Please Instance Everything

Once again though what happens is you reward people simply for having more time. I agree that you shouldn;t stand there and watch... that's not what I really meant by going in and looking around. I just meant that most of the contested would probably be dead anyways and a raid force could go in to kil trash just to see the zone. I just think access to content should be availabe without killing contested. Otherwise I think your ideas rock.

I love how people just assume killing a contested = you don't have a life and you have to much time on your hands

If you want/like instance content, you kill instance content to get more content. You get more instance and more contested all the way till the very end, where if you want access to more contested content you need to kill contested. If someone isnt killing contested they dont have any business at the contested. Make the zone a copy/paste of some zone currently in game with no new models, then there is nothing new to go see. The only thing you are misisng out on are contested mobs, wich isnt a big deal since the only reason someone would be missing them out is due to not killing contested mobs in the first place.

Furthermore, becacuse of the actual progression, the contested mobs at the begining will spawn more often and not be killed by the higher end guilds, freeing them up for everyone else if that is the cause of concern.

It doesnt reward people for having more time, it rewards them for getting out there, trying the encounters, and learning them so they can kill them. I never said anything about a level increase with this expansion, although it would be perfect to do when the cap goes up to level 80 though and have the content progress with it I suppose.

My stance is going to stay if you dont kill contested mobs, you dont need access to contested mobs. The system I outlined even made it so the more casual guilds that would like contested mobs should have a fairly good shot at it once other guilds have moved on. If you let everyone have access because they killed instances, all it is going to do is open the floodgates for people saying the zone is too hard, the zone is waste because its only contested, instance the zone, its not fair only the top guilds are able to kill these HARDEST MOBS IN GAME and we dont get a shot because they arent instanced. And based on their track record SOE will agree and then instead of having the hardest mobs, dropping just a little loot and every 10days (give or take) you have the mobs easier, in an instance for everyone dropping the loot every 6 days. It once again would ruin things.

There needs to be a way to seperate the playstyles. Trying to force them to both use the same content will leave one or both pissed off and almost certantly arguing with each other. This way, if you dont like contested content, you dont have to do it. If you do like contested content, you have some available to you, but if you want the meat of it, you have to do the contested content (or at least 80% of it). If you want to do both, both are available for from the ground floor. I just dont understand why requiring contested for more contested content is a bad thing. If you dont like contested content or cant get it for whatever reason, it shouldnt be a big deal.

I will thank you for not making stuff up. Nowhere in any post of mine did I say this and in any case I have always stated that EVEN IF YOU HAVE TONS OF TIME that is no worse or better than if you don't have any. There is nothing inherently better about going out and having a job or playing this game all day (if you can and that is what makes you happy). Please don't try to start fights... we are finally having a civil and, what I beleive to be, a prodcutive conversation. We are finally getting issues out there for developers to see and think about. Coming here and posting that isn't going to do anything to forward any viewpoint.

I cna finally agree with you. Like Harla Dar, there is a contested and an instanced. If you do the same thing with zones but one is contested and one is instanced (with contested dropping better loot) then fine I can agree.

You misunderstood me.

By "access quest" I meant killing dozens of trivial mobs for rare drops, or camping rare spawns that are ultimately trivial to kill. By "gatekeeper" I was more than happy to have just a single kill give you permanent access.

The Deathtoll access quest as it currently stands is more than appropriate for an instanced zone. You could probably get rid of the initial part that makes you go through the single group instances though - that only serves to slow down the high end guilds who shouldn't need to waste their time there and should be able to just kill the four dragons to get in. After all, if you can kill the four dragons then killing the single group zones is pretty much a given.

My point was an access quest implies a timesink and a test of the ability to stay logged in and maybe kill trivial mobs. A gatekeeper mob (or set of them) implies the ability to actually kill difficult mobs.

Dd

I was referring to this comment but thanks !!

Ish, your idea(s) are wonderful, they (if every implemented, and done correctly) could save this game.
SOE --- Hire Ishbu to save your game before it gets run into the ground.

That would be a ton of money spent developing for a small amount of people.
I do remember you saying you weren't sure if you'd stick around and play EoF if it didn't have a lot of content geared for your playstyle.
Are you trying to drive off the players who allow you to raid

Ish:

Your proposal has merit. Basing stuff off the better progressive expansions in EQ1 is a fairly good idea. I really don't care if there's a whole zone set aside for contested races, you just won't find me there because I've been there and done that and really don't wanna go back to it again.

My comments:

- Make the gatekeeper contested not drop loot, or drop very little. You want to give the top guilds very little incentive to monopolize spawns and the reward of killing a gatekeeper is the access to the next zone. This is the mistake SoE keeps making.
- Instance lock the "contested" zone, like the original Plane of Time was. This stops people standing around lagging you up.
- High end contested zones should become instanced sometime after the release of the next expansion. This keeps the separation but also allows casual players to see all the stuff they read about without hurting the egos of the hardcore raiders too much.
- To avoid backflagging (which sucks beyond belief), make the killing of a boss of any instance automatically flag everyone in the raid for that instance, like PoTime does now with killing Quarm.
- Provide more contested mobs on the way up. Having them at the top end is manditory, but put out a few easier x4's like the cube mobs in BM.

Dd

The instance-locking probably isn't that hot of an idea on second thoughts. It means the first to zone in wins rather than having a true contested race if you feel like leapfrogging each other.

Dd

Thats not true. I didnt particularily make it clear but the zones, asside from the instances are basically xp zones, progressively harder, progressively better exp. Chalk them full of quests or something (anyone else feel that each expansion has progressively less quests, not that that is really my big thing, but it feels that way to me anyways). Add more aa's for xp reasons, add some other reason to xp, I dont know, you gain status or something and have some relaly fun/cool [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] you can buy now with tons of status, and i mean tons. There are lots of reasons to fill content with xp/quest stuff.
EQ1 had non stop aa's you could get so that was the reason to grind there, not sure what the reason would be here. They really did have some (for eq1) great tradeskill quests and stuff going on in PoP though that would be cool to see back I guess (what was that big progressive earring quest called again?). Basically you started out as a lower level tradeskiller and made a lower level earring, then as you went up tiers and got more body drops off heroics and junk you made better and better things. Eventually for eq1 you had to be a master tradeskiller in everything but you got a [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]ing nice earring. There are all kinds of quests they could do progressing through giveing progressively better and better rewards that didnt invovle raiding. And like i outlined, a lot of hte content is avaialable without raiding.
The stupid thing is, with the number of zones I laid out, thats more than KoS had (and of course there could be heroic instances and stuff, i just didnt go into detail on them). As long as raid loot > heroic loot > solo loot. And as long as higher tier > lower tier, they will be starting to get things right. There should be a lot of stuff for people not raiding to do. This would be a massive expansion, is that really such a bad thing?

Zuh?
If i said that i didnt mean to or worded something poorly.

No! I said it! I was just correcting myself. Got caught up thinking how to avoid people lagging out raids by looking on, but realized after I hit 'submit' that you're perfectly correct in that it wouldn't be a problem if the zone access requires killing tough mobs.

Dd

I am soooooo sorry you took that as an insult! But what about the part where you move to a PVP server? How much more contested can you get? Or perhaps you dont really want contested environments you just want people to be blocked while the "hardcore" raiders fill their needs first. What exactly signifies hardcore anyway? I mean hell Bane is in Deathtoll, we were not the first but we got there. Instanced zones work for quests and access. Sure throw a few contested mobs in for people to measure themselves with.
People are crowding around to watch me get the Cingular guy. What the hell! They are just lagging up the mall, they should leave if they are not trying to get the Cingular guy.

PvP is not a disucssion to have because the pvp element of this game was promised to in no way, shape, or form ever affect or change the regular PvE game. It should be as if it doesnt exsist.

Regardless of whether or not PVP was in the original game design, it is an option now. To whine that there are no contested mobs, and that others do not deserve to be able to kill instanced mobs is silly. LIke others have pointed out. Camping a mobs spawn point hoping to get a raid force there before the other camp bots do is NOT fun.

You play this game for the chance to kill things and win fat loots (I assume). Or do you play this game to sit and stare at a piece of simulated real estate hoping a certain combination of pixels will show up?

PVP is an option that would truly make things contested. Why not consider it? Or maybe its too hardcore for you, I know it is for me. I am the suck at PVP. I am the baby seal of PVP.

This is what everyone wants, and what I've been banging my head against the wall trying to get through to people. Yet all I get is generic 1 liners from all the geniuses on these boards 'lol lets just instance everything you want everything catered to you' nonsense. I agree 100000000% that contested progression should remain totally contested. However the lines should never cross when dealing with instances, never. I don't care what kind of quest it is if it's x2, epic - whatever, it should never intertwine. After DT was instanced, it made no sense for Haraghur to remain on a contested-style respawn, it made no sense considering the entire quest leading up to him was ENTIRELY heroic. It also made no sense for SoE to release an expansion absolutely devoid of TRUE contesteds - and this is what they need to now fix asap.

My guild has seen both worlds - hardcore and casual raiding. And I'm talking about LEADING a hardcore guild in a much more hardcore game than this, EQ1 - a game where progression (in most cases) was actually worth a [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn]. A game where you had to lead ALOT more than 24 raiders, and without easy raid utilities EQ2 provides. In EQ2. we raid 3 nights a week. Three. For 3 hours two nights during the week, and 5-6 hours on Sunday. That's maybe a total of 13ish hours weekly.
In EQ1, we raided more than 13 hours every WEEKEND, let alone the whole week. Progression took MONTHS and in some cases YEARS to reach the end game - and this was solely time spent from RAIDS - not ridiculously pathetic x2 BS that you had to camp. The VT key camp was utter BS - hell I bet I could find a post by Furor saying the exact same thing - it required no skill whatsoever.. yet it was RAID progression?! Honestly this is where most of my hatred for Haraghur came from - a pathetic camp that doesnt test your skills, it tests your patience. Granted Claymore is not an access quest, but if you ever want to finish it - which is the goal of any quest - you need kill difficult epic mobs. I would rather spend my time LEARNING the mobs I need to kill to finish the quest instead of sitting on my [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] camping a spawn that 12 plat farmers can defeat.

One last point is I want to make is itemization and gear. I am nearly in full T7 armor, despite only raiding for a few hours every week - that is just silly. In EQ1, it took months and months and months of hard work learning and defeating RAID mobs in order to get decked out in full raid gear.. and it needs to change in this game. As a casual raider, I should NEVER expect to EVER be decked in out in better or more gear than hardcore raiders, ever. Because it just doesn't make sense. Add contesteds that drop awesome gear that casual raiders should never see. It would help out alot.
Message Edited by Tasnus on 06-08-2006 11:28 AM

PvP isnt about contested mobs, its about fighting other players in character vs character combat. Fighting a contested mob on a pvp server is similar to what someone can do on a live server, proximity aggro 20 mobs and run them onto the raid force that is ae'ing among other things. Its really no different, either way you have 20+ new mobs on you that you didnt want and had nothing to do with the encounter and really, is just pointless.
Regardless though, pvp is a part of the game, but it was repeatedly stated and promised that it would NEVER influence the pve game. So it is not relavent to this discussion.
And you know what? I happen to much prefer camping a mob to running around clicking rocks and stupid [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn] like that. Who are you to tell me what I find fun?

I never explicitly said it, but what Tas said there is very important. I can't really add to it, just quoting for emphasis.

Dd