All the positives from LDoNs (especially difficulty settings) and stick them into today's missions/tasks.
I expect that that's the way you played it as an SK-puller, but a group with another type of tank and an Enchanter, for instance, probably had a different experience. I don't see anything wrong with being able to pull mobs. It gives the monk something to do. I still consider that a dungeon crawl since you're still moving through rather than doing a static camp. I'm sure they're aware that dungeon crawl and other difficult zones don't get utilized like Sebilis or Guk did back in the day, but that's to be expected. Just need to reward those adventurous enough and we will come.
It's weird to me that people are going wild about LDON. At the time, I thought it was a little confining, but nevermind me. At this point, I'd rather have more dungeons that are visually spectacular. My nostalgia for old zones has been totally satisfied. I'm ready for another 10 years of totally new content.
My personal opinion is that a good dungeon crawl is always challenging and fun. We need more danger and risk, something that I think is lacking in EQ, it used to have risk, but now, it no longer has that feeling of "Oh man, I need to be careful and watch what I'm doing". LDoN was a good expansion, the rankings we fun to compete with others, the dungeons were challenging and fun to do. I personally like the direction you guys went with RoF,and re-using older zones with updated mobs and story lines, it's nice revisiting these places and having them be challenging again, it seems others have enjoyed this as well, so I think rehashing some older dungeons would go over well.
I've enjoyed most revamped zones, but I really love the new zones that are inspired from older content. Taking a good idea and going further feels better than trying to redo it. Ashengate and Chardok B come to mind. I really like Plane of Shadow as well. Would you rather see Old Sebilis again, or would you prefer the deeper, darker version of the zone? What if RoF's Velious zones had been Northern Wastes, with a mountain peak zone full of dragons like VP, and a Velketor's Labyrinth style zone? Part of what makes a dungeon fun to me is the depth of the zone, or that feeling of "climbing" you get. Vergalid Mines, Mech Guardian, Convorteum were all really rewarding in this way. I really wanted to stay there once I got to the end because it felt like a real accomplishment. Maybe I'm a wimp but I find fast respawns and lots of pathers very deterring to crawling through a dungeon. Of all the things to end a group, I think this would be it (other than lackluster rewards or difficulty reaching the camp - which is admittedly part of the fun). Not everyone wants to sit at their computer in fear of going AFK. Requiring 6 real players is an acceptable expectation to tune things around, but it wouldn't be that great for me - I may get to do such a dungeon once or twice when I get lucky, otherwise I will be by myself in an easier zone. I would like to do challenging dungeon crawls every time I log in with an awesome group, but expecting that to happen for many players is unrealistic. I think it's important for a dungeon to be sufficiently rewarding - if it is "cool" but you don't get anything, its not likely many people will do it. Mercenary tasks help alleviate this - I also really like the super aug quests/achievements, and zonewide rare drops. I enjoyed LDoN more than the DoN+ style mission where you farm the easy one repeatedly and know what to expect every time. Not that killing 60 monsters in LDoN zones was a huge surprise, but I got really sick of Creator & Nest missions. The special rooms at the back of LDoN zones were a lot of fun to get to, but not required which was nice. Randomized nameds kept you exploring, and the charm aug made it worth doing even if you didn't need the points for anything.
was layign down to sleep and never did..was thinkingabout my post here earlier about my vision of a dungeon taht would be ncie in EQ..and thinking how it could be set up and how raids coudl be done in teh same manner. The old expacs and wahtnot where htefinal tier was 1 zone with 7+ bosses you ahd to kill one to get to the next to the next to the next etc..that could be good with this too . could make an entire expansion out of it, not hte lost dungeons of norrath but maybe the unearthed dungeons of alaris or luclin or discord (woudl be great way to "finish" out the discord theme too) wehre theres 1 base zone similar ot shards landing and in the middle of that zone were venders and tents and such and a giant hole..also like SL, but if yo ujumped in that hole you'd fall to your death for about 5 minutes..unless you had a task or a dz, acquired from the tents surrounding it. This would be the hub, the zonein to every other zone in teh expansion. have a few sets of building blocks as id mentioned, differnt themes materials colors etc ice fire ash moonrock water (blech) stone etc..coudl be different mob types too of course to go with them etc. the raid zone would be the one exception to this randomized dungeons. raid zone would be 1 long dungeon. every time you entered it you had to beat in order, every mob you did not have a lockout on, in order to continue. every one. no skipping farming t1 to get to t2 if no flags etc..make no flags not even to start..jsut make every event have ot be beaten every 5 days to get to the next one etc. the mroe efficiently a guild can charge ahead the more they get to experience at the end before their timers run out etc. NO BOTTLENECKS. each and every mob/event should be slightly more difficult than the previous. no hard then easy then hard then easy, make every step a little harder. every time you get the instance the trash are all up regardless of lockouts (like with CoA and ToV and unlike SoD tower wehre ppl exploited new dz's to bypass clearing trash) put more and more in tehre..and you dont have to keep designing more zones and events sa expansions or big releases..if you think theren eeds to be antoher mob added, you unlock the door to the wall at the end of the current final one every month or 2, til in the end there are say20-25 total events. they dont all ahve to be emotefests etc but they shoudl be progressively more difficult in varying ways and the starting ones shoudl be doable by anyone raiding anything in the previous expansion, tahts formob one (like oh convorteum gatekepper was a gimme..so waht) then step 2 is the next tier up form taht of that expac the next one antoher tier the next one anotehr tier etc ..until you get to the true "tier 1" of the new expac its released in.. now you do maybe 2 events, the road can split. 2 events at that tier, dobule chests like in t2 VoA, you can go one way or the other..but you must beat both to get to the next pair and again for hte next pair etc. the racers will be slowed down by actually ahveing to do the content to get to the content they want to beat again and again, no one will have to flag or piggy people to this tier or that tier..every week you start over and try to push it farther and farther faster and faster until yo ucan get to the end before your timers are up. and the big bad boss could be in a gigantic pit of fire at the end taht everyone falls onto from a slippery slope after the 19th or 23rd or wahtever mob leading up..and there you are you're at the end..but can you beat it that night? or will you have ot start back at the beginning and push through faster next time so yo ucan once again try and maybeh ave 2 nights to push it before the timers expire? This would be pretty easy as far as designing zones..you jstu design themes 4-5 themes and teh raid theme. ddesign the raid zone which could have all tehmes in it (i kinda liked how Breedign grounds was done like this, but more involved than that would be awesome) and those thems yo umake the building blocks that are randomized depending what tent the tasks are gotten from. etc etc. i said this before but i like the idea of it, truly randomized (ldons werent really randomized hate to say it sicne i have maps of every one of those zones heh, they jsut had more options) not to say the dreaded names of tru dungeon crawler games liek dablo, fate, etc...but that kind of randomizing, but eq style with eq sets of themes and resists etc (diferent themese coudl ahve different resist sets on mobs for different types of groups..ify oru gourp is magic heavy casters then you take this theme if its fire heavy you take that theme if its melee heavy you go with taht one etc) with truly random boss/drop possibilities in each one, no turning back, to get more xp or more loot you have to push forward, only 1 boss per phase, limited time to clear to and kill or at least engage said boss before he despawns (his spwawn trigger shoudl be "pausable" by not moving into that phase from the previous, ro by not starting ot kill yet or wahtever..making the trigger a time after entering a given phase or a certain number of mobs killed in that phase etc.. anyway, i see it also similar to an old indiana jones movie or similar where you jsut keep pushing and pushign deeper with rougher obstacles etc to find that even better treasure..and eventually..you get to see the lgiht of day at the end of the long dark tunnel of despair..or maybe you dont and you die. now its really sleep time heh
To have some of the old dragon craws back would be good. ldons where fun. making them instance would work great. But for the love of god. DO NOT require that I have 3 people(or 2 and a merc) to get it. Make them so you can have anywhere form 1 to 6 people(counting mercs) and the instance scales to the group size.
Hmmmm...... well after reading all the other posts I think it should be broken down between instanced and non-instanced. Instanced dungeons lend themselves very well to dungeon crawls while non-instanced dungeons do not. I have a variety of thoughts about this: 1) From my own obversations in non-instanced dungeons players prefer to have well delineated camps. 2) Time constraints can be involved in dungeons that require a "crawl" through the dungeon. It would have to fit into a 6 hour mission if it is instanced. 3) a non instanced crawl where multiple groups may be trying to pass through an area sounds like a CS nigthmare waiting to happen. 4) Assuming a dungeon crawl experiene would be instanced the zone should also lend itself to seperate and defined camps for non-instanced play.
And how do you tune these missions? Tune it to the group player and it will be no challenge to a raider to complete. Tune it to raiders and you can forget casual group players completing it. I guess before an instance starts it could check the amount of raid gear you are wearing and make the mission correspeondingly harder.
If dungeon crawling is what people like you could design a large dungeon with a central path and several offshoots for various named camps. Along the central path place collection drops by see invis mobs. To complete the collections you need to engage the mobs or at least do you run and fd routine.
In thinking about the dungeons I personally liked the hard part, as the OP noted, is seperating the nostalgia from the experience. It's hard to do because the older dungeons were also back when the game was newer.. Back when I would leave my girlfriends place early to log on to EQ. Back when waking up before work to check a mob spawn seemed worthwhile..... yep its hard to seperate all that out. I do have a lot of fond memories of Befallen the Tower of Frozen Shadow, Sebs, and Unrest. An interesting idea would be to post a poll for all EQ players to vote on about the best dungeon they even played in. One or two of these dungeons could be given add ons similar in design to the orignals. These new areas would be at current level ranges but would be accessed via the old dungeon zones. This would also be an ideal way to sell seperate add on content via the marketplace.
Ah, Tower of Frozen Shadow and Sebilis, my favorite zones. It would be great to to have missions available in old dungeons, redone for lvl 100 - I think there are many players who would enjoy this.
I enjoyed LDoN, DoN, and MPG trials. The LDoN and DoN offered merchants with decent items could be nice to add to the level 100 game and add in some slot 3 augs for classes as well as some other augments that need completion of dungeons to gain. I personally hate camping namers for augments its just boring. The MPG group trials were nice and challenging in the time they came out as well. Just don't ever make the boomerang thing again like UF!
A dungeon can be as hard as the devs want to make it. As long as it's possible, somehow, and as long as there are appropriate rewards, people will do it. They may complain, but they'll still do it. And they'll secretly like it.
I know that its possible to make instance scale to the avg level of a group. wounder if soe could make it so the instance can tell what type of classes are coming in setup the mobs/names/traps/etc based on what type and number of classes you have in the group. so that for a group of say a war/cleric/mage/bard/shammy the instance would be setup one way but for a group of say a sk/cleric/ench/necro/rog/zerk the instance would have a complete different setup.
tahts why i madem y point about differnet themse..different resist types different mobtypes etc. and 3 difficulty levels..easy group, normal (high group) and hard (at least partially raidgeared) then balh blah say a lvl 90 hard is a 95 normal or a 100 easy..as far as mob difficulty..but the mobs level and xp themselves shoudl scale to level itself just let the players pick the difficulty based on their own capabilities
There is a lot of nice nostalgia in this thread, and I do agree, I miss awesome dungeons. However, as I said in another thread: I just feel like EQ has changed so much over the years along with the games culture. I feel like oldschool dungeon crawls in open zones would turn into a huge mess with todays player base. Especially if you cant skip over certain parts of it. You'd have trains galore. Tons of /ooc fights. KSing and camp stealing. You think its bad in hotzones like Freerot right now? You havent seen anything yet with this. Its the sad truth.
Old Sebillis was pretty awesome by dungeon standards but even that zone didn't experience much dungeon crawling, people tended to pick a camp and stay there. Howling stones required more dungeon crawling and constant moving and that zone, though being a ton of fun tended to be less utilized than OS was. I think the memory of dungeon crawls is a very fond one many of us have but in actual practice I don't think the dungeon crawl experience works in current EQ. Case in point most people don't really like the top floor segment of the plane of shadows because it requires you to pretty much clear your way through it to complete a couple quests. As a result you'll rarely find people up there just for the sake of being up in that segment of the zone. People like reaching their destinations and parking at some camp with minimal effort. Not all people but that tends to be the view of most players in my experience (though i could be wrong).
