EQ Never

Creslin_sl said:

If they want survivalist mechanics they should take some notes from like frostfall in skyrim or one of the good disease mods, rather than using the hunger system from EQ, which lets be honest was mostly a source of constant annoyance rather than ever presenting any real danger or challenge.

For those who didn't play those mods, frostfall basically added in temperature to the game, and you got cold faster based on whether you were wet, time of day, climate of the area you were in etc etc. For the most part you didn't think about it but if it got rainy or snowy at night anywhere or if you got caught in a blizzard on top of a mountain you had to think about where to find a fire and shelter. That kind of system is better imo cause its not just a constant annoyance, its a feature that kicks in for immersion in a few specific instances.

Same with disease, disease mods I played with always started weak and got progressively worse the longer you went out in the wild with no cure, imo thats a good compromise between current games where there is just nothing like disease and EQ1 where if you got diseased you were just immediately debilitated, the fact that it starts weak means that you could finish what you were doing and then think about how to get your cure.

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If they make the environment matter beyond being a pretty backdrop that would be great. The sandstorm effect they added to the new GW2 area is a nice touch, they even tied it into the gamelpay through the meta event chain. It is still gimmicky because it's every hour, on the hour. But still, it's a start. However I'm not sure that's something SOE is going for. Having regional weather that impacts your gameplay would be step 1 towards that. Rain and snow that influence how far you can see etc. Then figure out new environmental effects from that baseline. With dynamic water voxels they could even flood a river or have an avalance and stuff like that. I'd love it but it sounds unlikely for EQN, mostly because whiny people going on about how that shit is distracting them from the best orcs/hour camp. EQN is a mainstream game after all.

I fail to see how EQnext's "Dark Elves have taken over everything on server X" is truly different from any of Guild Wars 2's Dynamic Events, but on a somewhat grander scale, and less frequent.

They are still "states of the World" or switches that can be toggled by the player-base. The moment any of these changes is truly permanent, you are looking at needing a huge Live team in order to create new content so that entirely different "states" can emerge. Else it was just a one time event, like they had in Asherons Call. Which was cool, mind you, but costly, and with the usual drawbacks, like people missing out on the events, and other people longing for the "states" that existed before the event(but will never return).

John: "Hey, how's life on the Antonius Bayle server? Still Dark Elf rule and an abandoned Felwithe in ruins?"
Bill: "Yep, but we are working to get it back to High Elf rule so we can shop again in Felwithe."

I can only see a limited amount of outcomes with this system; you are looking at either constant content-creation + severe monitoring, or things run completely unchecked into extremes, with ridiculous outcomes and exploits abound.

To be honest, I thought a_skeleton_02 "storytime" about how a group of Orcs can differ in behaviour after respawn was a more interesting expression of how storybricks could work out.

Treesong_sl said:

I fail to see how EQnext's "Dark Elves have taken over everything on server X" is truly different from any of Guild Wars 2's Dynamic Events, but on a somewhat grander scale, and less frequent.

They are still "states of the World" or switches that can be toggled by the player-base. The moment any of these changes is truly permanent, you are looking at needing a huge Live team in order to create new content so that entirely different "states" can emerge. Else it was just a one time event, like they had in Asherons Call. Which was cool, mind you, but costly, and with the usual drawbacks, like people missing out on the events, and other people longing for the "states" that existed before the event(but will never return).

John: "Hey, how's life on the Antonius Bayle server? Still Dark Elf rule and an abandoned Felwithe in ruins?"
Bill: "Yep, but we are working to get it back to High Elf rule so we can shop again in Felwithe."

I can only see a limited amount of outcomes with this system; you are looking at either constant content-creation + severe monitoring, or things run completely unchecked into extremes, with ridiculous outcomes and exploits abound.

To be honest, I thought a_skeleton_02 "storytime" about how a group of Orcs can differ in behaviour after respawn was a more interesting expression of how storybricks could work out.

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I think the game just needs another trigger if a certain outcome like Felwithe being in ruins happens then said adventures will build in a different area away from the dark elves. Kind of how npcs decide to not zerg a neighboring town because of their AI.

Storybricks is meant to lessen the development focus on the small and medium level things and basically streamline the random and the dynamic elements of the EQN world. The static high level content is always going to be dev crafted and the time consuming focus for the majority of patch and content releases. As they pointed out in the prior vids there's not going to be one single trainer only located at X,Y for classes, lore, etc. So even if High Elves don't rule Felwithe, High Elves still exist.

Rogosh_sl said:

I think the game just needs another trigger if a certain outcome like Felwithe being in ruins happens then said adventures will build in a different area away from the dark elves. Kind of how npcs decide to not zerg a neighboring town because of their AI.

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Mm, so you mean that an entirely different (or even somewhat different) Felwithe could be rebuilt, at a different location all together? Would this have to be done by players or would the Storybrick AI take care of this itself through NPC's? I must say, that if they manage to put the Destructability and Constructability of the Voxel engine to such a use, that we could see more interesting dynamics then we see in GW2.

Treesong_sl said:

Mm, so you mean that an entirely different (or even somewhat different) Felwithe could be rebuilt, at a different location all together? Would this have to be done by players or would the Storybrick AI take care of this itself through NPC's? I must say, that if they manage to put the Destructability and Constructability of the Voxel engine to such a use, that we could see more interesting dynamics then we see in GW2.

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I think this is what they're going for. Players and NPCs will likely work together to build Felwithe. Every server will have a Felwithe, but in vastly different places most likely. Or some servers may have a Felwithe in ruins, stuff like that.

Sithro_sl said:

I think this is what they're going for. Players and NPCs will likely work together to build Felwithe. Every server will have a Felwithe, but in vastly different places most likely. Or some servers may have a Felwithe in ruins, stuff like that.

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One of the things they also said was that although NPCs have wants and needs, they can't complete those objetives on their own. They need the players to interact with them and act on their behalf.

Assuming the large cities are rallying calls, I doubt it'll be as simple as picking another spot since rallying calls are generated by the game, not players. More likely, if the Teir'dal presence gets too out of hand, the high elves, wood elves, and dwarves, along with any other "light" races (brownies, faeries, etc.) would band together to fight a common enemy, which itself could be a rallying call. Drive back the dark elves and start the "establish Felwithe" rallying call again.

The more I read about EQN, the more it reminds me of Civilization (the game) where players & groups of players act like units, and guilds could act like city-states, allying themselves with specific factions. Pretty neat.

I wouldnt doubt for a moment that after a certain time period, the server gets certain buffs in order to complete objectives. Having Felwithe in ruins forever is going to ruin some peoples wet dreams and make them hate the game if they dont want to switch servers. So while Dark Elves are dominant, they will have an increasing debuff towards a certain faction while the good Elves will have an increasing buff towards Dark Elves. Example. Dont use it to back up an argument

I fail to see how EQnext's "Dark Elves have taken over everything on server X" is truly different from any of Guild Wars 2's Dynamic Events, but on a somewhat grander scale, and less frequent.

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Well.. something being "permanent" in itself is pretty artificial isn't it? Why should the destroyed Felwithe always stay destroyed, if players actively try to rebuild it? You say that the EQNext events will happen on a more grander scale, and less frequently.. which is how it should be, imo.

Just because you completely destroy the invasion of gnolls on Qeynos doesn't mean that that event can't randomly spawn again in the future. It may not happen immediately, or even within the same week, but it could happen again.

If dark elves can effectively take over all of Antonica, through AI behaviors alone, that is way different than how GW2's dynamic events occur.

Didn't they say rallying calls for racial cities will always succeed, and you can only delay it? Pretty lame

Yes. Im sure killing level 10's with your level 50 is a sport in your mind as well.

Chakravartin_sl said:

Didn't they say rallying calls for racial cities will always succeed, and you can only delay it? Pretty lame

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They didn't mention by how much an opposing faction could delay the founding of a city, did they? Imagine a server-wide effort by dark races to halt the progress of the completion of Felwithe. It could be sitting at 20% complete for weeks, months, or even years, as long as players and the factions they're working for continue to disrupt it. However, if the devs decided this was a bad thing, they could have some high elves set up shop near the dark elf city and start doing the same thing. So then all those darkies attacking Felwithe would have a choice; continue blocking the advancement of Felwithe and risk their own city being ruined, or head back home and defend their shit.

There are loads of checks and balances that can be put into a system like this so that both sides end up happy.

I agree with Laerazi that a permanent state is also artificial. Players should be able to influence things.

However, things could happen on a much grander scale in EQNext(entire server been overrun by Dark Elves), things could happen on a much more drawn out timeline(may take months to drive them back), but in the end they would be still predictable "states" with toggles that are handled by the players, if nothing about the "state" itself can be truly altered. I you can not make it different then how it was before.

But! If players could rebuild Felwithe in another location in a different way, now that sounds pretty exiting. That would really differentiate servers and their history from eachother.

I dunno, maybe the grander scale and the more drawn out timeline is a step forward compared to GW2, but in the end it would still be(on a larger scale): "If players do not interfere, this little part of the land is taken by NPC Svanir; if players do interfere, they can conquer it so the Vigil holds it".

Laerazi_sl said:

Well.. something being "permanent" in itself is pretty artificial isn't it? Why should the destroyed Felwithe always stay destroyed, if players actively try to rebuild it? You say that the EQNext events will happen on a more grander scale, and less frequently.. which is how it should be, imo.

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I'm pretty sure in this context 'permanent' means it isn't going to automatically reset itself.

Most examples here are black&white good vs evil(probably for clarity), but keep in mind that hopefully they are going with a well-developed catalogue of factions that has much wider and deeper interactions then good elves vs evil elves. Otherwise, it's going to be a 2-faction system even if you can talk/group with everyone. They need to stay away from making obvious "main" factions and add many little touches that draw players into different directions.

One powerful way of doing that is having certain skills/classes only become available from certain npcs/factions. Unfortunately that is a very thin line to walk because of balancing those so none of them becomes the auto-pick, and at the same providing enough hints and guidance for players to figure that shit out while playing before they have fully commited to one path or another. The players need to be able to make at least a semi-informed choice without internet support, because it's irreversible or at least requires alot of effort and burning bridges (otherwise the whole approach is pointless). Funny enough allowing you to commit to a deity if you desire so is a shoe-in for this approach. On the negative side this method would catch alot of flak from min-maxers (the kind that rerolls the same class to a different fotm racial every year) and "modern gamers" (entitled adhd monkeys that need everything, now, no compromises).

Another good way of doing that is different starting locations - unless you travel early (and most dont) your standings within the world are shaped differently depending on your starting choice simply because you interact with different npc groups. This also allows people that desire it to put in the effort to stand out because of their faction choices, and there are many fans of that (good-aligned dark elf ranger with panther pet, but also Iksar that can shop in freeport or erudite necromancer that can get into the guild in Neriak). I'm not sure where they stand on starting locations currently, I hope they are moving away from the "everyone starts at a hippie love parade in Qeynos" idea and allow real racial tensions from the very start.

Some class and combat videos:

EverQuest Next: Classes and Combat :: ZAM

I think faction is going to be far more based on the decisions you make while playing than the decisions you make at character select. I don't think you will see the kind of huge faction differences among brand new characters of different races that you saw in EQ1, but on the other side of that you will see a whole lot more meaningful faction changes from playing the game, cause lets be honest, as good as EQ1s faction system was you really didn't see many people break out of the preset mold that SOE set for their face/class/religion. For that reason I think they stick with the Qeynos start thing, but that your situation as a player will change very fast depending on the decisions you start making in game.

I kinda doubt any individual level decisions will be truly irreversible.

Looks like they are getting rid of the idea of hit points and health and instead going with a rechargeable armor system.

Everyone will probably have about the same amount of personal health, but increasing the "shield" and it's recharge by class.

Each base class having it's own health amount could still be a thing; I don't see why they would have to make everyone have the same health.

Health definitely moves up/down a lot faster than before, but I could easily see if you're in warrior mode you have 200% base health, and if you're a wizard you have 75% base health. It wasn't really clear how fast or often you can change between classes, but I hope they at least prevent class changing mid-combat.