What are you looking for in a server?

[Maze_EQ]

Why would you scrap warrior when endurance can be used the same as mana?

Make the abilities discs.

You can make a disc cast a buff that doesn't get used by a timer.

There's absolutely no reason to remove any melee classes because "mana" is a problem.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by Maze_EQ

Why would you scrap warrior when endurance can be used the same as mana?

Make the abilities discs.

You can make a disc cast a buff that doesn't get used by a timer.

There's absolutely no reason to remove any melee classes because "mana" is a problem.

Yes, I know - you can use endurance instead of mana as source of energy.
I agree.
There are however some limitation related to Discs - unlike spells, they are more limited number of "empty slots" for discs (I believe its like 100?), and you can't delete them. Which means you can't give them an increasing progression as with spells (firebolt 1,2,3,4 etc), which leads to - you most likely will have to design them in such way that there are few of them and they improve with level by themselves.

You could probably make an npc or a custom command to reset/delete Discs but this could be another hassle for players.
On other hand, perhaps a warrior/monk/rogue/zerker doesn't really need as many abilities as say - Enchanter. So yeah this could be worked around.

I guess my most significant grief with pure melees is over a Monk - an amazing class in every way, that suffers from WASTED abilities. You get these cool monk skills every 5 levels (round kick, eagle strike, etc), but once you get a new one, previous one gets obsolete, people auto-switch and never go back. I believe they tried to give earlier abilities more value with AAs, but they didn't really worked out.

What would be better if each of these fancy strikes would not just do damage but have a unique perk to it (stun, interrupt, debuff etc) so you wouldn't just press the one that does more damage.

[NostalgiaEQ]

Good insight guys. Thats interesting to know they screwed with the xp system past 50 which was probably the single thing that killed EQ the most, that and constantly adding more zones as the game population was falling. I can see how this made them have to add overpowered mercs to make it possible to progress and whatnot.

I love the idea of stamina bieng melee mana bar. Do abilities like kick and stuff use stamina already? If so it should be easy enough to just add in a few extra abilities and call it a day. I don't see the need to totally revamp it, they just need a basic boost.

[sunbeam]

Originally Posted by NostalgiaEQ

Good insight guys. Thats interesting to know they screwed with the xp system past 50 which was probably the single thing that killed EQ the most, that and constantly adding more zones as the game population was falling. I can see how this made them have to add overpowered mercs to make it possible to progress and whatnot.

I love the idea of stamina bieng melee mana bar. Do abilities like kick and stuff use stamina already? If so it should be easy enough to just add in a few extra abilities and call it a day. I don't see the need to totally revamp it, they just need a basic boost.

There are already some disciplines in addition to the usual stuff like Mighty Strike that are in the EMU codebase. Verant/Sony tried doing some of this a long time ago (stuff like a "Headbutt" for warriors, and monks got some different toys like lulls).

It is operational on some servers, and not on others. No idea what happened on live with it. They did use the stamina bar though, and I think they were on the same timers as other disciplines.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

To add to this discussion, here is a very interesting article "The Kunark Problem" written years back, by member of Afterlife - one of the top EQ guilds of all time.
It underlines some of the core problem in initial EQ design:

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/kunark.php

[Darkscis]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayerZ

To add to this discussion, here is a very interesting article "The Kunark Problem" written years back, by member of Afterlife - one of the top EQ guilds of all time.
It underlines some of the core problem in initial EQ design:

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/kunark.php

It's an interesting read. Everquest is certainly known for introducing rather suspect mechanics to simulate "content".

The problem I see is that there are multiple different mind sets of players, and you need to know which one you want your server to cater too.

There are some who's attitude is "the game begins at max level". These people don't care what you have done to make the leveling fun and interesting. They don't care about low/mid level custom content. All they care about is your XP modifier and how quickly they can max level and start gearing.

Then there are those who enjoy the journey. They don't care if it takes days to level, provided there is new and engaging content they can explore while doing it. This ties in well with what Thott wrote in the article linked above. If there is content to consume, they don't mind that it takes days to level.

I have seen a lot of servers and devs in particular who only want to focus on end game content. They want to make raids, they want to make "uber" gear, they want to modify max level skills/spells/AA's. There is nothing wrong with this approach at all, but you need to make sure your XP modifier reflects it.

The classic leveling path has been done to death, creating a "live-like" leveling experience without custom content forces people into spending "an eternity" in these old zones which can contribute to the burnout described in the article. While there are plenty of people who enjoy this old content (and there is definitely a lot of it in Classic, let's not forget that!) eventually it gets stale. Doing it over and over on server after server just encourages the "end game starts at max level" mentality.

Personally, I am one of those "enjoy the journey" people. I love working my way through it, but it has definitely become stale to me. I have now done that 1-60 leveling path so many times in Classic->Velious/PoP the only way to make it fresh is to self impose certain challenges. For instance I have to tell myself "no more than 2 levels in each zone" or "in era gear only" or things along those lines to force myself to enjoy it.

This is no fault of the dev's, but is something that many should consider when thinking of designing and releasing their own server. Do you want a complete package where leveling and exploring is part of the fun, or do you want to focus on end game content? You need to adjust and match your XP modifier and the early game to match your vision.

[sunbeam]

Just as an idle thing, I'm not so sure "hell levels" were actually planned for the game from the beginning. The whole concept is kind of weird for anyone to put in if you think about it, as a base design concept.

I started playing before Kunark was out. Not one of the beta players, or very early ones, but pretty early. The Whirl Till You Hurl nerf had already happened (the first level 50's were a couple of Rogues that used that, as you could backstab mobs that had that cast on them originally. Rogues couldn't be invis to undead then, etc. You get the picture.

Anyway I remember doing a lot of reading about the game early on. I believe I read about the game developers being utterly shocked at how quickly people were leveling (they had originally estimated it would take most players a year to make level 50). And guys like Brutal (Brutuul? The FOH guy anyway, had like 2000 hours /played by year two, though I believe he just stayed logged on even when not playing).

My theory is that very early on (like the first few weeks), there was some kind of meeting with graphs and charts about the player base's levels after just a short time. And with the Kunark expansion being down the road a ways (took a year?).

Then the kludge of the hell levels came about.

If any of you guys go back to the very beginning, can you answer that? That is if you somehow made level 50 in the first month or two, you didn't have to go through hell levels?

Could be wrong, but that was always my theory. And the player base coming up with their own ways of doing things like pulling, camping, and kiting was never planned on as well.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by Darkscis

The classic leveling path has been done to death, creating a "live-like" leveling experience without custom content forces people into spending "an eternity" in these old zones which can contribute to the burnout described in the article.

This is exactly whats in my vision for a perfect server - spirit of a long journey, but in all new content from level 1.

[NostalgiaEQ]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayerZ

To add to this discussion, here is a very interesting article "The Kunark Problem" written years back, by member of Afterlife - one of the top EQ guilds of all time.
It underlines some of the core problem in initial EQ design:

http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/kunark.php

I love stuff like this and agree with many points. Don't quite agree with this though: "The key is avoiding content burnout, by never forcing, or even allowing, a player to continuously play in the same area."

Not everyone is an explorer and some like things they are familiar with and to be the big dog. I think that is great. Having parallel content for the explorers to play in one dungeon one day and another dungeon the next then come back the 3rd day is awesome as well. I think having parallel content is important but allowing people to play in the same place for a long time is also good. I am actually encouraging this by bumping up light blue xp slightly which will also help soloers.

[microlo]

I absolutely loved the kimura server. I wish the old server not the remake could come back. I spent hours and hours on that server playing and never actually beat it. It had mechanics of where you could farm trash for gear, but zone boss to progress to next tier had clever abilities that required 2+ actual people. I no lie would of paid what little money i have to play that again.

[NostalgiaEQ]

I played from the beginning and I didn't get to the hell levels myself but my best friend was in the 40's that summer and we talked alot and he never mentioned anything about harder levels. No one ever mentioned that once my whole time playing. Needless to say I was shocked when I heard about this in p99. It does just seem like something arbitrarily added later and fits perfectly with the project 2001 feel (err I think they still call themselves p1999 erroneously but I digress). I still haven't made up my mind about what I want to do be because looking at the modifiers they aren't horrible, 75% xp for each hell level untill you get well past 50. I am all for things that add excitement and break the monotony but I'mnot sure about this one.

Originally Posted by sunbeam

Just as an idle thing, I'm not so sure "hell levels" were actually planned for the game from the beginning. The whole concept is kind of weird for anyone to put in if you think about it, as a base design concept.

I started playing before Kunark was out. Not one of the beta players, or very early ones, but pretty early. The Whirl Till You Hurl nerf had already happened (the first level 50's were a couple of Rogues that used that, as you could backstab mobs that had that cast on them originally. Rogues couldn't be invis to undead then, etc. You get the picture.

Anyway I remember doing a lot of reading about the game early on. I believe I read about the game developers being utterly shocked at how quickly people were leveling (they had originally estimated it would take most players a year to make level 50). And guys like Brutal (Brutuul? The FOH guy anyway, had like 2000 hours /played by year two, though I believe he just stayed logged on even when not playing).

My theory is that very early on (like the first few weeks), there was some kind of meeting with graphs and charts about the player base's levels after just a short time. And with the Kunark expansion being down the road a ways (took a year?).

Then the kludge of the hell levels came about.

If any of you guys go back to the very beginning, can you answer that? That is if you somehow made level 50 in the first month or two, you didn't have to go through hell levels?

Could be wrong, but that was always my theory. And the player base coming up with their own ways of doing things like pulling, camping, and kiting was never planned on as well.

[NostalgiaEQ]

Originally Posted by microlo

It had mechanics of where you could farm trash for gear

I do like this. One just needs to be careful that they don't encourage high levels to steal low levels mobs but rather incentivize high levels to work with low levels to get what they want by paying low levels for the items for example. Maybe that exterminator quest could be useful...

[gravystain]

I think exp rates are totally up to the type of server. If you make a kunark, velious, or POP server and want to make the exp rates faster for a potentially large group of your player base that likes to get into end game content than it would make sense. If your server doesn't go past the initial release content i cant imagine any reason why you would want to make exp rates faster in any way. Clearly on a server like that your player base is more interested in the journey and if it were me i would hate for it to be over too quickly only to be stuck at a extremely stagnant experience at level 50.

[tdanger84]

hell levels were a way to slow peoples progression down to give Eq more time to release content and space out the player base that was doing high end content. you have mobs with insane spawn times and triggers and whatnot so you don't want the whole server to be at that level simultaneously. in EMU it's more of an annoyance than anything else. A bunch of servers like their exp rates low to make people "focus on the journey" like you guys talked about, but most of us don't want to just play one toon forever. each class is a different experience so I personally like higher experience rates that will allow me to level as many alts as I want. if it takes way too long to level 1 toon then get bored and wont bother to make an alt on that server. once i get bored with the 1 toon I will likely look to another server. it has happened on too many servers that during leveling you hit an exp "wall" at higher level and it takes so long that is more of a chore to play your toon then fun. i can only clear a zone so many times before i stop and ask myself what the point of the grind is. if content is challenging then the rewards should be great.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

Originally Posted by NostalgiaEQ

I love stuff like this and agree with many points. Don't quite agree with this though: "The key is avoiding content burnout, by never forcing, or even allowing, a player to continuously play in the same area."

Not everyone is an explorer and some like things they are familiar with and to be the big dog. I think that is great. Having parallel content for the explorers to play in one dungeon one day and another dungeon the next then come back the 3rd day is awesome as well. I think having parallel content is important but allowing people to play in the same place for a long time is also good. I am actually encouraging this by bumping up light blue xp slightly which will also help soloers.

There are more article there btw, where he speaks about ideas for hate, taunt,heals, new spells etc.

Also, while I myself do like to stick to certain area for awhile, to camp specific spots/mobsfor xp or loot, its one thing to stick around for a few days, and another to camp the same area for WEEKS.

IMHO, original EQ had problem with content gaps at certain levels. For example there was notorious content gap between level 7 and 13 if you were in Freeport area - the only thing you could do in that range in do Orc Camps for DAYS. Past 15 you could finally move on to Befalen.
If you were in Qeynos side, 5-15 were great in BlackBurrow, but past 15 there literally nothing to do there in entire western antonika. (not counting solo hunting roaming animals)

Another long term camp was in HK basement where people literally lived for weeks for 10 levels or more.
And yes Karnor was notorious for its massive overcrowding, while many other places were half empty.

Overall, I think, world should be balanced. There shouldn't be zone that only good for XP or only good for loot, while lacking the other things. All zones should be good and balanced with progression.
If you have multiple starting zones, then progression path should be developed from each of this points and be at least somewhat unique.
What happened in reality, that no matter where you started, past your teen levels there was mostly a single preferred path that absolute majority of players leaned too, creating overcrowding, and wait lines to get groups, while the rest of world barely had any players in it.