Not seeing it on the list of forums here, but I have been trying to work on making my own dungeon and was wondering if anyone knew where to look for inspiration (as opposed to manually touring all those dungeons lol). Eventually I want to make something that dungeon crawlers would like to take some time to go through, complete with bosses and if possible other things that are unique to dungeons like ambushes/traps.
Dungeon Maker allows you to: place furniture place enemies (stand still or patrol) place a small selection of items that slightly increase or decrease the difficulty of surrounding enemies That's about the sum total of the customization.
Houses are the same way basically, yet they get forums and websites dedicated to them... so was hoping there might be something for dungeon makers lol
There used to be, but they deemed it unnecessary and removed it along with several other underused forums (and some not-so-underused forums).
Given the traffic level of the Dungeon Maker forums there was no longer a dire need to have an entire subforum dedicated entirely to this topic. There are no plans to reintroduce them however the Housing subforum is an excellent place to get creative ideas on layouts and setup.
/join antonia_bayle.homeshow to chat with decorators of houses and dungeons and get all sorts of advice, tips and help.
This is just sad. Dungeonmaker was an excellent feature, but instead of supporting and expanding it, it was killed off mostly by focusing on the few who wanted to play their own characters. The original design did not include this and including it completely unbalanced the design. Even reskinning to the characters appearance and then giving them skills of their class type would have been fine for the average player. But the uber equipped players wanted an advantage...doh. Then frantic efforts to fix and finally shoving the whole thing under a rug and removing the forum. Not only was it impossible to get right, it complicated it for the dungeon designers. Or maybe EQ2 was always only a beta test for something that will be in EQL or EQNL. Or did the people working on this feature leave? I'm still left puzzled by such a great feature being left to rot. After all the "fixing" my completely terraformed dungeon that was in no way a dungeon designed for any cheats became completely unplayable, at least by the average player. I'm still trying to gather the energy to rebalance it, given that this feature seems to have been abandonned. I have a second dungeon with extensive design that I never finished rebalancing either. In the case I'm wrong about the abadonment, I would request the ability to script conversation trees. I'd love the ability to move the story along by having conversations with the non-combat npcs. Also cool, though maybe difficult, would be the ability to have convsations with the mobs which would then trigger aggro. I also still wish for dungeons that are more empty boxes so creating your own environment would be easier. The hardest aspect of terraforming my dungeon was covering up the existing architecture. The existing dungeons were wonderfully atmospheric in their own right, but a real chore to mask while creating outdoor zones. It's been well over a year since any new dungeon was introduced. What about an outdoor zone - you could make it obvious what the differnt "rooms" are, to work with the existing pathing and aggro features. To answer the original poster, one of the best ways to see what can be done with the dungeons is to play through several of them yourself. There are plenty of really creatively done dungeons among the power-level types. Generally, the dungeon name is an indication of which type you are looking at - whether the title is like a story title or just tells you how many dungeon marks you will get.
Sounds like my post really confused you, so I'll try to shorten and simplify it for you and anyone else interested. (1) dungeon maker was a very cool feature added and balanced for using avatars (2) some people complained, so the ability to use your own characters was added (3) some people found ways to design dungeons and use their own characters in ways that abused the system and gave massive dungeon marks and exp for little effort (4) dungeons gameplay was rebalanced by SOE to prevent this (5) the rebalance frustrated legitimate dungeon designers who found their own dungeons were no longer playable after SOE's rebalancing (6) Followng this revamp, we no longer saw new dungeons layouts, new features, new mobs, or any dungeon contests. Therefore, I used the word derailed to describe the fact that dungeon maker stalled out in the midst of the rebalancing, and has been left to languish while other game features continue to get new content and attention. I ended with a couple of things that are on my wishlist for dungeonmaker.
Dungeon Maker had the absolute minimum functionality it could possibly have. You could not link encounters. You could not build triggered events, add traps, spawns, anything. You couldn't put buffs or debuffs on enemies or players. You could just "place mobs". That is the most bare bones, stripped down implementation possible. Dungeon Maker was never going to go anywhere, and I knew that before DoV beta NDA was lifted. What "design" did you think was possible? You could place mobs. Full stop. What "design"? We saw Dungeon Maker abandoned because we never got enough tools to do anything with it. It had nothing to do with whether players could play one of ~50 four-button bland Avatars, or their own characters. Personally I would have put in 6-8 really fleshed out Avatars with interesting abilities, a backstory, and maybe even VO dialogue. So it would like ok, here's an avatar that I actually want to play. Instead, we're playing insects with 4 button combat. How boring can you get? Neverwinter Nights have built a whole market out of players building dungeons. The tools are incredibly complex and people have built great stuff with them. EQNext is going to have real dungeon building, although it's still a mystery what those tools will be.
I visited some of the winning Dungeons last year....one I never did complete, Too many kickbacks for the zone to be playable. By the time I was within sight of the exit I got knocked into the scenery out of range of any mob to knock me loose again. Then there is the unwritten rule for DM dungeons...never use dividers....mobs sorta don't see those. It makes it very notfun to get swarmed by....ok how many are on the other side of that wall?
I agree things were limited but I'll try to answer your question about what I meant. While there was only so much you could do, the design I'm referring to encompasses the following: (1) people created a themed dungeon by extensively building within the dungeon. (2) people created stories and quests by using books instead of having npcs (3) by use of the pathing feature, it was possible to create puzzles to solve in order to get past a certain point (4) it was possible to create mazes and other types of physical access puzzles I totally agree with you about refining a handful of Avatars for use. (And if people wanted to "look" like their own character than let them do that, but still choose one of the ability sets) As for boring combat - I can't argue that, but the combat was only part of experience unless it was a dungeon filled with groups of mobs and nothing else. I found plenty of surprises, stories, and humor in going through many interesting dungeons. While the tools given were minimal and never got expanded too much, it was kind of amazing how much some designers could do with so few tools. One difference about Neverwinter Nights is that from day one, the dungeon building tools were intended to be part of the game. The EQ2 feature was an add-on. It was definitely limited, but I saw it as something that could be expanded over time, but instead appears to be abandonned. Dulcenia - agree you could use dividers and subdivide and expect mobs to respect that. Designers had to be careful in how they developed their dungeon to avoid the issue you refer to. Part of that was extensive playtesting and care in spacing mobs.
i thought the switch from Avatars to characters was a good call. i didn't understand why the system wasn't balanced from the start with player characters in mind. the hope, for me at least, had been an expansion of offerings similar to the housing options we now have with outdoor options and more. it was disappointing that there weren't more tools to make more interesting dungeons. but traps and the like ... there's no mechanic in the game for locating or disarming those except in relation to randomly opening chest drops from mobs. however, i think what bothered me most was that, yes certain players were abusing the system, and personally i would have banned them from DM access. yet, to abandon something because it's too much trouble when it clearly had such potential was really a let down. but they are revamping pvp, even pvp on Nagafen, so who knows what might be next. i will put in another plug here for having AI directed npc's in our homes.
Its shocking something as highly successful as dungeon maker is doesn't have the player interest to support a discussion forum.
Dungeon maker hit a number of snags. Players didn't have access to the tools to make anything beyond a "turn-n-burn" style fight. Most players had no clue what reasonable design was and just packed rooms with 100+ enemies so that SK's could pull the whole room and Grave-Sac them for massiveuberxhaxor XP for Powerleveling. When SOE removed the ability to Power-Level suddenly people stopped caring. In short, people never were interested in making creative stories and experiences through Dungeon Maker, they wanted a cheap way to exploit the game for their own fast profit. Edit: Those who were and did make impressive Dungeons were lost in a sea of drivel created by people seeking only to PL stuff. My dungeon did fairly well for what it was before I transferred and frankly, I enjoyed making it, but DF and DM are not rewarding anything relevant to current content and therefore some of the incentive is lost to a lot of people who are more interested in Stats than Stories.
