Looking for(or willing to work on creating): Live-like, Progression, INSTANCED raids

[Ketzerei84]

Originally Posted by knowom

This could be used as like a base point idea to enable weak/normal/strong versions with 25%/50%/25% drop rate chances on items by expanding upon rare mob loot tables.
http://wiki.uosecondage.com/Item_ID

It's not so much that it's needed, but it is a potential way to enable players to enjoy the content that is there for longer periods and ease their way through it a bit more fluidly while lessening the dependance on servers needs for boxing/botting in order to do instead you'd have a avenue to farm locations longer, but be more rewarded for it overall and I think the real bread and butter of the game is the solo and group content while raiding is sometimes more challenging and can be fun it also can be more tedious to synchronize.

I agree with this to a certain extent. I found that the method behind raids in DoN was more suited to the 'current state of the game' as it were. There were 12, 18, 24, 42 and 54 man raids. Considering the state of eqemu, I propose retuning raids to be 18man appropriate. It isn't precisely 'classic' but it fits with a re-envisioned eq -progression atmosphere. I'd also retune group instanced content(admittedly it's not a thing pre-ldon) for 3 players instead of 6. This could easily be done by reducing mob hp only, while leaving abilities as they are. Making it challenging, but appropriate, for smaller teams.

[Ketzerei84]

Originally Posted by Maze_EQ

I provisioned a VM to host.

Luckily, our fiber line is back.

Been doing some work today on it.

Will post it on server discussion when I add in druid teleporters.

Perhaps get a group PM going so those of us involved in discussion can get to work soon(tm)?

[knowom]

Originally Posted by Ketzerei84

I agree with this to a certain extent. I found that the method behind raids in DoN was more suited to the 'current state of the game' as it were. There were 12, 18, 24, 42 and 54 man raids. Considering the state of eqemu, I propose retuning raids to be 18man appropriate. It isn't precisely 'classic' but it fits with a re-envisioned eq -progression atmosphere. I'd also retune group instanced content(admittedly it's not a thing pre-ldon) for 3 players instead of 6. This could easily be done by reducing mob hp only, while leaving abilities as they are. Making it challenging, but appropriate, for smaller teams.

SoD has made me hate 18 man raids on small player base populations basically indefinitely. It had no real in between that server was bottom and top heavy with no middle like a intro and a climax with no filler. If your going to scale raid sizes scale it to 12 man it better fits EQemu player sizes and is far more casual to organize considering EQ has a horrible clunky raid UI in contrast to most raid games antique as hell dunno if newer clients fixed that or not.

[Ketzerei84]

Originally Posted by knowom

SoD has made me hate 18 man raids on small player base populations basically indefinitely. It had no real in between that server was bottom and top heavy with no middle like a intro and a climax with no filler. If your going to scale raid sizes scale it to 12 man it better fits EQemu player sizes and is far more casual to organize considering EQ has a horrible clunky raid UI in contrast to most raid games antique as hell dunno if newer clients fixed that or not.

A thought on chronological releases: Starting this server at Classic, then moving upward over time, when we get there I think PoP/LoY should be released simultaneously, followed by Gates/LDoN being simultaneous.

12-man seems... doable.

Perhaps for 'most' raid content, but tune up expansion end-bosses for 18, or even 24? That'd be.... I'd say classic would be all 12-man, if we're counting planes in classic. Afterward:

Kunark: Phara Dar

Velious: either all 12man, or bump up Halls of Testing(I think it's open to debate, but HoT is considered end-game for Velious by many)

Luclin: Aten Ha Ra (and Emp SSRA?)

PoP/LoY: Quarm (or all of Time?) - side note, the 'raid' mobs from LoY should be tuned for 6man groups, which, for this server, with group content tuned for 3 players, would be the equivalent of a small raid.

GoD/LDoN: Tunat (OR Zun`Muram Tkarish Zyk's(txevu) AND all of Tacvi?)

OoW: Mata (OR all of CoA)

DoDH: Mayong (OR all of Demi)

PoR: Ayonae Ro (OR all of Deathknell)

Etc. I think that's a solid list for starters, and provides a good couple years worth of content for a progression emu server, there's room for debate on most of it, the idea might be scrapped entirely, and if we go with it - it's entirely possible for us to flush out the list well ahead of the time TSS and beyond are 'released'

[knowom]

I'd recommend classic, kunark, velious, and PoP skipping Luclin and bypassing the stuff after PoP. That's what people remember the most from live in most cases. Luclin is a take it or leave it affair I can't imagine many people would be upset if you skipped it regardless of SSRA being reasonably good and could be inserted in place of another zone some place or via a wizard spire and spell to that zone.

I think selectively using some 18man raids wouldn't hurt, but being quite selective about it and a 24man raid in the case of Sleeper would be really appropriate perhaps I mean that's one of the most iconic raid targets regardless of if a player actually attempted to raid or not the name Sleeper is a legendary as Cazic Thule's death touch, but a whole lot meaner.


Doing some raids that scale to periodically lock/unlock different expansions would actually be a nifty thing to do it's mutually beneficial for players to work together even outside of loot if they want access to those zones.

On that note you could utilize the item quality variation weak/normal/strong item thing I spoke of and the alternate spawn versions that could be used in different manners night/day spawns rare spawn/ultra rare spawn static/rare static could even swap raid target from different zones in places they might make sense Lodizal/Vox/Gorenaire/Lord Yelinak it would be nice having some familiarity with unfamiliarity mixed together mixed with the excitement of loot familiarity with unfamiliarity a sort of 50/50 custom/nostalgia type of experience. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, but adapting and improving the design itself a bit for different applications.

[knowom]

I think the item/spawn variation thing could be a very much for better or worse kind of love/hate affair, but if anything would enhance the game experience and longevity while taking a minor step toward customization of and drawing upon the wealth of available content within PEQ DB itself. Not too old not to new not to easy not to difficult not to cold not to hot just right. You could create a atmosphere of a almost neutral zone valuation within a given level range regardless of expansion. You might get stuck at times early in the servers life spawn with difficulty hurdles out of reach, but stuff like weekly static re-spawns could routinely fix and address those circumstances or give a opportunity to do so. It's a bit like having some automatic progression stop gaps in places actually which might be a reasonable thing. I also like the fact that you could in essence increase long term progression item quality goals a bit while marginally increasing spawn rate chances, but decreasing overall loot quality on average thus spreading loot distribution around further to more players I think that's largely beneficial particularly in the raid portions of the game where seniority is often involved and in many cases involving players within a guild due to variables beyond their own control. A guild could progress a bit more rapidly overall while keeping players happier in general is my feeling about the subject.

[Ketzerei84]

I always wanted to see a private progression server. There was a recommendation on the eq forums for a tiered set of progression servers, perhaps we could do something along those lines if this takes off in any meaningful way.

I'm fairly certain there's a way to code individual characters as flagged for certain expansions. Could do progression through everything, but make the progression character-based.

There would still be server patches and updates to bring in all the expansions over time, but to flag your character for an expansion, you would have to collect a series of group and raid character flags(much like planar progression) and then do some dialogue with an npc to verify that you want to be flagged for the next expansion. As long as we tie level caps into expansion flags it would allow people to play in the eras they want to, but have everything open to the server.

[knowom]

For day/night spawns a real simple quest related scenario that would work quite nicely is have a quest collection task, but making it so if you hand it in at night versus day the loot reward is a bit different attribute wise one of many possible uses.

[Ketzerei84]

Originally Posted by knowom

For day/night spawns a real simple quest related scenario that would work quite nicely is have a quest collection task, but making it so if you hand it in at night versus day the loot reward is a bit different attribute wise one of many possible uses.

This, the way I'm envisioning it, would require a massive amount of work. Essentially here's what I see:

Example: SK GM in EFP tells you head outside the gates, and kill that pesky priest of marr today - reward: rusty short sword, sharpening stone. Later on the SAME npc tells you: We resurrected her after you killed her, and she's broken free of the undead domination spell. Head out past the gates and kill that pesky undead priest of marr(npc level: 9) tonight - reward: bronze short sword.

If we flag the nighttime quest as requiring completion of the daytime quest, it'll prevent people from just skipping the daytime quests.

I can see this actually working out fairly well as we could then work it something like this: say you do your Temple of Prexus Paladin Class Armor Quest. You finish it up and it's "Crude Breastplate of Prexus". The same NPCs then give you another quest, to collect 'enhancement' drops from the nighttime versions of the first quests' mobs. Upon turning them in, along with your crude piece, you get "Breastplate of Prexus".

Tune the ToP/ToSR armor quests for solo(daytime) rewarding crude. Group(our 3man group version anyway) rewarding 'regular'. Then perhaps, to deal with the problems inherent in instancing the planes(making planar armor harder to come by) we could change the drops to slot appropriate enhancement stones. So, in the Paladin example, fetid fiends(these drop pally fear armor bp on 'live') from fear would drop 'Glowing Valorium Stone' on identify it would say something like 'this stone looks like it could be used to enhance certain armor types'. Take this, plus your Breastplate of Prexus to the ToP and turn in to receive Valorium Breastplate of Prexus. This gives you the planar armor, but its rewarded as an upgrade to the 'group' class armor. Which itself is rewarded as an upgrade to the 'solo' class armor.

Ofc, if we go that route(and I think it'd be the way to go) we'd have to slightly re-envison some epics, the SK epic comes to mind, as it requires darkforge pieces - that could be modified.

[Ketzerei84]

A few more thoughts:

Beastlords, Berserkers, Frogloks and Vah Shir should be available from the start. Vah can start in Halas(same classes available, doesn't require tinkering with racial factions too much) until Luclin launches.

Tinkering, Research, Alchemy and Poisoncrafting should have their race/class restrictions removed.

The more I think about it, the more I think epics should be radically re-envisioned. Something like the LoY newbie quest weapons should be the starter point, for every class, with quested upgrades along the way every 5 levels or so, with the epic quest being broken up into tiered(Crude/'normal'/Planar) upgrades to this. The crude version should be available in the mid-game, around the time that players can obtain their Temple of SolRo/Prexus armor sets - and be soloable, but a grind to get(requiring as much effort as the ENTIRE set of soloable class armor). The upgraded version should be available around the time that group class temple armor is obtainable, again requiring as much effort to acquire as the entire set of class armor, and the final, Planar, version should require 3 drops(we have a sizable picklist here: Vox/Naggy/CT/BB/SL/Inny) from end-game planar/dragon bosses.

This makes them epic, but also levels the playing field for classes trying to obtain them, no more rogues getting epic in 5 hours, while Pallies take 5 weeks to get theirs.

I'm not a fan of the tutorial bit, but perhaps the crafted deity charms(Golden Idol of XXX iirc) could be turned into a tradeskilling questline, you get introduced to it at level 1 when you turn in your starter note and get a simple charm of [your deity here/the agnostic] which has 1 ac, and instructions from your guildmaster in how to craft upgrades for it, with a turnin of the crafted upgrade and the current tier of charm you have, you get the next one in the series. We could even set it up so players could pick which tradeskill they want to grind out for their upgrades.
"Hello Adventurer, would you like to craft your next charm upgrade using [alchemy] [baking], [brewing], [fletching], [jewelcraft], [poisoncrafting], [pottery], [reasearch], [smithing], [tailoring] or [tinkering]?"
While of course adding in a final upgrade stage which uses a turnin token from a raid source.

Realizing that not all players will want to craft, a further option would be 'Hello Adventurer, do you wish to [craft] an upgrade to your charm or will you perform a dangerous [task] for me, to acquire your next upgrade?" The upgrades would be the same, the quests would be given by your GM, but once you had moved onto ToP/ToSR quests, I think class GMs should also be present in those temples, and a pointer quest should send you that way at a certain level, where you will continue the charm line from your class GM, who will in turn point you to the nearby NPC(s) to do armor quests.

Something like "Greetings Paladin, you've done well so far, but it's time for you to move on, Gwel Harnek in the [Temple of Prexus] could probably tell you how to upgrade your charm further, and would have information for you on more tasks as well."
You say "What Temple of Prexus?"
Dundar Palliessuck says "The Temple of Prexus can be found on the Isle of Erud's Crossing, in between City of [Qeynos] on [Antonica] and the City of [Erudin] on [Odus]."
etc.

For the Temple of Prexus custom zone, I would just copy the Temple of Sol Ro(can this be done?) and put the entry smack dab on Erud's Xing. Then alter the graphics a bit(change water to lava) and npc population(Prexus guards instead of sol ro guards, water elementals instead of fire elementals, you know, the theme of prexus is as watery as sol ro's is fiery). Both zones would need to be slightly repopulated, with appropriate class GMs and quest givers. And, of course, the quest lines would have to be revamped, and several new ones designed from the ground up(not too hard, there are enough Sol Ro quest lines as it stands to just copy/paste and change class/race restrictions for the majority of it).

[knowom]

You can selectively use the approach, but you've clearly put more thought into it and gone further with it than my initial thoughts were on using it which isn't a bad thing. It could be more simple and straight forward like my example or more complex like yours however and a bit both and not every zone or quest needs to make use of it either of course. It's a nice avenue to expand upon some quest stuff though no doubt.

It's certainly nice that some of the effort I put into Spawn2 Table for Faydwer/Odus could be put to good use on implementing a variety of these types of subtle differences fairly trivially to really expand and enhance upon stuff better. I had a good feeling they would be useful and handy, but the extent of which is actually a lot more than I initially envisioned. It's a little involved in some cases, but at the same time a portion of the work is done which was a big part of my goal. To finish Antonica it would take roughly the same amount of time the other two took, but it's something that could be chipped away at gradually even at a zone by zone need basis over time then probably extended to Kunark, Velious, ect...so more content for all of those zones basically could be expanded gradually and w/o interfering with PEQ db itself.

Something else with the Spawn2 Table that could be done is to use it for a particular zone then have a quest that despawns the entire zone or a large area of it's default PEQ normal Spawn2 Table and replaces it with a new tweaked one based off a quest trigger rather than day or night spawn trigger as a way to use it different and in a more controlled way rather than retroactive way.

Could even do a little of both within a zone and create like a war between factions and constantly in a cycling flux struggle, but also with quest triggers as hand ins to help either side involved.

Not immediate server needs or anything and the base PEQ db itself is even a good start off point, but long term development goals of stuff to add to it basically. I'd be curious to know or see what different developers have all ready done to tweak different aspects of the DB that is readily available and might be easily merged together. I think somethings could all ready be made use of selectively based on things people at one point or another posted for other developers to use. I wish a lot of the custom developed stuff released was more organized and easy to find there is a reasonable amount of it scattered around the forums.

[knowom]

What I think would be nifty for epics or maybe upgradable charm is something I mentioned in another server forum using weapon/spell procs for duration based pet summons that give your class a more hybrid feel in a area your class is weaker in and struggles like healers would receive something that aids them a bit on the DPS/tank side maybe they act closer to the wizard pet and don't actually fight and tank either. Something that gives them almost a more reduce and simplified cut down box/bot sort of added versatility.

I think a lot of classes even in smaller group sizes or solo could do a lot more content if they were slightly more hybridized even in the case of actual hybrid classes. Like if cleric had access to rune, slow, mez/charm, snare, mana song, haste or a variety of other things they'd be more versatile obviously and same is true with like any other class in regards to things they normally lack. Just look at manastone on a cleric which is obviously a extreme example, but it's really powerful in combination with CH.

[Ketzerei84]

Originally Posted by knowom

What I think would be nifty for epics or maybe upgradable charm is something I mentioned in another server forum using weapon/spell procs for duration based pet summons that give your class a more hybrid feel in a area your class is weaker in and struggles like healers would receive something that aids them a bit on the DPS/tank side maybe they act closer to the wizard pet and don't actually fight and tank either. Something that gives them almost a more reduce and simplified cut down box/bot sort of added versatility.

I think a lot of classes even in smaller group sizes or solo could do a lot more content if they were slightly more hybridized even in the case of actual hybrid classes. Like if cleric had access to rune, slow, mez/charm, snare, mana song, haste or a variety of other things they'd be more versatile obviously and same is true with like any other class in regards to things they normally lack. Just look at manastone on a cleric which is obviously a extreme example, but it's really powerful in combination with CH.

This is why I wanted mercs in from the get-go. Although perhaps we could go with something different. AXClassic has bots, of any class, highly commandable. They allow bot armies, perhaps we could do the same, but only allow 1 bot per person?

Of course I'd ideally like to somehow manage that with the merc interface, and ai scripting for each class mercenary, but I'm not sure if that is currently feasible within the coding framework for EQEmu.