Please. You guys have a great product, and it would be a great pvp product if you just reduced the damage by 70%. Its a fairly simple and uncomplicated fix. It would do wonders for your revenue!
I don't play on Zek but I have always enjoyed pvp and agree the problem should be addressed to save the server. The handful of people who seem to show up on these threads just to bash them are the die hard forum trolls who don't even play on the server. They show up on your thread just to spew their negativity, knowing thet no matter what they do to Zek server they won't play there. They just want to be negative Nancy's and "like" each others troll posts. It's pretty sad.
Thank you. Seriously dev/db. We all love eq. We want to play it. But you gotta show us that you want us here too. Show us that you are willing to put forth even a little effort to make pvp bearable. Its such an easy fix.
1) They don't make changes to the game that only effect one standard server while ignoring all the others. That is what you are asking here. If perhaps PvP was a huge thing in EQ, then it might have some sway. But PvP has never been more than a curiosity in EQ. 2) Short answer, yes. Zek uses the same melee combat engine as all of the other servers, so any change to Zek is a change to all of them. As I stated previously, the code that deals with a lot of these things is buried deep in a jumble of ancient code which typically has little if any commenting notating what does what. So the amazing coders we have, have to first figure out what everything does, then figure out how to do what you're asking, and then they have to try and figure out if they can do it without completely crashing the rest of the game in the process. So either it is going to take a significantly long time for the changes to come, or it will take a significantly large amount of money and coders to do it quickly. 3) Actually, there have been several PvP specific MMORPGs which have had that exact focus on them. There have even been some MMORPGs that were advertised as being those things exactly, and they, typically, failed miserably. Also, it is nothing at all about EQ or its design which makes those things possible; it is more that EQ pretty much lacks GMs that enforce things like the PnP in real time. As a result the community creates a situation where those things happen. On a somewhat related note, the Dev's typically are not going to respond to posts of this kind. And as I outlined above the changes you're advocating are going to take far longer than a measly 2 weeks to even approach a beta stage much less a test stage. If they are working on this or something along these lines then we'll find out when they get a lot closer to having it in a method that might be nearing a testing stage.
^ There is the best answer anyone can give. Unfortunately so far Ive yet to see an MMO that does both PvE and PvP well, WoW tries to but always creates more controversy than results in the balancing between them. Problem with games that focus on PvP the community (HA! ) just becomes a childish toxic cesspool in short order (looking at you Dark Fall).
1) They certainly do make changes to the game while ignoring others. (Ie progression) 2) If they reduced pvp damage it would not effect blue servers whatsoever. 3)Eq is a pve game, even on Zek. But it gives players the opportunities to compete for resources, and pvp to affect other players. Therin lies the difference. I am asking whoever owns this game to take responsibility for the fact that they have a pvp server, and if they are unwilling to look at Zek whatsoever, to get rid of it.
1. True enough but then from all the evidence it paid them well to do so. I don't agree with the nickle and dimeing of players that has developed (more like twenties and fifties) but I get why the TLPs happened. 2. Since we have no access to the engine or code we have no idea if this true, it could very well bug everything. I may be highly critical of DBG but frankly this may not be one of those times something is just being blown off. 3. and? So just ignore it and pretend it isn't there. Most of us that once played there figured that out long ago. No sense in impacting those that have stayed by something that petty. Glad to talk about it just in case one day minds are changed but dang some folks like it there.
This is the kind of debate that could go on forever without either side budging an inch. What ends up being brought up is kind of silly. People constantly try to stonewall anyone that supports pvp because they personally don't pvp. You don't see me doing that to tradeskills, do you? I don't like tradeskills and I'd be fine if all the tradeskill items were just sold by vendors and you didn't need to use tradeskills. All that development effort could be put into making my character flip people the bird with both hands and spin in circles constantly. Maybe he could look more like dracula too when he did it. It could be a new illusion. i love the idea. Or heck put it towards making people's connections more stable and stopping them from crashing.That'd be nice too. But what happens as opposed to me being that shallow and awesome is that I have respect for other people enough not to try to complain them out of the game that they love. I think the original poster's idea may help a bit, but the situation ends up being pretty complicated. If you lower dps by 70%, the disparity in dps between valid pvp dps classes and invalid ones will become much greater. In addition, due to the amount of instant gates, I think many classes will suffer, and have an even harder time getting kills because as soon as their opponent gets a bit low, the opponent will just gate every time. This already happens, and the solution sadly ends up being more dps. I think that if you take instant gates out, then that can cause issues too maybe. I mean casters get a very fast gate aa already and there's that pok stein too. Where do you draw that line? Something that gives people a real credit of some kind that the society respects for making someone gate might be good. I think that in short, the classes that aren't huge dps in pvp need to have value in pvp. That's where things should go. One shotting is bad. It would also be really hard to make gating work appropriately in regard to pvp. People only care about kills, and not really about assisting others. Assisting could be made more important. I'm not sure what to say about that atm, but as far as these one shot dps classes all blowing discs and then gating out, that has become the meta. You need to give defensive classes a chance to matter. If a guy deals damage to another player, that person should count as having engaged that player for the next 30 seconds. Maybe a debuff on that person could come into place. Now the game has 2 sides instead of just one. If you engage someone, they can still win if they survive and you gate out. If a defensive class gets attacked, they have a chance through solid play of ending up as "the winner" instead of just "a survivor". Maybe make it so the guy that engaged has to stay within a certain range of their target, or they lose the engage similar to zoning. This would stop some ranged classes from doing things that they really shouldn't be able to do to begin with, as the advantage ends up being far too great. Anyways, it's not a fully thought out plan, but I think that people that care about pvp should be allowed to talk about pvp without being basically harassed for it by players from blue all the time. People on Zek are hard enough on people from Zek, you guys don't need to jump in. But I also think that the plans people come up with need to be a bit more robust. Good luck to all parties involved, I hope you grow from this situation instead of growing into it.
I'm not in favor of a new ruleset server for Zek. I am in favor however of sme updates to Zek, atleast 2 a year. There are multiple suggestions on these forums. 1 zone that all servers had access to for PvP with no trade functions or dropping of items in that zone allowed would be quite popular imo. Perhaps a new zone specifically designed for pvp with multiple zone in points and environemental areas; caves, mountains, buildings, cliffs etc would be really fun. Anyone that doesn't think Eq PvP was great, still has potential, and is/was awesome doesn't know what they are talking about. The OP explained it rather well actually.
Bump. I've moved on from Eq, but I would be happy to come back if dev's would show some effort towards the server. Plenty of people are in that boat.
I'm not sure much can be done with the current Zek, for the reasons already said in this thread about dev time, F2P, low pop, etc. However, I think there is a $ viable option if you get into the "special ruleset server you pay for" niche: Era-locked PVP server -Capped at Luclin (provides some faster travel, limits world size and keeps gear threshold reasonable)... this could be done with 6 month progression unlocks I suppose. After a time consider a server vote to have PoP (easy travel hurts pvp in my mind, but the population should decide). ...if PoK books worked to go out to places but were disabled for leaving them that might be the right compromise. Irregardless of the PoP travel concept, an era lock is a must due to mercenaries and newer content killing PVP. -copy the names of all current zek characters over... returning Zek players would have their identity reserved (this includes long-dormant). Give all the "vetarans" a free month sub to launch the new server. -Consider doing a level-locking where month 1 you can't go past level 10, month 2 level 20. Point of the server is to kill each other, not level fast. May require incentivizing PKs. Would be pretty cool to see a level 30 capped raid beat Naggy... Would also encourage alts while keeping the population clumped longer. This coding could be useful in a future non-pvp prog server. -look hard at the past pvp rulesets and consider going with Sullon Zek
