Ghosting - how do you fight it?
 

Something got me thinking: all those big games (EQ1, EQ2, WoW) they have this problem - as time goes on, the bulk of players moves up into the upper end game, and lower end game becomes a "ghost town" (hence my term "ghosting").

If I would want to say play WoW right now, despite the 12 million players there, I will find myself soloing all way to max level before I will be able to get any groups, even with all the difficulty reduction Blizzard put in. People simply not interested in doing lower/mid level dungeons anymore. Even what use to be high end is abandoned (Molten Core, BC raids, even Northrend is dead)

Which leads me to the next question: lets suppose I make my own EQ Emu server, and suppose it will have a breath taking content (wishful thinking here) I will attract some players, people will play, let suppose they will like it. The time will go on, I will add some more content, players will move up a tier, then again, then again. Then a point will be reached when any new comers who log in will find 80% of players all sitting something in the upper end game and no one to play with.

How do you deal with that?

I understand that continuing influx of new players can keep all tiers of the game populated, but this cannot happen indefinitely. Even if game continuous to live on (see EQ1 live which is on 19th expansion) all the content made prior to that is effectively DEAD.
People not going to line up for a 40 man raid at lev 50 to do Vox or Nagafen - they will solo level up to lev 100 (or whatever) and then maybe do raids at that tier.

So, I am out of ideas - how do you stop or reduce "ghosting" ?

Awaiting your comments ;)

This is something i myself have thought a lot about as-well, Recently actually.

Everquest live tried fixing this problem with the use of fabled mobs. It makes players want to go back into all of the old zones for the fabled versions of their old nostalgic items. Once fabled time pops around there are people in all of those zones either getting gears for alts or themselves.

There could also be World/Zone Bosses or Raid mobs that could run around the zones either KOS or Indifferent to bring the higher end players to that zone itself.

And then questing. Think of the everquest epics in live, the 1.0 1.5, 2.0 ect.. You are running throughout the whole entire world again. Foraging, Hunting, Fishing.

None of this is really a fix though and completely a gamble depending on the population and behavior of the players.

Skill based system instead of levels.

Kos-mobs by level. Much like grey cons usually leave you alone. Strew high level mobs across lowbie zones.

Involved quests.

Faction based progression.

Avoiding every kind of "forced" hub zone (Nexus, PoK, GL).

And much more. There is not just one solution.

Well even if you remove levels - still have some sort of progression - call them TIERS.
Each new content release = new tier = players progression.

After a while you will be at tier 10, 20, 30 etc

Then new players comes in - and majority of players somewhere around tier 35 - you still all alone at your tier 1.

High lev mobs in low end zones- yes that will draw in the high end people to hunt them - but this doesn't mean they will be playing WITH YOU. They will kill their high end raid target in move out - they not gonna group with you for level 5 mobs.

Didn't EQ1 introduce Tutorial/Cresent Reach to try and bypass some of the effects you are talking about? It is not really a solution but it seems like a reasonable way to 'herd' together new players.

well yeah, the "herding up" works to a point - they essentially gave them a new hub. But the rest of the game remained dead...
I guess there is no real solution to that: people cannot play in the same zone eternally - they level up, they move up to next one.

Unless you have continues influx of newcomers, the low end zones will ghost-out sooner or later.

EQ2 tried to solve this by having only 2 starting towns (even thought that sucked for immersion), but even that didn't work for long.

The most viable solution I can think of, would be to utilize the Shroud system as a mentoring system. High lvl players have the option of going into Shroud form, which is basically turning your character into a mob. Anyway, have a fraction of the xp earned whilst in Shroud form convert to AA xp for the normal character. Further, have no-trade/no-drop tokens drop randomly from low lvl content, perhaps <lvl50 or whatever based on your lvl cap. Limiting them to nameds would be ideal.

Those tokens would then be exchanged for lvl-req'd gear off some sort of vendor. Alternatively, you could have one or more of the modern currencies drop, instead of tokens, to make the exchange bit easier.


Players must have an incentive to group with lower-lvl players, and yet not have their higher-lvl gear and abilities to steam-roll the content. This system would allow for tight control of "mentoring" character power, instead of more common algorithmic gear power reduction systems which never seem to work properly.

Aside from combat suggestions, I'd have to agree with others here and say, NO port-hub zones! That ruins world utilization and will make new players feel alone. Imo, it also "cheapens" the feel of a server.

another solution is super mario brothers style world repetition.

what that means for the younger folks.. is that after you "beat the game" you can play again, but in a harder difficulty mode, and progressively continue to beat it on harder modes - with one notable exception... when I implement this, it will include "better equipment" as well, and not just a harder difficulty with the same stuff.

Cross Realm Zones in WoW has been really effective at making the lower level content more populated. It only really works though because WoW has a lot of realms to pick from.

yeah unfortunately this would not work for Emu, or any games with just one server and less that a 100k players ;)

I have always thought the answer would be to have raid type involment of low level toons.

for example have raid targets in the a cave out side of misty thicket and part of the raid encounter is level 10 and under toons have to kill bats during the raid fight. (maybe a bad example)

MMO raid content needs to be revolutionized to utilize all players and not just the bleeding edge ones.

The only problem I see with low-level raiding content, is that high level players can kill those targets with ease.

*EDIT*
Thought about this after I said that, one way around that is level-locking zones intended for low-level raiding.

Easy enough to put a banish script on proximity with low level raid mobs detecting level, without having to level-lock the entire zone. But yeah, I would have loved for Emperor Crush in live be an actual 1 group "raid" or something :)

I thought about this a lot back when I was playing live when they released shrouds.


Shrouding was supposed to be the solution to this , BUT was poorly implemented.

Shrouding abilities where ok but the primary one healing where severely gimped. The shroud at time where a combination of a lot of mix of classes with some being a lot of fun to play. Having to exp in shroud tree to unlock higher shrouds was genius.

Shrouding would be and Ideal solution for Planes of Power and down expansions. I had personally tested all shrouds in POP expansion.

shroud tanks could tank in pop tier 1 zones , you still needed healer to keep them up. <player tanks where better Obviously but they where not always available>

DPS shroud did decently in POP.

Healing shrouds failed miserably in POP the healing skill given to healing shroud where very limited.


I always felt shroud should have had their own level appropriate gear that would drop from common mob to named with quality going average to good respectively. This would have motivated higher level player shrouding down to get aa xp also hunt gear for his /her favorit shroud.

So many wonderfull possibilities with shrouds oh well

Do what Call of Duty does, called Prestige. Game delevels you back to level 1. Usually this is to achieve a reward, may be ranked item. Now player has to go through all the lower level zones again to level up.