main point, i can think of zones that would have been decent dungeons but it's always the same in modern eq, you're not encouraged to crawl thru them. It's all sit at point A, kill mobs, move to point B (invis, nothing will see you anyway), rinse and repeat. Peoples got used to it. That's how you end up with zones like Beast Domains, Shards, or hell just look at Chelsith Reborn or Plane of Shadow, what a waste those zones are.
In addition to things already mentioned by others: Base pop - if it's a dragon's lair then eggs, juvenile dragonets, fledglings plus the usual denizens of underground environs. No Orcs unless its as slaves/meals on wheels. An overall story/explanation of why the dungeon is - home of the Orc King, a dragon's lair, robber's hide out, underground city, Caverns of the Cave Bears. Fast enough repop and wanderers so that you are pushed through it. You can't easily skip through it - it's occupants are proof against Invis, Stealth, etc. Accustomed to low light conditions their other senses are more acute. "I smell you Halfling. Come out and play.", rumbles the prismatic dragon. Rewards along the way. Yard trash ought not be just impediments that keep you from the good stuff. ToV came closest to what I enjoy. My only complaint is it feeling too much like a Dragon Apartment Building or a boss mob vending machine and not enough like a massive underground system of caverns where multiple dragons found homes but were still solitary/territorial. Oh, and mobs ought not be chained to one spot. "You'll not trick me!" and the dragon returns to his mound of treasure is understandable. Foot nailed to the floor is not.
The risk of death at any second. Use of class specific skills to navigate it. IE rogues getting to do actual rogue stuff or some equivalent. Clearly defined goals. It has to be worth it to navigate from the beginning to end. Everything else has been covered.
man wish a dev would read this post...yes difficulty with a reward attached. A lot of the dungeons also offered bonus exp because it was accepted they were mroe difficult then an easy go on an outside zone. So that if the group was bad exp was better gained outside but if the group was good then you reaped your own rewards.
My favorite zone of all time is Veksar. A variety of mob types, large enough for easily 6 or 8 groups, difficulty increasing as you went deeper, all combined for a fun zone. I would love to see it revamped.
A zone that's easy to navigate visually - without using the map. I seem to get constantly turned around everywhere these days - everything looks the same.
Rest assured that we are definitely reading this post We don't always post in threads, but we do our best to read everything posted on the forum. Personally, this is one of my favorite threads in awhile. I've been checking it regularly and I'm posting here to hopefully draw more attention to it and get more opinions on this topic.
1) Multiple difficulty levels that increase as you complete them, (Mission 3 is slightly harder than Mission 2 is slightly harder than Mission 1), but with an option to reset at any point to prevent getting stuck at too high a level. 2) Mobs that scale in difficulty up to "bosses" that drop unique gear. 3) Special requirements that differ like new resists (except don't it up like Corruption was) or stat types that requires choice and planning and scale up in requirement with the difficulty. (Harder = need more of X resist/stat to do well). 4) Alt currency that allows you to increase the new resist/stats as well as get standard gear upgrades. (ala LDoN) 5) Alt Currency is tradable (ala DoN) but the items are locked behind earning enough yourself (ala LDoN). 6) Special rewards like a Charm or Aug that increases in power (ala LDoN) 7) Randomized dungeons (ala LDoN but hopefully more advanced by now ). 8) Additional special rewards for completing the top levels / all of the progression. 9) Multiple mission types (ala LDoN) but that have variable rewards to prevent overuse of one type to the exclusion of others (ala TBS). 10) Good Lore Basically, if LDoN and TBS had a baby and they named it Nancy so it would grow up tough.
The best dungeons to ever be made were LDoN. Belfast missions in DoD are a close second. The thing that made LDoN so great was the time limit. Having a mission with a 6 hr timer is not nearly the same as trying to beat the clock in LDoN. Many times my group failed by a matter of one drop, 2 more kills, etc.. because we ran out of time. Other times we barely won with seconds remaining and to win, we had to skip a final med break and just hope the mana lasted long enough to finish or fight the last 3 mobs at the same time. As to what makes a great dungeon? Time limits, traps, locked doors, pulling/crowd control, a reason for being there (does not need to be complex but still need the lore; i.e. dragon's lair and the dragon is eating the villager's children/livestock), and a reward worthy of the possibility of death. A good dungeon is something that makes the entire group commit to a hard core grind for a solid 30-60 minutes without an afk break or you will FAIL!
Hopefully, the implementation is better than the 2 group mobs. By this I mean having a few people clammer for something, putting that something in and having it go unused by the overwhelming majority due to it being overturned and having RvR out of whack. Then telling us its how you wanted it for months and then fixing it.
I absolutely agree with what Kacman said... The desire to not fail always generated excitement in LDoN's for me. I still run them with my boxes whenever I am feeling nostalgic.
