EQ Never

Laerazi_sl said:

EQNext not having such huge ranges of "levels" should hopefully free the Emergent AI system to do whatever it wants, without having to worry about whether players can outlevel the content or not. The system they are proposing doesn't seem like it would work in a mostly static world/content system like Rift or GW2.

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They're basically pitching a Terraria-esque content progression tier system. From what I can understand. The deeper you go the harder stuff gets. (Not sure if they meant that in a literal sense or not)

The replayability factor here is pretty verticle however, horizontal replayability is particularly coralled in PVP.

You can only save the princess from whatever variant of nagafen is on your server so many times before it becomes dull. I'm hoping to see player wars over said princess etc. Ideally the Nagafen Faction vs the Light Faction or whatever. Winner claims the lair.

That would suit my horizontal needs.

I just think of it as a more progression based EVE system.

Servers? This isn't going to be 1 big server?
Soooo, what happens to those who backed X faction or did X Rallycalls and then thrown into a condensed server merge 6month to a year after release, all the efforts made are now gone to them or missing or now hated in the now new-to-them cities due to choices from their old server? Rebuild their toon to match the new server and possibly redo unlocks they did before from scratch? Seems like a toon death/reset to me in the making.

Dr Neir_sl said:

Servers? This isn't going to be 1 big server?

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Bro, do you even read?

Dr Neir_sl said:

Soooo, what happens to those who backed X faction or did X Rallycalls and then thrown into a condensed server merge 6month to a year after release, all the efforts made are now gone to them or missing or now hated in the now new-to-them cities due to choices from their old server? Rebuild their toon to match the new server and possibly redo unlocks they did before from scratch? Seems like a toon death/reset to me in the making.

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Pretty dumb to speculate what's going to happen when servers do or don't get merged in a game that's pre-alpha. Playing along though, I'd guess though that after unlocking a class on one character, you'd be able to purchase it to unlock for another character on another server. If the world really does react to your personal choices, I don't see how character transfers will be possible.

I'd prefer if they just didn't allow character transfers at all, though. Make your choices and live with them.

Maybe they end up going with a Landmark style travel system and you're not allowed to impact worlds or get quests in worlds other than your own.

Btw, they just mentioned on the Landmark livestream that they plan to redo the Storybricks panel, and post the video online-so we should get a version of that panel that we can actually understand, eventually.

GW2's issue was that everything cycled too fast and predictably. Why defend this outpost if I can take it back within 10 minutes whenever I need to access it? That coupled with the fact that you actually didnt need to access anything for specific reasons because of their bland loot system meant people stopped caring quickly. Those problems are probably not going to be a big factor for EQN.

Mr Creed_sl said:

Those problems are probably not going to be a big factor for EQN.

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I'm not convinced that this is true, any game with a tiered difficulty approach incites content avoidance, what makes you think EQN's theoretical world will be more rewarding than GW2's? Just looking at EQN's proposed items in game you can tell they're basically simplified versions of GW2's runes/sigils (w/e their called).

It entirely depends on the tier system. A game like EVE had a tier system but since it mostly revolved around gold acquisition or raw materials that you would then trade to buy completed products made by players they didn't have the problem of people skipping too much content. It only makes sense to try to skip a tier when you are actually skipping something, like say skipping WoWs normal mode dungeons at the start of an expac in favor of LFR or heroic dungeons, ya you might spend the first day or two wiping horribly at a pace that is like 1/4th what you would move at if you just did normal but who cares you are skipping that entire tier, but in a game like EVE suffering through content you can barely handle like that is counter productive because you might as well do an easier mission that gives half as much reward but you can complete it 4x as fast with no deaths. Problem WoW has is each tier makes the previous one obsolete.

D3s torment tiers are another example of that, you don't see many people trying to do insane torment levels in yellows because sticking to T1 or 2 where you can kill at a good pace is far more rewarding than dieing every 10 seconds and taking 4 hours to clear through T6.

The key is that rewards across tiers should be basically the same just with higher volume of whatever(gold/resources/rng legendary drops) going to the people who can handle the higher tier.

My question is will their new ideas and systems be sustainable. We've seen a lot of niche ideas and rehashing of mechanics but in the end people want to progress and get to whatever is considered the end game. How much of their ideas are going to bring in the core player base. How much of this will consume player's time and what will be the required time to give to their systems. I have a fear of these mechanics leaving players behind as the world changes due to player actions, you run the risk of entire story lines altering while players are not a part of that change. That is probably a relatively minimal problem but the primary concern for me will be how much are these grand ideas going to be part of the game. To me, they need to eliminate any sign of traditional alternatives. I believe that is the plan but in a year or two, a lot could change. Their ideas need to 100% impact how people solo, group, quest, and raid. If that is the plan, it needs to do so completely. There will then lie the risk... if they change the way we play MMO's and I hope they do, will it be something we enjoy doing for 3-5 years? As of right now, after about 30-90 days you either quit or decide to find the most efficient method of leveling and take part in the end game before ultimately burning out and tap your foot awaiting new content.

I expect there isn't going to be a complete random factor as to what spawns in each region, although I would like to see at least 3-5 possibilities optimally. Everfrost mobs shouldn't be showing up in the Desert of Ro for example. But I also don't expect to have 40 pages of factions and orcs from Crushbone/gfay/lfay would all be the same related faction.

Malakriss_sl said:

I expect there isn't going to be a complete random factor as to what spawns in each region, although I would like to see at least 3-5 possibilities optimally. Everfrost mobs shouldn't be showing up in the Desert of Ro for example. But I also don't expect to have 40 pages of factions and orcs from Crushbone/gfay/lfay would all be the same related faction.

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How much of this will actually matter to you though? I personally don't really care about it. I'll go where I need rep and achieves and discard the rest, considering that it seems to be the only tangibly permanent reward set for doing content (From what I can tell).

To me, I simply don't feel the weight behind their description of "AI", it all boils down to "Why should I care about this". If I can obtain something permanently unique by completing/participating in a major cataclysmic event that's a different story.

Example: My Shadowknight happens to learn the Summon Undead Guard skill from defeating the Qeynos guard and claiming the city during the seige of qeynos cataclysmic one time event.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating this playstyle. So don't get mad.

Edit: PVE in EVE online is multi-tiered and completely simplified into a "Wealth generating activity"

I might be happy with just setting up a rat pelt cart outside Qeynos for the newbie quest. Who knows. I was that guy giving out CLR buffs at WFP gate in the 99 era.

The problem I've been having lately with this genre is that there's literally no need to interact with the community.

Which makes me sad about EQN because everyones hyping up the AI, I want the community to be Hype you know?

I'm not seeing any heavy community impacting topics pop up about this game, so I'm keeping all this at arms length.

I hope the community aspect comes from getting to know people who hunt in your areas and from rallying people together to try to push for events that you want. I kinda hope if I end up migrating out towards like the commonlands area that I will get to know some other people who hang out there and either work with or against them in different events. Kind of like how EVE might be a mega server but since people live in their little areas you can still get to know people. So it will depend alot on whether they allow really fast travel and there are 100k people on the server all bouncing around constantly and you really never get to know many of them cause you rarely see anyone twice.

It's hard to expect or hype up a community aspect where we don't know where the framework of the land, the quasi-static landmarks, and the randomness of the AI and storybricks will begin. Continents don't need to be on rails but there needs to be something more concrete than 1d20 faction spawns for each region so the mass of players can support hubs in the center focal points. Otherwise we'll have roving nomads of both players (and eventually bots) who simply wipe areas clean and move on and that's not much to build a community on.

Randin_sl said:

Btw, they just mentioned on the Landmark livestream that they plan to redo the Storybricks panel, and post the video online-so we should get a version of that panel that we can actually understand, eventually.

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I was there and the guy was hard as hell to understand so I am grateful for this. He has a pretty odd accent combined with a quite voice and a bad mic and it was hard to figure out what the blazes he was talking about at times.