EQ3/EQ Next ~ The Ideas Thread

what would please me the most is SOE selling the everquest ip to someone who will make and support a good game

avrid wrote:

This is not valid input and your statement assumes or insinuates that there are better companies out there in the MMO market at this point in time which I would greatly disagree with as I've been around the block a bit. The only one even remotely close to SoE in terms of the MMO industry would be Trion(Rift). All other companies lack very hard in certain primary areas.
Regardless this is offtopic from the reason of this post.

Here are a few things I would like to see in EQ3 (or any MMO or game).

1. Smartphone apps - I want to be able to do crafting, or other non-intense activities, while riding the bus or waiting at the Dr.s office.
2. I would like to see the implimentation of transformative "diseases" or afflictions of some sort that might hinder you or give you new powers, etc. For Example, in EQ2 you can fight a million werewolves and vampires and never get "infected". There could also be other made-up diseases that do things to you too. Of course, these afflications would have to be curable although the decision to cure them would be up to the player. This would also create another job for Healers to do - they could have the ability to become experts on certain diseases and be able to cure other players. It would open up interesting quest lines for healers to undertake, it would add some spice to players without creating whole new classes or races, it could have effects on factions (predjudices from NPCs etc.). Since diseases would be random, would you find players hanging out in vampire infested towns trying to get bitten?
3. This is an OLD, minor gripe of mine. Example: I am out adventuring, whistling a happy tune, when I stumble across a Hairy Nutsack Spider fighting a Grim-Faced Goblin. Well, lets say I think Grim-Faced Goblins are kind of cute, so I kill the Spider. But what does the Goblin do? He attacks me!! I would like to see some A.I. and faction where rescuiing a certain monster makes them be a little grateful to you, rather than them simply be hard-coded to always attack.

That's all. thanks for reading.

Halo of G4 wrote:

What awful Froglok voice acting? I'd say Regent Wibbley is one of my favourite characters in the game personally, its in their character to "thee" and "thou" and have knightly virtues because they felt (and were) touched by Marr.
The only voice acting that does make me wince are the cutesy high pitched fairies in the starter zones (and small kids talking), but then again there is a wide variety of styles in the game so something is guaranteed to not be liked by someone else.

Actually I guess accents are another thing with the voice acting, its not a problem that a NPC has an American accent, but I do find they often put in an American accent somewhere without any real link to the local population. I think WoW showed how to do it well there with the various races each having a distinct accent linked to it (or at least not having the troll accent appear on a halfing etc, so for EQ2 it could be fine for Qeynos to have American and other accents perhaps).
Going back to the Frogloks they are one of the races that does have a uniform accent/speech pattern across their NPC's.

On the top of EQ3/EQnext or whatever I'm not really seeing ideas that are radically different from EQ2, personally I think there is more they could achieve with a revamp/relaunch of EQ2 then with EQNext or a EQ3 since the graphics are already there and of good quality, they just need a team of 10 or so people redoing the engine fundementally (1 person solo showed what was possible with GPU shadows and shader 3.0).
Put in some NPC's, settlements and factions that really react to the actions of players (things like a shopkeeper's shop improving as it gets more trade - maybe with the shop keeper specialising in certain goods, randomly they might retire and someone new appears etc) and the place would be much more interesting, that's easily doable in EQ2 without needing a whole new game to be written.

salty21db wrote:

Trion had a blank canvas with which do so something original but used $50 million in investors money to create a reskined WoW, I don't think they deserve any kudo's for that.

Here's another idea for now.
DONT RELY ON NOSTALGIA. I'm sick of it. Seriously, i wish EQ3 took place in a different world, a different setting, different people, dungeons, ect. Kind of like Vanguard Saga of Heroes. Although that game was was a bug riddened rushed slopply put together launch title directed by an drugged up has been (Brad Mcquaid), it still had some really good redeeming qualities. The world felt fresh and new and we didn't know what to expect. Discovering lands, races, classes, dungeons, and enemies felt exciting and brought to life new elements for each place you went to. What we'll probably get with EQNext is the same old stuff. Sure it will be parallel, but by how much? Probably just get the same Befallen/Guk/BlackBurrow/Crushbone/Permafrost/CastleMistmoore again. "Oh boy, befallen...whoopee....i guess. Oh wow, it's Gynok Moltor, necromancers, and zombies. Wow.....why did i pay for this game again? " Maybe this will appease a percentage of the fanbase that has no imagination and needs to relive nostalgia over and over. Well if you want EQ1, go play on the Project1999 EQ1 emulated server. Christ, even SoE has no problems with this server being up, so go there for EQ1, not to EQ3 just so you can whine about how the layout nor textures are the same as the simplistic quake like environment of the original.

So when I think about what could make for the next huge MMORPG I believe the words are customization, customization, customization. What makes a graphicly limited game like Minecraft so popular? The shear amount of customization you can do in it. What makes player housing so popular? Customization. What makes the Elder Scrolls games so popular? Customization of your characer.

So what kind of customization are we talking about? How about Elder Scrolls style character creation? No classes, just skills that you can develop over time. Perhaps not even having any levels per say but that may be going too far. A character that is totally defined by the player. If you want a spell slinging fighter you can build it. If you want an assassin that can heal his teamates you can build that too. Let the players decide what skills are best for them and give them abilities based on those skills.
Speaking about abilities, how about when it comes to ability effects we let the players develop those too, within reason. Each ability you get to pick an effect, a color, and perhaps a sound from in game sets. Let the players choose how their players abilities appear. Perhaps even song based characters could even choose to create a bit of music that their character could play, either just for appearance / in game concerts or for ability effects.
Housing, blow it though the roof. Let players buy rooms that they can position in their house. No need for multiple homes, just let them add on rooms as they see fit. Also let the players choose the appearance of rooms walls, floors, and ceilings within a list. Sort of like Freeport and Qeynos homes do now but perhaps on a grander scale. Let guild halls do the same.
Moving on to guilds, you have guild levels and guild banners, how about guild special abilities centered on their banners? Much like the player ability trees, as a guild levels it gets to choose special perks that go with the banner. Maybe it's that everyone within a certain distance of the banner can move faster, get back power/mana quicker, restore health over time, greater armor etc etc. Or maybe it's a touch the banner or activate the banner ability like a big heal or some sort of buff. The guild banner can be recieved from the guild hall and carried into either a raid or guild PVP fight. Perhaps it would be traditional for lower experienced characters to carry the guild banner which would allow them to recieve the experience of being in a raid or guild PVP event.
Crafting, lets blow it up!! Let crafters decide, out of building blocks and color sets based on their experience level, the look of their items. When it comes to weapons and armor perhaps they have a template that gives certain abilities but then they get to apply the look to that template. Perhaps higher level crafters could even apply an added effect to that weapon or armor that had appearance and game stats, like flames, ice, lightning, holy light etc etc. Make it so that players can design their own trinkets/cloaks/house items/books, to be given away at events.
Game world, leave room for players to build things. Let them build dungeons that people can enter. Let them have guild built sections of towns, perhaps you could let the top experienced guilds and/or top guild PVP let them decorate their sections. Perhaps out in the game world top guilds could hold forts or smaller towns.
Make it easier for player ran events. Possibly provide festival grounds that guilds could "rent" out and schedule events there in advance. A message board at the festival grounds provides info on upcoming events. Possibly put other message boards in other cities where players could put up flyers announcing their player ran event. Festival grounds could be similar to a house type place where the originator gets to decide who can come in pre-event to help with setup and when they "unlock" the place so that attendees can enter.
Multiple character mounts. How about chariots, war elephants, or other multi player rideable mounts? How about PVP events centered on such mounts? One person steers while the others fight from the mount? Mount based abilities? Perhaps even allow mount based combat for single or multi character mounts in the regular world.

These are just a few of the ideas I've had when thinking about this subject. If you look at the very popular games out there right now you'll see two trends. Trend one is to pack in as much player customization as possible into the game as in Minecraft, Sims, Elder Scrolls. Trend two is to make a very intense game along the lines of Modern Warfare 3, League of Legends, or Monster Hunter. Though intense games are popular they tend to turn off the population that enjoys MMORPG's, especially those that are female. That leaves you with packing in as much customization of the game experience as possible. I firmly believe that the next massivly popular MMORPG will be one in which players themselves control a large chunk of how the game looks and feels.

Controversy:
In EQ N, I'm comfortable with a "premium" payment tier ($25/month, e.g.), especially if this "premium" tier enables "premium" players to vote first and have more influence on the direction of the game (in exploration, not mechanics or back-end features -- like SWTOR early-access).

my thoughts....
its most definately gonna have this free to play and sc model, soe wont go back from this now that the balls rolling so no point in arguing about that.
- would hope to keep the ogres and iksar as playable races.
- updated characters, weapons and armor, character animations, fighting animations. what we have needs a facelift we are way out of date compared to games with nice looks
- would hope they have new lore and stuff for the rest i dont want another rehash part 3 of eq1. give us fresh ideas, new worlds, new story lines.
- would hope the model is more... for lack of better term... hardcore-ish. all the people who want an easy game can stay with eq2. bring back the challenge of the eq1 days, at least somewhat.
- i hate flying mounts, ruins immersion and wrecks the dangers of travel for me. i understand in a game as old as eq2 now most danger is long gone but hopefully in a new game they figure out how to balance the flyers so they dont make it easy to bypass all the content the spend time creating
- open zones, open zones, contested heroics, contested heroics, open zones. get rid of all this hide in instances crap. design it so we have reasons to return and hunt in the open
- customizable weapon and armor. then we can change it to what we like, saves dev time and player complaining when everything designed is purple fruity and candyland cartoon looking
- most importantly to me. pvp needs to be thought out and designed for the game from the beginning. some of you dont like pvp thats fine im sure there will be servers for you but alot of players enjoy someform of pvp or another. and some of us want no holes barred pvp with no influence from the people who dont want to participate in it. so figure out how you will seperate it from the beginning so people who do not pvp are not the ones calling for changes to pvp.
also wanted to add...pvp should go back to what it was in the beginning here. paper ,rock,scissors. class trumps class. top skilled players could upset the balance somewhat but overall it was about class and skill not gear.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/0...nt-in-your-game

/2012/01/15/the-daily-grind-how-much-searching-do-you-want-in-your-game

A few things come to mind here.

We must see real communications features integrated into the core game and that includes real text-editing features in the client. The EQII mail client is a bad joke. You can't even paste a line of text into a chat window. Adding optional feeds for Twitter, etc. is a good idea, and will work better when written into the game from the beginning. "Unified communications" is a concept that applies in-game as well as outside.

We also need reliable data feeds of player info for things like guild management tools. There are people out there who have written those tools and just need reliable player data to work with. If SOE can't be bothered to write those tools, then at least provide a data feed that works.

EQII was a huge improvement over EQ because the core game mechanics made it much harder to be a jerk. All the things I hated in EQ like kill-stealing, training, and ninja-looting were magically gone. I'd like to see one final improvement: no duelling outside an Arena or Battlegrounds. Players who want to play like street thugs should play on PvP servers. It's annoying that the first thing I have to do when I log in with a new character is to set auto-decline on duels because there is frequently some social defective handy to challenge me without even saying anything. Other than that, the one major annoyance is the practice of some people to run around an area, pulling aggro on a dozen mobs and thus leaving none for the rest of the players nearby. I mention this because I never see it happen in World of Warcraft. Any time WoW gets something right and EQII doesn't is noteworthy.

In general, EQII does a better job of supporting content for players with different (and contradictory) goals. I play amost entirely solo and I am very pleased with the progress EQII has made over time in that area. I think a major goal for EQ Next should be to continue that work, and make exceptional challenges for the solo player as well as the group/raid player. I like to see more unique content that cannot be done by a group. Deity quests, for example, should be re-written to be uniformly difficult and solitary. There should also be storyline/lore quests that can be done only by a single player. This would enrich the solo adventurer's life without taking anything away from the other high-level content.

Whatever EQ Next does, it needs to continue the Norrath storyline, at least if it's to be called EverQuest. There is always the possibility that "EQ Next" isn't actually going to be EQ anything. There are possibilities in any case. Some people want the new game to take place on a new world. I don't. I like EQII because of the story and the gameplay. Norrath changed pretty drastically during the Shattering and I find it very interesting to play the new Norrath after playing the old one so much. I remember how cool it was when my wife realized that a particular part of Elddar Grove was the original front gate of old Qeynos, and we found the old well and the niche where the Queen Klicknik used to spawn. I personally would love to play in some future changed Norrath if the mechanics and storyline were done right. Of course, I keep hoping the Gnomes and Erudites will figure how to put Luclin back together...

That pretty much covers my thoughts for now.

I want TRAINS in EQ Next again - at least the possibility that they occur sometimes, not always, so "griefers" are discouraged from pulling trains onto people.
You could do this maybe with some random algorithm:
in 80% of cases the mobs behave just like in EQ2 (rubberband).
in 15% of cases the mobs follow the guy who pulled aggro MUCH farther (maybe 3x as far) or they begin to sprint!
in 5% of cases the mobs follow the puller only for a while, until they get tired... then they stop and walk back and aggro anybody they hate who's close enough.
This means, you got a 5% chance of a train, and a 15% chance that a "griefer" will only hurt himself if he does it deliberately.

I've been thinking they should have special serverS that allow a variety of different type of gameplay. Let one have trains, ksing, contested based, rough xp debt and slow xp leveling. Then make an easier solo based server filled with mainly instances, speedy levels and no fear of having someone train you or steal your mob.

Whats kind of funny is that alot of this was in EQ2 at the start was was removed or toned WAY down because of casuals crying that it is too hard.
Specific items and bonuses for and from specific areas (see "Myst" or "Zelda": keys for certain doors, items useful against certain bosses, and bonuses against local adversaries). Darathar and Wyrmbane weapons, access quests to Zek, EL, Everfrost, lavastorm, Key to Varsoon anyone? Removed because ccasuals dont have time to do things and want everything handed to them for their few hours a week of play.
Send new players on a dangerous journey of exploration at the end of tutorial quests, between the city-state in which they start and one of the city-states with which the starting city-state is allied. New players meet other new players along the way. Old class and subclass quests were removed because they were too hard and took too long /cry /whine.
Area puzzles are not a bad idea, Rift does these and they actually lead to things.
- Culture-oriented cities competing with others for land (guild or NPC-run outposts in and out of the battle-arena), sea (hiring pirates to harass NPC traders from opposing cities), and air (most trading is accomplished by air) EQ2 did this already too and all of it was removed (except from one server) because people complained it seperated the comunity too much. EQ1 did it with Burried Sea and it never took off.
Here's one vote for a casual-friendly game (no time for anything more than a few hours per week for ~95% of the year -- although the ideas behind the games are really exciting!). 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.
NO, this is an MMO not a console RPG. They are not made for the casual, they are made for the people who WILL PLAY IT. This is a dynamic always on world that is not ment to be played a few hours a week. You want a casual MMO experience, go play the .hack games. Simulated MMO experience that will not move on or evolve or do anything without you when you dont want to play.

Meube@Splitpaw wrote:

That just can't happen, imagine the nightmare of releasing new content and fixing issues on several different types of servers that have different game mechanics like no leashing, and no locked encounters, etc.

Nynaeve wrote:

I could only see that in the context of the world for mobs with whom the player has a strong negative gain in faction ("you're really wanted", for murder, so they're going to chase you for a while -- maybe all the way to the end of the tribal territory, for example).

GeminiStar wrote:

Those are unclear access quests operating as triggers. Instead, it would be fun to find an applicable key or item or solve a puzzle within the same dungeon or region. Amnesia and Zelda present more thorough methods: The goal (not the solution) is clearly defined ("find x to proceed", "talk to the villagers to find out more", etc.), while the world remains mysterious: the challenges, in this sort of arrangement, are through the puzzles (keys discovered in the coherent environment).
The old class and subclass quests were not much like the idea presented. New players ought to begin in a safe place and arrive in a far away, safe place -- earning the designations of heroism along the way -- for example, from Qeynos to Halas and back, experiencing puzzles (akin to Myst and Zelda), crafting (akin to SWG and EQII), mobs (here the quality of opponent and randomized "personality AI" are substantial factors in combat), resource acquisition (see previous posts), diplomacy (akin to Vanguard's card game, sans the cards), exploration (akin to Amnesia, where players yank levers and knobs and light candles and open chests, and enter and leave empty rooms, to reach the goal), and all of these in increasing combination, until the final introductory scenario, whereupon players receive a means of rapid transportation to and from the begining location, and this ties together with resource-management and trade (see previous posts). Then the fundamental player questions of "Why are we here, why does this matter?" and "How do I establish myself?" are answered. Given enough variation in city-types (culture and government), and randomization in the important areas (i.e., behaviors of randomized dungeons and opponents, places to travel, and appearance of goals), and distinctions in classes and skills, creating new characters will be more enjoyable. The aim of completing quests ought not to be the continuous generation of "xp", but rather ought to be the desire for an increase of influence on the world.
EQ2 never had something close, and the elements that were similar were never to that depth. This is where directed quests come into play (common adventuring areas into which players from separate, culturally distinct cities are thrown; but unique cities are there for resource-management, trade, brokering, some crafting, diplomacy and social, some puzzles, and war, and so on).
The game simply must be easy to play: the more things to learn and master, the longer players will stay and pay, but the long "learning curve" must be very 'gradual'. These games must be time-sinks to be profitable, but they also must offer instant gratification, a little burst of dopamine, within the first ~7 minutes of play; I also think they mustn't be too grindy in combat; and one way to achieve this balance is by increasing the size, and randomizing the styles and behaviors, of single-area mobs; and lengthening boss-battles within the right contexts; and the encounters can remain interesting and challenging by not only including puzzles -- beyond absurdly hidden items and instead to clearly directed orders of environment events and mini-puzzles, some of which may be hidden, primarily in those mini-randomized dungeons -- but layering in reusability through variation: with opponents, the strategic combat may be slightly different from one single-area mob to the next, within the same region.
A less-cluttered UI, without a mini-map border or a Station Cash button, can easily be applied -- without sacrificing news updates or Station Cash exposure -- through pop-ups when logging-in or loading regions. An option within a phone app to operate in place of elements of the normal UI.
On opponent or "mob" placement: When there are invaders, they ought to attack as large, large groups. Otherwise, opponents should be rare and powerful (ForgeLight engine raids allowing each party to a massive leg). Why are huge packs of wolves placed next to massive troops of lions (or sleuths of bears)? This is neither natural nor fantastical.
Where do the children go to school? Where are the townsfolk? Where are the crops?
If an impressive structure appears anywhere in the game, like a cathedral or a castle, allow players (at some point) to enter it.
Cohesive environments: geography and naturally-sized flora and fauna blend, evolving noticeably from one region to the next.
Persistent battles between warring city-states in strategic areas of the world.
Mounts from unique environments of land, sea, and sky: horses, camels, elephants, lizards, cats, etc.; beyond boats: whales and dolphins, sharks, octopii, mollusks, etc.; dragons (stylistically Eastern and Western), eagles, griffyns, clouds, etc. But it'd be great to just see horses and boats and dragons.
Blue-prints: Player control of customizability saves on developer time. If you wanted, as one player typed, "ogre style table legs with a dwarven tabletop": If you set craftable items as interconnecting blueprints, blueprints that are required in order to access those designs, then certain designs will be rarer in certain city-states. You could have an ogred-table, but it would be expensive in Qeynos or Mara (depending on distance), as you'd first have to trade with Oggok (sp?) to receive the blueprints; and the further away _diplomatically_ (what degree of rivalry, ally or neutral or enemy) from Oggok (sp?) your city-state is (and that could be almost static, or very rarely altered), then the more expensive the table-blueprint would be.
"AAs are minidingable... less of a grind needed," another player quipped. An average of four minidings per level, with 200 levels, with numerous (and varying) 'AA' spots that improve very slowly. Players would FEEL as though they were progressing quickly; it could be imposed upon the same amount of content.
Fundamentally, it's the static-ness of 'complete task x, return to the point of assignment'; whereas, 'complete task x, encounter subset-task y, open result task z, end task' provides an illusion of dynamism. Even that -- without randomization -- is more exciting, and takes the same amount of time to make -- but then there are loose-ends. So what! As long as it's all a part of the same theme, the events remain 'immersive'.
It doesn't have to be an atomic-level world simulator for to keep human interest. It simply has to appear dynamic on a social level (like a little randomization in AI personalities, a little in dungeons, and a lot in economy, trade, resource-management, and adventuring styles).
Different city-states (like Halas, Mara, Qeynos, Freeport, Neriak, each politically distinct) trade and manage specific resources (environment, climate) between them (not crafting or harvesting, but large-scale resource-management in instances, see previous posts), and then allow the hiring of small mercenary fleets (sea, land, and air) to use against opponent NPCs in trade-routes. The world and the gods, and the racial tensions, and the cultural differences and environments are perfect for the sort of game here described. When this is implemented, powerful players will want to delegate certain tasks to new players: there is always something to do, and everyone feels purposeful.
Halas and Qeynos allied with Rivervale, and Rivervale allied with Maj'Dul, and Maj'Dul neutral with Qeynos, and Maj'Dul allied with Neriak, and Qeynos an enemy of Neriak, etc. These diplomatic relations should be clearly presented for all players.
Player-control over designated areas to be used as outposts and forts (see previous posts), or with different parts of that designated area assigned to different guilds, with upgrades available as the guild levels up. Deep customization of housing and personal resource-instances (some regions have guarded resource-instances, some are contested/invaded, and types of possible resources vary by region). Avoid the haphazard, careless placement of player structures, which often mold in ugly, inefficient places (SWG).
Trade-routes supply the guilds with resources for upgrades in claiming land areas for either a) additional and rare resources or better resource conditions (environment, climate), and b) more forts and outposts. These supply land and resources to support the fighting, crafting, harvesting, resource-instance access, and diplomacy between city-states. Then if you include the delegation of these activities from high-level players to low-level players, the game will last longer.
Rules within an environment applied to different / unique situations, instead of the same situations. It's not stimulating to play the same situations for hours and hours: the rules are what ought to be consistent, not the situations; and story doesn't offer that. From what I can tell (and although these are interdependent traits), story is an element of environment, culture is an element of story: "There is snow on the mountain, so we will stay here. When the water stops flowing, the sky cries into the wind. We paint in these bright colors to arouse the water."
Story ought to be a part of the environment.
Hide-and-seek minigame.
Represent in-game guides of the tutorial quests as spirits from whatever city the player has chosen.
If there are optional or purchasable 'companions' (in addition to mercenaries), they ought to be unobstructive, small, easy to hide (like a fairy), and removeable.
AI: Stanford, MIT interns.
Free e-book guide with the purchase of the game. Extended guide for a small fee.
Night and day affecting events of environment (the dead rising only at night in a decaying city).
If I place group-chat into one of the tabs, it won't appear in the others. It'd be nice to see group-chat in the main chat and also in a tab dedicated solely to group-chat.
Heroic Opportunities are great! More strategic combat would be even better!
The Freeport upgrades are superb! Thank you, developers.

I am having serious EQ withdrawl but I refuse to play EQ1 or EQ2 again.

For **** sake will you please get us something to look at on EQ Next?

Thunndar316 wrote:

There are some "old" concept images a few pages back, and a video of animations.

Gilasil wrote:

The kind of game the guy you wanted quoted would only be populated by the Korean grinder fans, and would have an obscenely small population.
The folks that enjoyed everquest 12 years ago aren't the same gamers today. I could have played eq all day every day 12 years ago. Now? If I gotta go, I gotta go, and I don't have time to find you a replacement, I don't have any desire to spend weeks camping the same mob for a quest that I need to be viable in anything.
31 years old and I got more to deal with than a video game. EQ had the players they did because there weren't really any other options. Not the case anymore.