EQ Next - What I DON'T Want to See

I was trying to come up with some pros and cons zoned vs continuous.
Continuous worlds are certainly possible but there will be tradeoffs. Just have to think about how such a world would actually be implimented. For example, as you move around, your comp will have to be continually loading new areas and unloading others. All the time. Likewise, since the "server" will still not be a single machine, some way of load balancing will be needed.
In EQ1 that each zone would have it's own models (especially mob models). This allowed zones to have unique models. In a contnuous world you can't do that and you're limited by however many models the minimum client you're going to support can hold simultaneously. Asheron's Call (a continuous world the same vintage as EQ1) had an extremely limited number of mob models compared to EQ1, because they all had to be loaded globally. Presumably this isn't as much an issue nowadays but I suppose with models having ever higher resolution and multiple textures (color, bump, specular reflection etc.) and the push to make them as high resolution as possible there may still be issues there.
I'm guessing EQN will be a continuous world anyway though.

Here are my thoughts on what would make a great mmo
I cant wait to eq next to come out. I fell in love with eq1 when it came out. yet back then there wasn't anything like it and as such we had nothing to compare it too, which made all the hard work seem worth it. Now with the advent of so many mmo's there is a strong distaste for what was, and a desire for what hasn't been done. Only thing is, how do we reinvent the wheel?By looking at what made eq1 So great! as well as what caused its decline!

It all boils dont to the mechanics of the game, A friend of mine once compaired his love for the eq1 like that of a mouse in a maze searching for the cheese at the end, and Eq1 did a great job doing that! You had to work hard inorder to get to that cheese , it took time , and patience, sometimes luck as well. yet when you got that cheese it tasted so good, you would show it off to all your friends, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. people would come up to you and see your cheese and be jeolouse , so they too worked hard for their piece of cheese. And people played since each achievement and exploration rewarded them for that hard work.

But that was then, As time passed by though there came out other games, flashier games , better graphics and they made it easier to get the cheese, cause the competition was more complex.The New MMo's satified the immediate need for cheese yet failed, due to the ease of getting it. And as such developers had to work harder and create more content to satify that need. And everyone complained! and then when ever a new game came out , people would jump onto that game. years later and many more MMo's later people are tired of easy, they want a game with a challenge, with an extensive community to interact with. And it has to be fun to play. Now im not going to tell SOE what they already know as far as story lines nor graphics , im talking about the mechanics that make a good game great, and even though some might complain these Mechanics keep people plugged in and turned on to a good mmo.

First, make the game loot based, after all we are on quests for loot and glory. What makes a mouse run faster thru a maze than to provide a great piece of cheese at the end!! Allow use to give that loot to our alts! part of the fun was twinking lowbies and watch them chew thru mobs !! we loved that! IMHO when sony penalized us for that was the beginning of the end for eq1. Now i dont think we should beable to sell the item , make the heirloom but lets stop making them lvl based! Think about it if items are heirloom you cant aquire them til your able to anyway so why make them based on lvl. Instead make it hard for them to get and let them have fun with it when they do. No need to give a player an exp bonus for their other characters , the items can do that!

Second, allow for unbalanced characters! I know I know , I can hear all the complaints we need balance. Yet dont you remeber how cool it was , when a whole guild would get wiped on a Plane of Fear run and the Sk's and Monks would drag and rezz everyone, Or druid or necro could kite mobs in the plane of air while the rest of the guild would rezz back up!! that was cool!!! There should be times and places certain characters should have an up on the rest. What we should do then is give them an exp penalty for being so unbalanced, that way those characters earn the right to be over powered!!

Third, as one lvls make it so the mechanics change as well, so that each player had to relearn how to play their character, make it interesting. Allow for certain buffs that you get at different lvl teirs as well as the buffs you are given to change the way one plays! We all hate getting the same upgraded skills over and over. This also creates areas of unbalance and as such apply the appropiate exp penalties with the different buffs! Remember this is a loot oriented game, not lvl oriented the need for the buffs are to be able to accomplish the mission at hand , not to for leveling.

Four, encourage grouping ! people complain alot about having to group but lets face it , the whole reason for an mmo is to meet people, if you hate grouping, play an RPG instead. By playing with others one creates friendships which in turn, keeps you playing the game.

Five, Allow for groups larger than 6 , why 6 ? why 5? why not allow people to join larger groups! Make it so the farther in a dungeon you go the more people you need? make it flexible. Encourage grouping! and make the end of each large dungeon for raids only! and dont put a cap on raids, allowing for only 24 people makes it so disappointing for those who want to go but cant because it forces guilds to pick and choose the raiders . People will quickly figure out what size a group needs to be for their benefit. As the chances of loot goes down with the more players that roll for that loot! Remember Lvl does make a difference when one doesnt have the skill to dodge or to fight a mob of the appropiate lvl so abunch of lvl 20's trying to take on a lvl 30 zone would get their butts handed to them.

Six, reward Good leaders and punish bad players!! When someone leads a group they work extra hard , they gather the group together , they keep the people inline. They determine where the group goes, and handle any issues when someone leaves the group. Lets create a point system where , with each successful mission people are rewarded with follower points and leadership points, create tiers where a player can recieve a personel buff that helps fighting and questing, and then leadership buffs that can contribute to the group as a whole. as you group you earn points for killing and recieving rewards.

When someone leaves a group the group can penalize that person and take way points, if someone solo's then they too lose points ( albeit very slowly so one can lvl by themselves when they dont want to group) causing them to lose those buffs that they aquired. With these buffs people can tell who is a good leader and a good player, create an aura around the personage that glows brighter an in different collors as they go up in tiers.

Make it so when someone's behavior is negative (kill stealing, training, dropping group, Ninja looting, all things a leader and group can penalize someone for) those characters too, show a darker aura, so other players know when someone might not be the best person to group with. These aura's are also damaging as they weaken a player's abilitiy to play the game, penalizing their skills as well as earning a penalty for exp earned. These negitive auras can be lifted when they behave properly in groups. On a side note Soloing will not cause one to have a negative aura, unless more than one person witnesses a negative action and they report you. ( a guide would have to make that judgement if he finds the actions are negative he can penalize as much as he feels fit too)

Seven, there should be areas that one can pvp. areas that can be fought over that when won by one faction, grants that faction with economic boost (prices of food and items drop) and allow for honor points to grant other buffs and aura's that can be granted to the group and themselves. ( Grouping , soloing outside of the PVP areas cause these buffs to decline, yet dont effect the PVE as much ie. a toughness buff that reduces crit damage, or a buff that increases speed of casting certain spells , such as heals or stuns ) Even setup Npc events within these zones such as invasions of other factions brought on by the known Npc's of the land. For example if one faction is completely rulling the other, and prices go to up to far on that faction , then it only makes since they would go to war and invade the zone to take those parts back! at that point the other factions can try to hold their ground and earn extra honor points .This also allows for some really fun PVP with all the action going on.

Eight, Corpse recovery!! bring it back! I know I know , it sucks but nothing brings you more satifaction than when you can kick those mobs butt, that once made you cry 5 lvls lower when they wiped the floor with you. You can allow someone to help retrieve your corpse ie corpse drag. But Keep corpse recovery in place. I dont care how much someone complains , it should hurt you, when you make a wrong turn, or the wrong decision to go into that dungeon!!! the harder it is to explore an area or dungeon , makes it all the worth while when you have earned that right. And it keeps the player from running out of content since they have to work so hard to get there.

Nine, Earning experience, what was wrong grinding? I understand there needs to be a story and we definetley want quests. yet going from one quest to another to another can get boring, place gaps in quests where a player needs to be a higher level, so they have to grind to beable to finish the quest. Create a quest line that allows for solo parts (such as getting pieces in town , or building faction from an npc ) to also making them group up for that last piece way down in that bad dungeon. Create mini caps in lvls that require a player to quest for a certain achievement that unlocks the next tier and another set of spells and skills of which that person has to master inorder to continue to lvl.

Ten, Advertise! Market the game! sometimes the only reason why a game fails is that word of mouth isnt enough! WoW was so popular cause people think there were a million people playing it!!! Keep advertising the game about once every couple of months, let the public know about the game and let them know there are a lot of other people playing that game, lets be honost no one wants to play in a ghost town! Some people stop playing cause the buzz has run out. Keep the Buzz going Advertise!

I could go on more , yet for now will leave this for others to read and add as is needed.

Hell, no more zone-based. No more zone-based world in EQnext. EQ1/2 is enough.

Playing catch up.
feldon30 wrote:

Agreed. Better not look into Guild Wars 2 then.
feldon30 wrote:

Yep. This is why I miss 'disciplines' from EQ1. LONG reuse abilities that had over the top effects. I loved 'saving the day' by suddenly becoming nearly invincible and turning the mob with my ranger's 'weaponshield' on EQ1.
Gilasil wrote:

Vexus@Nagafen wrote:

Exactly. Number of abilities has nothing to do with skill. If that were true EQ2 would be the hardest video game on the market.
Kasar wrote:

And no typical GCD of 1.5-2 seconds. Its an obvious method to cap player skill with a low 'top speed.' It's like putting a speed limit on a foot race and the winner coming down to who had better aerodynamic equipment.
Not liking several hotbars really isn't about screen real estate, its about needing to have a bunch of hotbars. 5 different ways to do the same exact thing is boring, bloated, and again has nothing to do with player skill.
Rainmare@Oasis wrote:

I actually liked trying to duo/trio stuff in EQ1 that I wasn't supposed to. It was like a whole new level of difficulty. I didn't do it a lot, but it was fun BARELY taking down a group mob where the slightest mistep would mean certain death. These days if you are well geared and can't solo group mobs you are a newb.
Veltherel wrote:

Yes. Now if people can stop making the same exact one with a few twists and extremely small advancements for 10 years I would be much happier. See the latest single player RPG's on the market? Now......ADAPT IT INTO AN MMO! GO! NO don't touch the combat or graphics.
It's like the MMO developers are purposely short selling themselves so they can get away with the smallest advancements possible. They could easily make huge leaps, all the tech has been around for years and proven, but they refuse to utilize it. At least SoE is knocking the complacent FPS developers around with PS2.
Vlahkmaak@Nagafen wrote:

Vindictus and more recently another F2P game called "continent of the ninth Seal", C9 for short, showcase much better action combat.
in C9 you really only need one hotbar and a lot of moves are tied into your basic movement functions. Such as doing a special attack by jumping and hitting left click, opposed to just hitting one of your hotkeys. Lots of variations as well. Jump+rclick, evade+lclick/rclick, jump+evade+rclick/lclick, D+lclick, double tap S while getting hit, etc.
Why I just don't play that game? No raiding. ALL instanced. And just a general gear grind. Kind of like D3. If i could smash some nice combat and next gen visuals into EQ1 raiding, grouping, and overall world with a couple more modern twists I would be SOO happy.

Neiloch@Butcherblock wrote:

TERA is terrible. The combat system was very stiff and awkwand like RIFT global cooldown. Largest PvE group size was only 5 man missions.

Vindictus does have 24 man raids where are amazing. That is definately the best raiding content I have ever played and I would like something like that in EQnext. It is very challenging and does not rely on 3rd party programs like ACT and guild connect to excell at it. Vindictus problem is lack of depth with no open world or player housing. Long grind level cap is also a turn off to players.

If SOE ever makes EQ Next, how many of you would like to see the avatars be more realistic looking? (as with the star wars games). Yes, No?

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If I'm told I have to move my mouse every time I want to attack something, I won't play the game.
If I'm told there is only a minimal amount of questing to be done, & then only for certain weapons &/or at certain levels, I won't play the game.
If I'm told I have to group with people, many of whom I don't even know in any meaningful way, to accomplish anything remotely meaningful, I won't play the game. For example, if I can't even go into Antonica solo to hunt gnolls at 10th level, then IMO that game will suck, & I won't go near it.
Now, as for what I do not want in EQ Next: instances. I'm sick past my fuzzy ears of instances. Get rid of instances entirely, & I'll be a much happier camper.

Freejazzlive wrote:

So you would have been one of the many who didn't like EQ2 when it launched. I had a long friends list of people I'd found through LFG, primarily healers, that I could hit up for groups, since my weak guardian couldn't handle the heroic gnoll groups even around the Antonica claymore. That list was convenient later in T5 raiding as well, but it was practically a necessity early on. LFG was a frequently used tool, until it was "fixed" and no longer just a simple flag.

Kasar wrote:

I first started playing EQ2 in July 2005, before even the Combat Upgrade. I solo'd quite frequently, & had no problem doing so. EQ2 was not even close to the sort of "forced grouping" I'm talking about.
Edit: another thing I don't want to see would be raids limited to only 24 people in 4 groups of 6. I'd much, much prefer to see bigger raids. I like soloing, & I enjoy small groups, but I think raiding took a HUGE hit when raid sizes were maxed out at 24.

Freejazzlive wrote:

Most classes could not solo. I had already began taking a long break a couple of months before you started playing, so this may have changed by the time you started, but the reason classes couldn't solo is because of the difficulty of the mobs. Most mobs were meant for groups. As a coercer at launch my damage output was garbage and charm was broken for months. It was possible to kill SOME (very few mobs were solo con) mobs, but the far more viable option was grouping. With that said, I did have guild members that were able to solo x2 encounters solo, I believe it was templers that could do that, also berserkers had a broken skill that allowed them to aoe mow down x4 mobs, a few berserkers used the bug to level quickly.

Iad wrote:

Things must have changed, because when I started, the only classes I had any real difficulty soloing were the two Chanters, for reasons you stated. I know of no melee classes that had that difficulty. By July of 2005, there were plenty of soloable gnolls & other such creatures in Antonica.
It's one thing to have a game where soloing is slow but possible -- which is what EQ2 was, in the late summer of 2005. It's entirely another to have a game where even doing n00b quests in the starter zone requires grouping, because there is simply no solo content whatsoever. 2005-era EQ2 was fine.

One other thing which was brought home to me today while I was playing EQ2:
Mentoring. PLEASE!!! DO IT RIGHT OR DON'T DO IT AT ALL!!!!!
The original idea of mentoring was that you could mentor down to someone's level and do it just like you were at that level. It was a way for friends of different levels to play together. It was NOT a powerleveling exploit. The idea of solo mentoring (chronomage) was so you could do lower level content you may have missed originally.
As was brought home to me today, nowadays it's just a way to be horribly overpowered and trivialize content, usually with the intent to powerlevel someone. That was not the original purpose.
So mentoring doesn't work at all for it's intended purpose. It only works for powerleveling. Which is NOT its intended purpose!
This was brought home to me today. I happen to have several beastlords and decided to finish off the manastone quest in Varsoon on a couple of them. I mentored my 92/320 beastlord to 30, and headed to varsoon. Everything was ridiculously easy. I was one shotting stuff right and left. boring boring boring. Didn't bother with a merc as it wasn't needed. I eventually got disgusted and left without finishing the quest.
I then took my naturally level 31 into varsoon with a merc. Then it was fun and challanging. I finished the quest and had fun doing it.
This was a dramatic illustration that mentoring in it's current form is a horrible failure at what it was intended to do. For just letting a high level experience lower level content it doesn't work at all. I'd LOVE it if I could mentor my high level down and do low level content as it was intended. That's fun. But not this.
So instead I"m leveling up alts so I can experience the low level content at level. Becuase mentoring is just plain broken.
So mentoring is a great idea. But please please please, don't put it into EQ Next in it's current form. Please.
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And while I"m on the subjects of exploits. SoE needs to get a lot more serious about not allowing them and plugging them PROMPTLY when they surface. Exploits completely change gameplay and not for the better. If there's anything which would keep me away from SoE games (other then cartoony graphics) it would be maintaining their usual lackluster stance towards exploits. People find a way to cheat and get something for far less effort, others find out about it, and eventually the intended gameplay is forgotten. At that point, playing largely becomes using a series of exploits. Any attempt to stick to the intended gameplay meets with ridicule. I'm getting rather sick of it.

MalletMan wrote:

Yeah, not expecting SquareEnix-level characters which looks dang cool, but no more plastic-looking playdoh hair and character models like in EQ2. Stylish and realism are both good as long as we can make and customize our chars to look awesome.

The one thing I don't want to see is another lobby based instanced themepark. bring back the adventure in a huge open world (preferably without the constant zoning)
Rainmare@Oasis wrote:

The reason people hated the interdepence is because it shortly becomes a broken mess in level based thempark MMOs. Once most players start leveling up the lower end players can never get anything done because tehy depend on other lower level players in a game where everyone is maxed out sitting in the latest quest hub spamming "LFG for 10000 run thru the latest instance."
Crafting newbie gear shouldn't take longer than actually leveling to the next tier of gear. Hell, even now with as easy as crafting is in EQ2 it still takes more time to harvest the mats than to get the 10 levels needed to use the next tier of gear.

It's SOE, they are going to put out what they think you want, regardless.

remove speed ... why must everything go so fast?? (can't even walk with my horse and that sux)

Freejazzlive wrote:

I got EQ2 about a week after release. At that time and for some time after that the first few levels (up to at least 10, maybe a bit farther) were very soloable and most people soloed them. They were typically the levels you'd do in the Qeynos or Freeport suburbs and Isle of Refuge. Once you got to Anotnica or Commonlands things changed. There would still be solo mobs but there would also be heroic mobs and a lot of them. All those gnoll camps you see outside Qeynos were heroic back then. As were most of the bears etc. If you were very careful and lucky you could probably manage to solo stuff but you'd just be soloing trash mobs. You might be able to solo some green heroics. It wasn't very productive or satisfying. If you really wanted to get something done you had to group once you were past the really low level stuff.
I was gone from about late 2005 to 2008 (Kunark) and sometime in that timeframe they did a total revamp, got rid of almost all the overland heroic mobs, and replaced them with solo mobs. The game became a lot more solo friendly like it is now. I suspect they did it in response to WoW which was solo friendly and eating them alive (EQ2 and WoW released within a week of each other). It was kind of funny, I came back fully expecting to quit within a month or two when I hit the grouping required stuff. Except I never hit it. So I'm still here.
I do not want to see a return of that. While I used to put up with the requirment to constantly group because I had no choice, it would be very hard to return to that now. I never liked the requirement to group and it was a big part of the reason I left for several years to play other games which were solo friendly.

Gilasil wrote:

All of that was true in July of 2005 when I started -- except for the notion that you had to group to get anything done. I grouped some, but I solo'd a lot more, & had no trouble doing so. "Productive" & "Satisfying" are relative terms; I had no trouble feeling "productive" & "satisfied," but perhaps that's just me.

I don't really want a return to what it was in July 2005 either, but ... I think SOE went way too far in nerfing the overland zones. I'm pretty sure there's a happy medium somewhere, but I'm not seeing it with SOE. All I want is a situation where I actually feel "challenged" when playing, not the current situation where I can take out level 90 mobs without even using stealth, & where simply having a mercenary renders virtually all "solo" content faceroll easy.