Fridgecritter 2X Diablo 2 random loot

[lsuee]

I'm actually having a good deal of fun on your server so far. I do have a couple of questions and would like to offer a couple pieces of advice.

Questions: You mentioned putting the server in ALPHA mode and said we can expect several restarts. Does this mean several restarts per play session, per day or per the ALPHA period? Furthermore, will our characters be wiped once you decide the final version is done?

Advice: Give main bosses their own item loot that will give people a reason to kill them. The other piece of advice would be to make all items dropable.

[Fridgecritter]

There will be a few restarts a day, depending on how many changes made to the database I do per day. I will try and wait until I have a few changes made until I do a restart.

As for character wipes... I don't plan on wiping the chars. I don't know if I will have to, and I don't see a reason to do so yet, so the answer for now is no.

I thought about taking the no-drop or no-trade status off of things in an effort to get people to trade back and forth for gear they can't use since there is no economy on a custom server... But I changed my mind because I don't want people hording items and giving it to their alts and not having to earn anything with their alts.

As for the bosses, there will be some planning involved, but I am not sure what yet. I am thinking not just drops, but custom quests that will take you to all corners of Norrath and beyond to finish them, with good rewards of course.

[lsuee]

I like that idea. Perhaps I can help you expand on it a bit. A series of quests to kill several of the big-named bosses that give nice items as rewards...AND if you complete certain chains of the quests you get keys allowing entrance into a few locked zones offering higher challenges and better rewards.

Just an idea that would be fun...

[Fridgecritter]

Well, after reading this reply, I am kind of disheartened after some thought. I think the project here at eqemu should not stray so much from the original game that it becomes another game altogether. That is my opinion. Having said that, I think if there is so much work done to the quests that it becomes a custom kill-and-quest server, it will take away from the content and theme of the game so much so that it will not be fun.

Ok, so where do I stand after all of this? I think there should be a few changes made to the original game so a small population can play on it while still having fun, and receive some sort of benefit that they would not receive on another server, making it unique and fun. This is why I need to change the random drops so lower level mobs are not dropping level 75 items. It's just not fun.

If I cannot alter the game just slightly without altering too much of the game, I think I will just open a PVP server. That was my first thought before I saw GeorgeS tool to implement random drops.

For now, I plan to wipe everything but the character and inventory info, and dive into the database to manually implement random drops that are level specific. I think this will be the best way to do it. I will keep the spell scriber and teleporter, but no hot zones, no custom exp for the hot zones. Just 3X exp across the board and random drops that are level appropriate.

Feedback appreciated. Thanks.

[Fridgecritter]

Well, I'm used to just diving head first into software and figuring out how to do it later. I started using GeorgeS Diablo II random loot program (great program btw) for implementing loot on my custom server about a week ago. I didn't bother to read the directions, and added loot to the tables. I was frustrated when I didn't get the results I was hoping for, and there were lower level mobs dropping level 75 loot.

After actually reading the help files and doing a little research, I figured out how to use the custom query tool that is built into the program, and I am now working on getting proper loot for appropriate leveled mobs using the program. It is simple enough... All you have to do is enter criteria for what you want to be edited into the tables. If you put "reqlevel<=10 AND an ac<=6". then a level requirement and an AC cutoff is made to distinguish those items.

I am doing all of the loots over again now, and hopefully it will be a lot better, and players will have gear to prepare them for the next level.

[Cvinion]

First thanks for a the fun server man, Im having tons of fun playing here, but secondly I was just curiois as to if you have an idea of how long it will be before the custom loot tables are implimented, any updates on this would be really appreciated. I jsut like staying on top of things to know what the next big thing is going to be.

[Fridgecritter]

This afternoon I will be running all the queries on the tables, this should take about an hour or so, then I will implement them if I have time. If not, then it will be tomorrow morning before they are implemented. I want to make sure I get it right this time.

Also, I don't want to flood this forum with issues like this. The website is up at http://www.fridgecritter.com and the forums will be up this morning. You can post there. Thanks.

[Fridgecritter]

Here are the statistics for random drops:

100% of mobs in the game with loot tables associated with them have a 35% chance to drop added items randomly along with the regular loot that was already in the loot table.

Levels 1-10 mobs have chance to drop added items up to level 15 and or items with a recommended level of 20.

Levels 11-20 mobs have a chance to drop items up to level 25 and or items with a recommended level of 30.

Levels 21-30 mobs have a chance to drop items up to level 35 and or items with a recommended level of 40.

Are you seeing the pattern? You may get items that are a few levels higher than the mob's level, but not much over that.

At level 60+, Mobs will not drop items (other than items that are from the original drop table) that are level 49 or lower. This makes it so higher level mobs won't drop junk (if they didn't originally drop junk).

[Cvinion]

Great addition Fridge, Let's see how it works out. Very excited about getting my druid up some levlels and seeing how things go.

[Fridgecritter]

It seems to be working very well... I also added a little "extra" to bosses so they will drop some pretty good stuff along with their normal drops. After I'm done figuring out a few more bugs that people have submitted, I think it will be finished.

Having said that, does anyone have any interesting ideas for the server, keeping in mind that I don't want to stray too much from semi-custom?

All I have done so far is add some level appropriate drops, and up the exp rate, so I don't want to change the gameplay aspect very drastically in a way that makes the game totally different than live.

Maybe some added quests, or something... I don't know. PVP doesn't seem to be a viable choice since there are too many bugs that need to be worked out of the PVP system. Am I wrong about that? I read a few posts about PVP being broken, so I didn't even venture into that realm. Also, with a sparsely populated server, All it would be is PVE with the occasional naked kill because the player bagged their gear.

[Cvinion]

The drops and XP increase are amazing, I think the best route to go for a small population server is adding in Hot zones which i believe you may impliment, or have at least tried. Along with these hotzones i think another great idea would be smaller group related GM events, even running one per few days wouldn't be that hard, and with a helpful guide it would be easy as cake.

I'm not talking about throwing in epic quests, but just a small event here and there appropriatly scaled for level would be wonderful. Even adding small things such as an event where a small group of level ~50's would have to run into the Luggald caves in Dulak, Kill Captian Varns and receive small rewards that are slightly above the average of what is dropped.

Just some suggestions, I think the server is nearing an actual plateau where players can come, level and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be

[Cvinion]

Also as of 2:50pm EST the server is currently down, just a small FYI if you are reading this thread still.

[Fridgecritter]

The Random loot items are put back in with the new rule settings, and The drops should now be level appropriate. It should make things a little more fun that way.

I know a couple of people are having trouble with zoneservers going down and up repeatedly, and I don't know what the problem is. I have not made any system changes, and it was doing fine for the last few days. No idea.

[miotch]

Alot of folks are having the same problem. It seems, when you zone, your stuff goes poof. and you are then naked.. The first time this happened to me, i simply zoned again and that fixed the problem. But after being struck naked again after zoning, i tried zoning, camping out relogging etc.. Nothing worked..

When you camp out to char select it does show your char with all items / equip. Just does not seem to compute when you log in..

[Fridgecritter]

I reverted a few different tables back a few hours in the database and it solved this issue, or seemed to. I haven't had this problem since.

The server is not in the list for now because I am upgrading the hardware due to the population. I underestimated the popularity of a random drop server. It will be back up shortly with 4 GIGs of RAM.

I will be making a lot of zones static, and hopefully this will solve a lot of the zoning into abyss problems where players need to be #kicked then #movechar nexus in order to get back online because the nexus map is smaller, and loads faster.