Contested content: yea or nay?

As far as combat challenge goes...I'd love to see a system where most fights require strategy. I am not interested in twitchy, over-micro-managed combat that gives the advantage to whoever's reflexes are best, but I don't want "walk up and press "melee attack" " Either. I'd like to see a situation where an encounter could be resolved by combat, by avoidance, by trickery, or occasionally by running away

If they eliminate the old "training to the zone line" thing, I want to be chased across the landscape by a mob for 10 minutes....and I also want the opportunity to help someone else who is being chased....and I WANT to have to watch out for mobs that were on other people suddenly deciding I look tastier

Unfortunately that's too traumatic for the modern MMO player who excels at spending money on instant gratification.

Anyone who thinks EQ lacked challenge obviously never played a bard, hell I can remember times where I regularly sent tells that went something to the effect of /t soandso hey234 want t234o join us in..... never mind if I suddenly needed a song that wasn't already memorized (never understood why mobs got so angry about people sitting down ). Keeping a bad pull under control as a bard, or even an enchanter, keeping that rogue who though no fault of their own (they were 2 levels higher and had better weapons than the tank) pulled aggro, keeping aggro over that rogue or not taking it as the rogue.

I pray for the day trains will arrive at a new crushbone station, that I CAN lose my level when I make a mistake, that I have to spend 10 minutes looking for someone kind enough to bind me to a new location before I can risk going out adventuring lest I risk a 25 minute CORPSE RUN!

WHY?!? Because all these things require people to make intelligent decisions or pay a price, there was nothing more frustrating me when I played WoW than to go into a raid with people who couldn't be bothered to do some prep ahead of time and wipe again and again in an instance they didn't deserve to be in, that **** didn't happen in EQ. You went in ready, knowing what to do, as an organized group...... or didn't get your loot. You couldn't just throw yourself against it till ya got lucky then pay a few paltry plat at your repair bills, if you wiped more than once someone was going to step in and take over in your place and they were probably doing you a favor.

I played on The Rathe it had instancing before the concept was even invented, your guild couldn't just go down to Sebilis and kill Trakanon, you spoke to someone in the RTA (Rathe Travel Agency) and let them know you were making an attempt on a rotation mob or you were shunned by the majority of the server, then if you were sucessful you wait another ohhhhh 10 - 15 spawns (a month or more generally) depending on where exactly said mob was in current progression. While this might sound like an argument in favor of instancing its not, it was an attempt to "make life fair" and news flash people LIFES NOT FAIR! instancing is the same thing, I'd rather never have gotten my Singing Short Sword than have had it be the cake walk that finishing my Judgement set was or even helping my buddy get his Sulfuras after the eye dropped.

Lost Dungeons of Norrath was the perfect amount of balance IMO. 3 non contested dungeons each with regular and hard. If you wanted one of these groups, you had to walk to the zone in and talk in /say until you were needed.

if both contested and non-contested are desired for a given level, then the contested should drop better/more frequent gear.

Example:
Paludal Caverns the ZONE
Heavily Camped
Above average Xp and Loot
Vs.
Paludal Caverns the INSTANCE.
No Competition for mobs
80% Loot reduction
20% Xp reduction

I have never been a fan of having a dungeon both offer normal mode and hard mode as it seems a cheap trick of trying to double the content available to players. Plus it normally is ran on normal mode dozens of times just to turn around and have to run the same dungeon thats bit harder another dozen + times.

I loved the excitement when a raid boss spawned and guilds competed to see who assembles first. Once a guild reaches a certain number and began clearing most good guilds would tip there hat and leave. The bad guilds would get a bad reputation and end up disappearing after a while.

If they do decide on adding instances I hope its only for a short period of time after which it gets converted to open world contested. Example is if a new raid zone is discovered. For first 3 months it is instanced but after that it is open world contested. Over time some of then can even be converted to group level or even solo level difficulty (of course loot changes also)

LDoN is exactly what I don't want, and was one of thing biggest things I didn't like when they introduced it to the game, and for multiple reasons.

Seriously, can we please not have a "dungeon difficulty" option? Could anything possibly be more lame? Oh, I want to magically fight harder monsters. *poof* done! Uuuuuuugh. Immersion breaking to the extreme. Is it too much to ask to just have dungeons exist, and to have them simply be the difficulty that they are? And if you can't complete it, you'll need to come back at a later time, and if it's too easy, it's time to move on to something new? The ONLY thing having a "dungeon difficulty" option does is lets developers take the easy way out by creating less content. If there's enough interesting content in the world, why would anyone need to run the same stupid dungeon again on a harder setting? Just move on to something else....something new and exciting.

And one of the absolute WORST features of MMOs these days, all of which seem to want to do it, is the dungeon "points" system. Basically, any dungeon or dungeons that you run that grant some sort of currency reward that allows you to then buy a specific piece of gear from a merchant. Please, lets stop the madness. This does nothing but turn dungeons into a gigantic grind fest for gear. Everything becomes a min/max game where the goal is to plow through the content as quickly as humanly possible rather than actually interact with your group mates and actually explore. WoW took this to the extreme, and if these forums are any indication, this is exactly the opposite of what people are wanting.

Lastly, instances are just lame... period. It's an MMORPG. Not just an RPG, the MMO is important. Social interaction is kind of the whole point, otherwise we might as well just go play Skyrim.

I agree with you that if instances must exist, that they should be inferior in both exp and loot, but ideally they wouldn't exist at all, and there would just be sufficient unique content to keep the populous entertained without them.

Here's the problem - players want content. They chew through it and want something more. The days when players were content to sit in a "camp" for hours on end are over.

Seriously, how well do you think Everquest would have done at launch if camping wasn't an option? Were there enough different dungeons and content areas to keep an entire server happy if people tried to play them all?

Instances are necessary. Otherwise you have to create ten times the content, for no real gain, since most players won't go through all ten dungeons anyway - better to make a few dungeons really well. Hopefully the procedural generator is up to the task.

As for difficulty - it's the same thing, and the dev's have already hinted at it by talking about a 'solo path'. That sounds an awful lot like different versions of the same dungeons to me. Again, it lets them reuse content in a good way. You've got a good group? - run it on hard mode and get the best loot. On your own? run it solo, and maybe even get good solo loot if they make more than two stats meaningful and itemize creatively.

I do agree with you on the 'specialty coins'. My currency tab in EQ 2 has over a dozen different types of tokens, some of which are no longer in game, and there's a lot I haven't collected any of yet.

You're kind of missing the entire point of what this game is supposed to be all about: A sandbox, with players creating content for each other. If it's just another instanced dungeon run game, there's literally zero point in even making it. It already exists, and it's called WoW.

The dungeons will change though - procedural generation of content.
Mobs will move around and change - emergent AI.

Those are the two things that are going to bring people here and keep them.

As for players making content - Landmark will be filled with that, so I'm not sure how much I'll need to be happy in Next. I know there's the whole 'players building cities' things for the Rallying Calls - but how much of that is really players building content? Do I get to choose the texture for the city towers, plan the windows and hang the drapes? Or will I just be shlepping mats while the city magically 'grows' around me?

Dungeons should be transient things for the most part anyway. They form, get populated, change a few times, the world heals, a new one opens up, and the cycle continues. None of that precludes the use of instances, either for the whole dungeon or for parts inside, should the devs choose to go that route.

i might be missing information here but i believe you are thinking of everquest next LANDMARK with the sandbox reference. and if that is what you are referring to, yes i agree, instances probably shouldn't even be in that game.

i am referring to everquest next, which i believe is intended to compete with WoW on a much more innovative level. I personally like instances but don't want it to be overdone like WoW. WoW has been hugely successful and has an abundance of instances, in fact 95% of the raid/group content is non-contested. LOTS of people like them and would like to see them in some way incorporated into everquest next.
as far as two difficulties goes, if an instance takes 1000 man hours to create and can be converted to hard in 10 hours, why not? developers don't have an unlimited amount of hours to just create everything everybody wants and if they can double the number of players interested in instances by increasing development time by 1%, it only makes sense.

EQNext will have occasional instances - for story finales and such.
The vast majority of EQNext will not be instanced.

Quite a bit of the content in EQNest will be procedurally generated.

To be fair, the vast majority of WoW is not instanced either.

It would seem you are.

I agree, I guess I need to be a little more specific. most of the content is contested but of that content there are very few (if any) contested areas that I would consider a dungeon, a raid, or anything worth setting up a group and "camping". the original WoW had 3 world bosses which were incredibly fun but those are a thing of the past for WoW players now. of the contested content, the only time I would say I actually have to compete for a mob is for an occational quest.

of course I am, we are ALL missing information. Very few details have even been released yet. I guess calling EQNext a sandbox type game is a bit in the eye of the beholder.

with that said, I believe you are possibly confusing EQNext and EQNLandmark as being the same game or maybe just referring to EQNLandmark. while SOME content of EQNext I might consider sandbox, I don't believe it is the "entire point of what this game is supposed to be all about". I DO, however; consider that to be the ENTIRE point of what EQNLandmark is about.

IMO "the point" of EQN is to provide an RPG environment that learns, develops and changes to create a truly unique playing experience. any sandbox ability would be one of the tools used by developers to create that experience.

I can think of two aspects that could be considered sandbox.

1. call to arms that might result in the building of a city. the question becomes how much of this city will be influenced by the players of EQN (not EQNL)? Even if the characters on that server create 100% of that city, having the choice of where every building block goes (doubtful), I don't see this happening back to back to back. I see this happening 10pct of the time with 50pct of the server participating.

2. mining, tunneling, or destroying the environment in an attempt to find a lost city, dungeon, or whatever. I do believe that players will try to find these, but think they will be mostly unsuccessful in their efforts. I believe most new content will be discovered by accident or prompting from developers. I just don't see more than a small percent of players spending countless hours digging holes with no reward (except possibly mining) in the hopes of being the one that discovered the new content.

counting both of these together, I think amounts to less than 20pct of ones gameplay experience.

this is just my perception of what I might expect, maybe you have more information that will sway what I have typed and I would like to see any additional information.

I just feel that non-contested never made role-playing sense. Things like multiple instances of the same thing existing in one world? A place that I cannot go just because there are already people there?

How about having the players have the power of making it non-contested? Maybe they can destroy a bridge to the area or cave in an entrance or barricade off the place in some other way. Maybe erecting a wall or creating a chasm. That sounds like a fun way doing things.

The main question is why have this non-contested stuff? Do you really want a game where players constantly don't want other players around? How is that helpful for community? They should be happy people are there to help right? Unless they are there to stop you, but then that would be part of the challenge and fun.

Hope this helps. =)

Both EQN and EQNL are intended by the devs to be sandbox-style.
EQNL will be more sandbox than EQN.

EQN has several major goals. Sandbox is a major goal, but EQN isn't purely sandbox.

I can think of two aspects that could be considered sandbox.

That is all procedurally generated content. Players won't be unsuccessful - it's just that the results of finding a lost city won't be permanent.
You dig back down in the same spot a few hours or days later, you won't find the same city.

Depends of the focus of the individual player.
But, emergent AI and Storybricks are also major factors in the sandbox aspect of EQN.

Repeatable content has never made "role-playing sense". Regardless of whether the content is open world or inatanced.

It wouldn't really be "non-contested".
But, sure, players can do that.

Depends on why you're adventuring and how "xp" and loot are distributed - as well as how much time it takes to find new mobs once all the mobs in the area are killed.

i just hope they don't over do it, if i wanted to play sandbox style, i would play EQNL. (which i probably will)

back on topic of contested vs non-contested.

a common scenario for me back in the day of EQ went something like this.

its not a raid night, a few guildies get together with the intent to do a dungeon, you spend 45 minutes traveling to several popular areas only to find that they are already camped. you decide to head off to a dungeon less popular spending another 30 minutes getting there only to find it is camped as well.

in this scenario, i would like to have an instance available to fall back on. i just want to hang out with my friends killing stuff, not spending the night running from zone to zone looking for something to do.

Instanced dungeons are an abomination. If people are "dungeon running" the same dungeon multiple times to try and max out their gear, then it's become an arcade game and not a living world. To me it also shows that the "world content" is lacking. LDON was appalling. It was one of the first EQ expansions where I felt the game becoming something awful, and one of the first where I felt I had wasted my money on the expansion.