In-Game Dungeon Overlord AKA Player Built Dungeons :)

Just figured I'd ask a few questions about the new Player-Built Dungeons.
• Mobs can you direct their Behavior when not engaged (Stetching/Researching/pondering/dancing/flirting/etc)
• How they fight (Ranged Primary-meleee only when approached/heal or buff primary/debuff/melee)
• Who they assist/ignore (other NPCs)
• What they say.
• Scripted drops (keys/etc)
So far I have two vague concepts, one a soloable Brawler dungeon (A brawler Test I guess)
And a dungeon where you can see if you can make it tough (but not impossible) for a group or raid to pass. [insert Evil laugh here]
That Reminds me I wonder if I they [Devs] are going to change Rust Eaters to actually damage weapons and armor and if I should place them before the Lich fight (or was it Paladins Guarding the confiscated weapons of evil)
On that note I hope Carpenters get more House-item weapons soon, they are necessary for Dungeons amd L&L just don't make enough and the Axe recipies limit you to axes /em ponder

Zabjade wrote:

Keep in mind that you dont run the dungeons as your own character. You need to find/collect adventurer NPCs out in the world that you use to run the dungeons. Similar to what they did in the DoF expansion with the arena champions where you bought, looted or quested monsters (also doubled as house pets) that could be used in the arena.
You pick which one to use and you get a reduced set of abilities according to the class of the NPC. Makes it much easier for the Devs to balance i guess.
There is a bit more detail in the eq2wire panel 1 writeup now as Feldon has added the slides to it.

Liandra wrote:

I knew that was hoping to find some Monk NPC's for one and random NPCs for the other. If they are findable.

You would think they would have realised from the debacle of the arenas that anything you dont play as your own character is completely doomed. People come here to play EQ2 and to play and progress their toons not to play a completely seperate mini-game.
I was pretty keen on this but frankly it now sounds MUCH less interesting.
Maybe I will be surprised.

Armawk@Everfrost wrote:

Yep, I even hate the quests that turn you into some other class and avoid them like the plague.
I forsee this to be another waste of dev time.

Armawk@Everfrost wrote:

Why learn from their past mistakes? I'd be curious if a dev popped in and stated if there is actually a technical or gameplay difficulty why we couldn't just run our own toons in these type of dungeons. I HATE the avatar thing, it's like playing that stupid avatar in the SF solo shard missions or becoming that spirit in the loping plains solo quest, it sucks. I've spent 7 years playing and learning my character, and I would want to sit and rearrange my hotbars and learn new skills/combat why? Welcome to the new Arena.

Armawk@Everfrost wrote:

From what I understand what happens is you set up the Dungeon and then OTHER people take a whack at the Dungeon as themselves. You basically are the Dungeon Master...
I COULD be wrong.

Zabjade wrote:

Have a look at the video from fanfair. It is up on youtube here. The bit on DYOD starts at about 24 minutes in.
You need to collect adventurers from quests/loot/etc out in the world. When you zone into the dungeon you get a list of your adventurers and you pick one to play through the dungeon as.

Rick777 wrote:

There are several reasons why we chose to use avatars rather than your actual character. And of course, everyone won't agree with these ideas.
First, a big part of the player made dungeons will be creating dungeons that provide challenges for players to complete. There are leaderboards associated with the dungeons so you can compare your times with other people. Unfortunately there is a huge range of power for a player-character of the same level (like level 90) depending on their gear, AA's, etc. This makes competition impossible because you aren't comparing apples to apples. We hope to make the dungeons more about your skill and creativity, and not so much about how much time you've invested in your main character.
Second, we wanted to create specific types of gameplay that may be different from what normal characters can do. Avatars will have specific strengths and weaknesses that should play off of the different types of creatures and objects that can be placed in a dungeon. Part of the fun of running the dungeon will be determining the group make up and which avatars everyone will use in order to beat the dungeon. And after running it you might decide to try again with a different avatar because those specific abilities might help you complete it faster and earn a higher score.
Using avatars also allows us to create themed dungeons where we can re-enact historic battles or stories by forcing players to use specific avatars. This is something we will consider expanding around holiday events in the future.
Avatars also provide another collectible mechanic and gives you additional ways to set yourself apart from others if you're interested in that kind of gameplay.

Rothgar wrote:

I understand the reasons why you want to use avatars to avoid player power unbalancing the content, but would it be more fun instead if players could choose to at least use their own appearances in the dungeons?
Perhaps either as a system where we say get the "Shadow Archer" and get a set of abilities and maybe an armour appearance to use inside the dungeon with our character?
Or maybe just the abilities + an illusion appearance, and we go with our own appearance if illusions are switched off?
As while I like the idea of now and then swapping to a new appearance, and I definitely like the idea of getting and being limited to say 8 new skills to make the gameplay new and challenging, I also am quite attached to my character hopping around

Rothgar wrote:

I'm predicting that after maybe 3 months, the excitement over these dungeons will pass and the whole thing will get about the same usage as arena pets. Using avatars is going to get boring. Players want to play their own characters. I spent about 1 hour using arena pets back during DoF and never took a single one out of my bank vault after.
I feel the same way as Rick777 in that all of the quests and zones that put you in control of another type of character are lame and tedious. It wasn't even fun being scrooge mcduck or whatever you call him in that Christmas quest.

Rothgar wrote:

Huh? Didn't we all start out with 0 XP and 0 AA? Where we all took our characters after that was our choice. Some are clearing the toughest raid content in the game, others aren't. Those of us that aren't won't be showing up in the top 10 on the leaderboards most likely. Speaking for myself, someone who doesn't raid anymore, I understand that.
Couldn't you leave the choice up to the dungeon designer? If they choose to design the dungeon for avatars, that's their choice. If they choose to design the dungeon for player characters, that should be their choice too. Give the designer the option of making it an easy dungeon that small groups can handle or a really tough dungeon that only seasoned raiders in really nice raid gear can handle. The stats would show which are more popular to run.
I enjoy playing my characters. I know what they can do. I've built up things over time to help in certain situations. I get better at playing them by playing them. With this, what you're telling us, is that if we want to run one of these dungeons, none of us gets to do so while playing our characters that we've been working on for years.
Where is my incentinve to learn the avatars and get better at playing them if the only place they are used is in these player designed dungeons? I hate to say it, but it probably will be like the Arena after the newness wears off if we aren't allowed to use our own characters.

Rothgar wrote:

Out of curiosity I am very curious how you plan to address this when this all goes live this being my question of why play game to loot gear or shards ect if were not allowed to participate in instances ect with our real characters this will turn our real characters into fluff
also what will be the point to play the game anymore? I mean why level your characters adventure level or alternate achievement points when they mean nothing in the playing grounds / instances?
also out of personal experience there is a solo shard quest in lavastorm that was introduced a long time ago and it doesn't allow you to use your real character and I really disliked it very much as I put insane amount of work and money into my real character

Rothgar wrote:

I have to say I really like the idea. It sounds interesting and is something new. What really excites me is the quoted section above. Re-living historic EQ1 stories/battles in EQ2 sounds very intersting and fun. I played EQ1 since almost the beggining up until this games release and was (am) a huge lore fan so I look forward to what you guys do with that feature!

Rothgar wrote:

So to put this into EQ1 terms, player made Monster Missions with a LDON style scoreboard. Less and Less interested in this feature the more and more you guys explain it. i was hoping for NeverWinter Nights style Dungeon Building, but I can see that likely is 180 from what you guys are going to offer.

Rothgar wrote:

Using Avatars is by far the worst idea ever. Do you guys even play this game anymore?
Sad to say it but you guys are wasting your time. Look at the arenas....they were okay for a few months then not used at all...ever. Players want to play their characters, thats the key aspect of these games. If we cant play our characters, then there is never a sense of reward. Battlegrounds were much better then the arenas for this one reason. But, why would you start listening to your long term players now.

Anestacia wrote:

What's new about it? We already re-enacted a historic battle once, on both sides (The Battle of Cauldron Hollow, good and evil versions, in which you took on the role as either Commander N'Farre or the greenhood Gandari), and we also have The Trial of Harclave, which is essentially a re-enactment of Harclave's life.
Speaking of Harclave, I'd much rather see something like that in the playermade dungeons than avatars. If you're worried about levelling the playing field, grant everybody some sort of Harclave like buff in the dungeon to ensure a relatively balanced experience for everybody. Because, let's face it, unlike anything in this game that had you playing as an avatar (which I agree is boring; I can't stand not playing my own character), at least Harclave's was insanely popular in its day.

Rothgar wrote:

Thanks for the response, it's heartening at least to see a dev in here explaining some of the reasoning.
You know, I don't think it really matters why you can't let characters run the dungeons. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think in this case you guys are a bit blind even in hindsight, or I'm not sure if most of the devs were around back in the Arena days. I don't see why this isn't an EXACT copy of the Arena, except with player generated content which may even be worse to the extent that the quality of dungeons will vary wildly.
The fact of the matter is that overwhelmingly you will find players are not excited in the least to play an avatar. No one likes any of the avatar situations in the game. First of all you get an entity that does not look or act like your character, this is something you've spent literally years building an emotional attachment to. Then you throw some abilities onto the character, now I have to right click and examine each new ability, set them up on the hotbar, figure a casting order, etc etc which are things I've already done over the years with my character. The skill I've built up using my own character are the skills I want to utilize in any aspect of the game. This is why BG's had a modicum of success and why, even though they are slowing down due to bugs, they still are goin on, players got to capitalize on their own strengths and weaknesses and that is exciting, avatars are not.
So what are you guys going to do to drive players to the DYOD? Let's assume you will do what you always do, entice players with gear. In this situation it will be winning tokens which will be used to buy gear. Will you do the same thing as BG's and make the gear the best non raid gear in the game? What happens after the players get their gear, will they ever visit the DYOD again. Once again hindsight is 20/20, all you have to do is open your eyes.
So you ask what can you do? IMO what you can do is not waste the dev time, resources and finances on an avatar played dungeon, just scrap it. Just like with the Arena how can you better spend those resources from a project no one will use in 3 months? There are sooooo many answers to this, how about itemization (yeah I know 20-90 itemization is on the list but more resources would be good for such a mammoth task), how about class balance, how about mob dancing, how about just putting the dev power to solving how to let characters themselves run the DYOD, the list is endless and goes on and on. For every player you might gain with a new feature you lose 3 because of frustration, part of that frustration is not understanding the players even though it's here in black and white, we are telling you, and the Arena is clear evidence that it's just wasted dev power.
I appreciate all the work you guys do, EQ2 is pretty awesome and I'm hoping you guys can recover from the dropped ball that was the DOV xpac. But really really think through this avatar driven DYOD system.

Circadian@Unrest_old wrote:

How many of the people comparing DYOD to DoF Arenas actually used Arenas?
I did, I actually enjoyed them for some time, long enough to unlock all the arena champions and a decent number of arena titles (on a now largely defunct character unfortunately).
Firstly, you could play your own character in Arenas. This, however, proved almost impossible to balance as the system implemented was never broad and inclusive enough to be able to offset the massive advantage raiders/high level players had in any match. Battlegrounds combatted this by forcing everyone into new gear for Battlegrounds, by creating a new set of goalposts so that everyone's old gear was somehow lacking. Raiders obviously still had an advantage to begin with, but once people got into the PvP gear everything levelled out.
Secondly, Arena champions were possibly more often used than player character matches, because they were better balanced and Arenas was always a way of passing a bit of time, it was never a self contained play-style (like Battlegrounds is).
Lastly, competing in arenas was entirely pointless. It gave access to some arena champions (not great ones to be honest as the Rujarkian Blademaster and Thulian champions were little death machines; the rujarkian blademaster was a quest reward and the Thulian was, I think, an entry level champion) and it gave access to some titles. That was it. The proposal is that DYOD shards can be spent on actual useful gear for your main character. Assuming this is correct and it's not just appearance crap (that would almost certainly kill this mechanic) this single thing invalidates the assertion that it is like arenas in it's lack of tangible rewards.

I, like everyone else, would love for this feature to be a seamlessly integrated part of the whole. Where player created content competed equally with developer created content, where we used the same characters and got the same tokens to spend on the same gear. But I realise how complex that would be and how ill-considered it would be to attempt to do it all at the same time. If SOE tried to do all that at the same time it would almost invariably be a horribly overcomplicated and broken monstrosity of a feature doomed to failure from the very beginning.

I sincerely hope I get to take part in the testing of this feature, the rewards are what will make or break DYOD, if the rewards are good enough then people will walk half a mile over broken glass to get them (Like the TSO Lavastorm solo shard quest /shudder). Of course it would be best if it wasn't an experience akin to walking over broken glass, but even fun and amusing features get no use if they're not well endowed on the reward end of the spectrum.

Anestacia wrote:

On the Historic battle Front I hope you add in an Open-air Dungeon for turning into a forest or other natural settings. (hmm would need a water fall, river, and lake setting pieces