EQ3/EQ Next ~ The Ideas Thread

Edit - Pink text added 24 May 2011. Blue text added 29 May 2011 (edited). This color text added 1st July 2011.
Edited again 28 May 2012. There is a LOT throughout this thread, covering various mechanics, gameplay, guild structure, combat, adventure, exploration, desired features, and nearly everything else.
Most of this thread is oolldd.

To Read the Pink Text, Click Here
forums.station.sony.com / eq2 / posts / list.m?start=270&topic_id=399389 (remove the spaces)


EQ3:

• Exploration is the most important element
• Trade-Route System (sea, sky, and land; underground areas are primarily for supplying the "black market" or "smuggling" from one city to the other)
• Layered combo attacks: thus making the game feasible on a console without diminishing the number of spells, and the variety allows for exciting, randomized animations
• √("Spellweaving") Animation-focused combat: players know what button to press based on the animation of the opponent -- this feels like action or "twitch" combat
• Smart instancing in a seemingly seamless world: Resource-based zones (farmlands), per player; housing zones, per neighborhood; arena zones, per tournament; trade-hub instances (interactive world-market or bazaar (optional: buy the item, retrieve it within the small zone), resource NPCs); seamless: sea, ground, sky, and underground zones
• Various forms of governance in each city-state, dependent on the culture; players interact differently with the governments of each city; this affects guilds (in very small ways, like armor bonuses) and trade (resource management)
• Never-ending randomly-generated quests in a quest-book (go here, give this crystal to someone, etc.; like geo-caching)
• Social media applications (check the market, chat with friends)
• Mobile applications (same as above)
• Achievement system (keeps players hooked)
• Non-instanced, ranked and instanced bloodsport, races, etc. (arenas)
• Interactive NPC dialogue: I'd rather have interactive NPC dialogue (Vanguard sans cards) and advanced AI pathing, function, behavior, and personality (see pink text) than excessive voice-acting. Limited, professional voice-acting is more "immersive" than excessive, redundant, mediocre voice-acting
• In-depth crafting system (like SWG)
• Highly-detailed character customization (like EVE, but stylized)
• √(SOEmote) Voice-chat
• Don't call it "EQ3"; keep a simple name

I think you can make it easy to jump into at any time, not too grindy, interesting and challenging. Lots of little achievements are an important element of this, I think. Here's one vote for a casual-friendly game (no time for anything more than a few hours per week (sometimes less) for ~95% of the year -- although the ideas are really exciting!) -- casual availability != desire for easiness, acceptance of limited content, or avoidance of subscription tiers and item-store purchases. I prefer challenges, exploration, and a steady supply of new items and locations.

Your ethnic municipalities make absolutely no sense within the contenxt of the game world. High elves in the Enchanted Lands? Kerrans in the desert?
I can't see the High Elves enjoying rubbing elbows with the Halflings and I can't see the Halflings overly enjoying a snooty elf presence on "their" island. It would make more sense for them to retake Felwithe.
Kerrans are a species evolved to thrive in sub-tropical to temperate mountain environments. I can't see the desert being all the comfortable for them.

I agree with the person before me where puting the differnt races in differnt ploaces doesnt make sence with the lore. Secondly EQ3 Really really needs to be in yet another alternate dementoin where antonica isn't a buch of tiny little islands. That really kills imersion in the game you run for like 5 minutes and you hit the other side of an island. and theres not nearly enough land in the game to make up for the populatoin. So Id like eq3s landmasses to be more like everquest 1 and a little like vanguard. Vanguard bombed but the one thing i do like about is is the scale of the world. I want to feel like im in a real world a HUGE world not on a little string of islands. I want to see things get gradualy colder as you get closer to everforst i want to see some small sort of volacanic atvity in some way before sudenly being in the middle of huge lava feilds in lavastorm. I want it to take a long time to get places and have lots of quests along the way.
The problem with vanguard I thought is that it wasnt layed out well. Your lv 15 you dont konw where you should go you try to explore a little bit and run into lv 45 mobs vangaurd wasnt well layed out and there wasnt enough mob population in the world and the game just didnt look good.
I love eq2s game play. keep that make the world more like it is in eq1 but make it on a MUCH bigger scale maybe have areas in the city that are dedicated to farming so that they are walled in away from danger. Bring back racial citys and multiple starting areas instead of just 2 citys to start off with. Races need to be seperate in there own citys unless they have aliances to let other races in.
I maybe one of the few that was hopeing EQ2 would just be a beter looking better gameplay version of eq1 in the future well eq2 is far from that the land is very differnt. I really hope that Eq3 is eq1 in the future in another dementoin so that the world can be the same not borken and be on a much larger scale.

Sell the franchise rights for EQ3 to NCSoft or Blizzard, see if somebody else can run it in a fair and competent manner.

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Banedon@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Im sorry, I don't want to see billions of immature people that are my age.

A lot of us play EQ2 because it has a better community with LESS people.

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And we JUST got a new senior producer YESTERDAY.

You cannot judge the future of EQ2 at all based on the events that he had to come resolve on his FIRST day.

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Aurorum wrote:

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Josgar wrote:

Spot on there Josgar,spot on

Make the game run well on current top of the line hardware not what you think will be top of the line in 3 years. Blizzard proves time and time again that you do not need cutting edge graphics for a game to be fun. System upgrades do not really help eq2 if you were running a top end system when it was released which seems a little strange...

My idea for the improvement of Eq2 is to start over and try an EQ3. Too many systems in place in Eq2 now to salvage it. Shattered Lands was a busted concept. No real soul to EQ2 atm, it feels very gamey and it is very hard to lose yourself in the Norath of EQ2.
If they had managed to turn the shattered lands concept into an evolving story it may have worked but thus far it has solely consisted of - yup, we found another Shattered Landmass. Woohoo.

And thats any different then in other MMOs?

WoW yeah we found a gate to outworld that was normally all destroyed
And their new expantion is Northend where they just happen to find some frosting on a mountain

Its all the same system, where the NPCs find the hidden lands first

What i would like to see is the Boat system of Vanguard.

Lets ourself sail towards the different islands. Ok they will need to create a HUGE Sea between all the islands
but thats a very nice adition to the game and everyguild can work on the Boats. So that you have the small personal boats and the HUGE Guildboats.

Then you have a more consistent world

just remove instanced content, make everything contested and you get a winner.

In my opinion if/when they do a third incarnation of EQ they should make it truly innovative and new when it comes to game features. EQ1 was ground breaking in its day. EQ2 was less groundbreaking but still good and worthy of the name.
Features I would like to see would be

• A Truly massive scaled gameworld with realistic world mechanics, by that I mean a functioning changing political & economic world where the actions or inactions of players can shape the world
• New improved AI system for creatures and NPC's .
• A more detailed Faction/social system whereby you are treated differently depending on your behaviour towards NPC's.
• Guild run villages and towns. Allow guilds to run villages and towns like a Barony, these would have there own simplified economics that need to be maintained. Also If the Guild lets the village/town fall into disrepair then it should be siezed back by the Ruler, and the chance of running it given to another guild. The guild that lost it would lose a lot of status with there ruler and would have to earn there way back up the ladder.
• Guild run Mercantile endeavours - setting up shops, smitheys etc in guild run towns. Clearing trade routes, for caravans. Hiring other PC's for tasks!
• Monsters should not respawn! once there dead they are dead. If you clear out the den of orcs, they should not just re-appear there. Its possible that they may come back, but whose to say that some other creature doesn't setup shop in that lair. Also unchecked monster lairs should grow and expand there influence dynamically.
• Ships!!!
• A new innovative combat system, perhaps based(only) on the DDO style, rather than button mashing.
• Magic system, allow the tweaking and thus creation of new spells by players. Also maybe a Tech tree style approach to spells, depending on how well or often you use certain spell types.
• Crafting. Allow crafted buildings, ships, also allow crafters to learn how to specialise and tweak certain items stats and change the colours where possible. Crafters should also be allowed to mend broken items and Salvage items for some raw components.

just a few ideas there. Some possibly beyond current technology I'm not sure.

Don't get your hopes up:

Smedley:
"[We're] refocusing SOE on high quality and not rushing releases," said of his coming crop of games. They learned many valuable lessons from EverQuest II and its head-to-head competition against World of Warcraft. Fact was, while both games did rather well, WoW had the budget, time and polish that EverQuest II did not. What's more, EQII was the first attempt at an MMO sequel, a mistake Smedley readily admits.
"In hindsight, I wish we could have had a do-over and not called it EverQuest II," he said frankly. "I doubt you will see us do that again."


taken from Warcry interview.

Aurorum wrote:

I'm with the OP on this, I still haven't seen a 3rd gen MMO, in fact: one doesn't exist. Third gen doesn't mean better graphics, better graphics are a given as equipment and available hardware improves.

I would also dispute second gen, although I feel eq2 makes a good stab at it. LoTRO online sucks, once you get over running round middle-earth (took me about 5 hours for that novilty to wear off) it quickly develops into something boring. I had great hopes for Vanguard, and that seemed to go backwards during beta. I was attracted to the promises over combat and the monsters AI. Sadly it didn't happen. Maybe it will be worth a shot in a few months.

I Like a lot of your ideas, but whilst games company resources are put into developing eye candy, true development with regards to AI and variety will be indifferent. After all, most people judge a game from its graphics, many I talk to say they are very important. Personally I'd settle for something like the original EQ Live zones with superb AI, tactics, and development. WOuld keep me interested for longer.