Custom Server Design: Epic Weapons

[Drajor]

Heyas. I have had this idea rolling around in my head for a while now and wanted to share it to get other player/designer opinions.
The idea is this, epic weapons on custom servers are a poor and lazy design choice.

I guess a good place to start is to try and describe what is an epic weapon, what makes it epic? If you played during Kunark/Velious you will probably know that epic weapons were rare/uncommon. The players that had them were in a guild that raided at least weekly, the quests were long and the rewards were great.
So an epic weapon in my opinion must be both rare and powerful. Think of your favourite custom server, would you consider an epic weapon to be rare? Chances are no, everyone has them. They are common and mandatory. They are certainly powerful, but they are not epic.

Ok, so with a definition of what is an epic established. Lets look at some of the side effects of having these non-epic epic weapons in the server design.

The first side effect is the impact it has on diversity. Log into your favourite custom server, 9 out of 10 warriors are all using the same weapons. For good reason too, these weapons are generally the most powerful, of course everyone is going to have one or is in the process of getting one.
This is a shame because there are hundreds of really cool weapon graphics available to designers but instead we see 10-20. Boring.

The second side effect is the devaluation of the designers work by channelling all players into epic weapons. The designer probably spent a lot of time making all kinds of other weapons available as loot or through crafting but chances are no one will really consider using them, because they are not 'epic'. So all that work is essentially wasted. There is still an illusion of choice for the player, but really there is no choice, you need to get your epic.

I will leave it at that for now and wait for some feedback!

[dagulus2]

They were rare when they first came out, but by Luclin pretty much everyone had one as the quests became more and more outleveled.

I pretty much agree with the rest; it was a bad idea by sony to essentially make one weapon basically synonymous with each class.

[Tabasco]

I saw this on my first server. Epics were easy to get but we had global drops. The byproduct was that you would see a mob with a fantastic weapon model in his hand, then kill him and be disappointed.

Since then I've played down epics a lot. I just don't like the idea of them, but it ends up being easier for a developer or designer to just implement 16 weapon sets and call it a day.
You also run into the player issue. "Wut, no epic at lvl 10? /q lol"
(The above is very sarcastic, we all know those kinds of folks don't actually use commas.)

As I've added more recently I try to give it a role, or something special that might make it appealing to one kind of player, regardless of class, but not appealing to another.
Here's an example of that: http://dungeoncrawl.us.to/eq/ak/item.php?id=133458
Some folks won't touch a 2h with a delay that high, others are put off by the negative regen. In practice, with the high proc rate, it's exciting to play with because if you're not in combat all the time, you're dying. You have to swap the weapon out to rest, which can be annoying and impractical, so there's a tradeoff.
Other examples are weapons with really low base DPS, but a fast and reasonably reliable proc, elemental damage, etc.

I'm a big fan of Borderlands 1 and 2, and while it doesn't translate perfectly, you see a very functional mechanic at work. The weapons are about more than bullet damage and rate of fire, they do special things, have significant advantages and significant disadvantages. You can find something that fits your play style rather than being funneled into an expected play style.

[Mariomario]

Originally Posted by Tabasco

You also run into the player issue. "Wut, no epic at lvl 10? /q lol"
(The above is very sarcastic, we all know those kinds of folks don't actually use commas.)

This made me laugh, sad yet true.

I have always felt that way and completely agree with Drajor. Unfortunately the sad effect into making more content is previous stuff becomes obsolete, just the way any live game is. More content, better gear from weaker enemies making previous end game content pointless to do, so what from there? You go back and revamp a zone. No developer wants his hard work to feel worthless, but you can only play a game so many times before you reach the end and get bored. This is why most people make the 16 sets and call it done and everything is dependent of that 1 epic weapon. Why invest a bunch of time if it's only going to be seen once and then never again? This is what I believe defines the true developers. People willing to devote countless hours learning and exploring the game even if it means that content is going to go into the void for a certain about of time. Then later on they go back and recreate that world with even better events, models, gear etc. allowing those players to re-experience the wonder.

An epic weapon does need to mean that, epic. It should be far superior to any other of its type and era. Obviously with the introduction of newer content it will lose its finesse. This is what it means to play a game, and even more so, a MMO. If I wanted static end game content I would just play the RPGs that are released on a console. As for most of us you beat a game once or twice and then it hits the shelf and collects dust for a few years. Playing a MMO is what it means to never truly 'beat' the game. Sure you can reach the end and collect all of the items possible, even on some servers do silly side quests for interesting items, but the best part is knowing new rich ideas will soon be in store for you to tackle.

[Zaela_S]

Making any kind of be-all end-all anything in a growing game is not very wise, I don't think anyone will argue against that.

As someone who got into programming by way of designing items for a server... it is pretty disappointing to think that developers would shoot themselves in the foot and stifle their own creativity just because Live did the same.

Items are pretty flexible things. You can do "powerful, irreplaceable, epic" without being stuck with a static item forever. Random, obvious idea: epic weapons exist, but are just shells that get 100% of their stats and procs from epic-only augs. A weapon has a few pre-set augs when you first get it, but new augs can be obtained and swapped in to drastically change what the weapon is and does. With a tiny amount of effort, the weapon's model could depend on the aug in the first slot or some such. A little more effort could probably change a lot more. You could make your server's whole weapons system out of that; balancing the mix-and-match element takes some care (and there would be a lot of ways to do it, depending how flexible you'd want the possibilities to be), but it can be more interesting for players than either static epics or cyclic wholesale replacements of weapons -- trying to find the best combinations, experimenting with different set ups, that kind of thing. (For the really ambitious, perhaps other non-epic weapons could be turned into augs that preserve the most interesting aspects of that weapon.)

But that would be different. Who wants that?

[nenelan]

I love that idea, Zaela_S, that would be fun.

Anyhow, to me, Epic is more about scope and time than it is the item itself. I absolutely loved the Lore behind some of these long spanning quests, and even better, figuring things out for the first time. Oh how I loved that, especially on Live, some of those Epic quests were kept tight lipped for a while, and some of the text was rather vague. It became a journey as opposed to a theme-park rail-road.

That's missing in a lot of games now, and it is more of a product of the nature of gamers as opposed to the nature of games. Players (myself included) don't have that kind of time and patience, and if a developer is to make something like that that maybe 5% or less of the population will utilize or take the time to figure out, especially here on 16x classes, well that's not the most productive usage of time.

But boy is it fun if they do. It's one of those things that's hard to justify doing, and just as hard to not. I, for one, like to see Lorehounds rewarded just as much as raiders, even if it is in different ways.

[Mariomario]

The unfortunate side effect to rewarding both the lore hounds and raiders is once the discovery happens that you can get just as equal items doing something an easier way, 98% of the population will do things the easy way. Just like you said figuring things out for the first time is so rewarding and great and those quest texts that are vague, discovering their true meaning makes you feel wonderful. Most players now need things spoon fed. If it doesn't say exactly where to go or who to talk with they don't do it until either developers have to give hints or that minority that does like to do it, does it. Then its all about asking where to go instead of figuring out the quest themselves.

As for Zaela's idea on the augments, it is a great idea and the aspect of her server comes with it. Combinations of items essentially define who you are and what you are capable of, but no matter what in the long run there is always that one super combination that out does the rest that people strive for and everyone essentially becomes the same.

No matter what it always comes down to the developer and how they want their server to scale. If they want stuff hitting for hundreds of thousands of damage and the only point is to zerg stuff and stack more damage and hitpoints then that's their choice. The players will play where they like. Our goal as developers in my opinion is to learn and enjoy what we like to do, just the same as the players. If I have a core 30 people who love and enjoy my server and log on every day then my server is a success, not just because it reaches preferred or legendary, but because there are players that enjoy what I've brought to the table. You don't always have to do what everyone else is doing to be successful even if it means your 'epic' gear isn't exactly epic in other people's eyes. Sure at that point it's just gear since everyone has it. When it comes down to it, all it is is a label.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

+1 to this discussion.

for a long time I believed that epic is the kind of things that on one hand starts with a promise of power and on other hand quickly fades into a "useless time sink" as new content becomes available.

Taking WoW for a example - in times of vanilla, Sulfuros was simply UBER and took many many raids for just one person to get the components, and those raids were 40-man base at the time. With BC, people pulled equivalent or better weapons from BC end content with only 20-man raids, and those were regular raids, where new cool weapon could drop normally.

This of course made all the people who actually quest for Sulfuros pretty sad... Which leads to ultimate conclusion that drawn-out epic quests with epic rewards eventually result in epic frustration.
Of course almost 2 years passed between vanilla and BC, but eventually it will happen. And as game progress and adds more content and more max levels, equal gear becomes even easier to obtain.

Of course having Sulfuros back in vanilla at lev 60 was way way more prestigious and powerful that having some random "Lightning Sword of Vrykyl" that can drop from 1-group common name at lev 80 4 years later.

You must also keep in mind that there are raiders and there are casuals.
It was never feasible for a casual player (or say casual non hard-core raider from family guilds) to get an epic in EQ (and for some classes much harder than for others). Not during Kunark, not Velious, not even Luclin. But with PoP Tier 2-3 gods dropped weapons that were of equal quality. So for a casual raider, playing during PoP era, leveling to 65 and going to a God raid was much easier to obtain epic quality item without spending months camping ultra rare items in obsolete zones, and specially dragging their entire guilds with them for a single drop (try getting the Sk sword of golems in Fear, with only 10% drop rate and 1 week re-spawn time, when there are 25 other guilds and 200 other SKs are all after it)

And finally my ultimate problem with epics is - yes have the uber weapon and you stuck with it forever. The whole game is driven around upgrading your gear. Its always exciting to get new upgrade. Especially when its a WEAPON upgrade! But if your epic really uber - it will never upgrade - where is fun in that?

My position is: yes let there some tough quests with some nice rewards that stand above concurrent content, but don't make class specific/restricted. If its a 2-handed sword - then let all primary melee classes use it (ok if its a Holy sword, then probably exclude the SKs to make it lore-realistic). If its a Wand - they make it all caster wand.
At the same time - don't make just one quest for a single 2-handed sword - have 3 such quests and 3 different 2-handers - let people choose which one suits them better, or even let them go after all 3. This will create much more class/weapon combos at the end, so all warriors in the end game do not wield exactly the same item.

Ok enough babbling for today. Night

[rdnck]

...I have a slightly different point of view...I think the quest for * epic-ness * should never end...you decide what weapon-style you want to choose, get that weapon, and it should evolve and gain abilities just like you do...the mechanism can be thru augs / mod-2's / mod 3's or w/e, but the weapon should grow and develop as you do...as you gain abilities, so does the weapon..you can add other weapons / weapon styles to your armory, but they should require the same amount of time investment as the original to become epic class weps...

The endless get-gear-to-be-able-to-get-more-gear-to-be-able-to-get-more-gear-etc.ad nauseum is not my idea of a good gaming experience...my gear should grow with me...the game should be about the bloody game, not about keeping up with who has the newest, brightest, shiniest toy today...ijs...

[Warking]

Just wanted to add that I am adding my own version of an Epic 3.0 to my server complete with quests, mobs, etc... So far I am having a ton of fun just creating it all.

[Drakiyth]

Originally Posted by Drajor

Heyas. I have had this idea rolling around in my head for a while now and wanted to share it to get other player/designer opinions.
The idea is this, epic weapons on custom servers are a poor and lazy design choice.

I guess a good place to start is to try and describe what is an epic weapon, what makes it epic? If you played during Kunark/Velious you will probably know that epic weapons were rare/uncommon. The players that had them were in a guild that raided at least weekly, the quests were long and the rewards were great.
So an epic weapon in my opinion must be both rare and powerful. Think of your favourite custom server, would you consider an epic weapon to be rare? Chances are no, everyone has them. They are common and mandatory. They are certainly powerful, but they are not epic.

Ok, so with a definition of what is an epic established. Lets look at some of the side effects of having these non-epic epic weapons in the server design.

The first side effect is the impact it has on diversity. Log into your favourite custom server, 9 out of 10 warriors are all using the same weapons. For good reason too, these weapons are generally the most powerful, of course everyone is going to have one or is in the process of getting one.
This is a shame because there are hundreds of really cool weapon graphics available to designers but instead we see 10-20. Boring.

The second side effect is the devaluation of the designers work by channelling all players into epic weapons. The designer probably spent a lot of time making all kinds of other weapons available as loot or through crafting but chances are no one will really consider using them, because they are not 'epic'. So all that work is essentially wasted. There is still an illusion of choice for the player, but really there is no choice, you need to get your epic.

I will leave it at that for now and wait for some feedback!

Varlyndria: Ascension has over 100 epic models. (Some paths get 2 or 3 items, main hand/off-hand etc) 64 sub-classes (paths) all with their own epic to fit the theme. These epics are not easy to get either. The point of this post is to tell you that not all custom servers are the same and there are developers like myself who understand what you're saying and ultimately what players want.

In my opinion there has to be a place where you STOP adding weapons to the current tier during a certain epic period for content, but than have a couple tiers where players can use some new non-epic weapons that are better than their older epic to mix things up a bit but than get a bigger and badder version of their epic later on. (I will be using the same model for my epics because they are themed to fit the path and pretty much anything that has a glow effect is used on my server due to the high volume of class choices.)

With that said, you're probably right with a lot of epic choices for servers who just do the 16 base classes since that's all you got to play with.
However, their aren't as many epic choices as some make it out to be. Even a few of my own path epics don't have a glow effect because there wasn't any choices with particles to fit the theme, so I had to use a non particle model but it at least fit the theme of the path.

Here is an Example of a timeline for epics that I will be using in Ascension:

• Epic 1.0 Quest: Good for a few raid tiers of progression. These tiers won't drop weapons.

• 3 Tiers above Epic 1.0 Quest: Weapons stronger than Epic 1.0 dropped.

• Epic 2.0 Quest: Good for a few tiers of progression. These tiers won't drop weapons. (Rinse and Repeat with new tiers and epic versions)