WTF? Everquest... 3?

Man some of those names, Ballads, Renevan, etc. I miss raiding Eq2

Everquest, and more specifically Everquest 2, are to this day, the most socially involved I've ever been with a game. I played from day one, used the pre release character generator to pre create my character, and raided casually in vanilla and Desert of Flames. But raiding in Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, and the crescendo that was raiding with LoV in Rise of Kunark are some of my best gaming memories. That expansion was probably the most fun I ever had in that game. Then it all just kind of faded away. For quite awhile, my guildies in EQ2 where some of the closest friends I had. I've gone back with mixed results, played for a good bit around Age of Discovery, and made a solid, but futile jaunt on one of the progression servers. Ah to be young and have plentiful unmitigated free time again...

Elidroth said:

Wrong in every way. The way you induce people to be online as much as possible, is to make a great game that's fun to play, with lots of content..

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You forgot one part of that equation: Make the content pipeline sustainable out of the gate, so that developer crunch time is minimized, all while making a great game that's fun to play with lots of content.

It's a tricky balance to actually achieve... if you have the right people working on a game, it becomes so much easier to do emergent PVE content. Dynamically scaling content is the future and it shocks me how many people aren't on board with that style of content in industry. It's ridiculously effective and efficient. Also, dynamically scaling content avoids monetization stigma with stuff like lootboxes as you can just sell boosts to get a chance at getting a rare item higher as opposed to selling that rare item outright via things like Krono/WoW Tokens.

Making a game like EQ in today's market is just a piss-poor decision for example; the amount of content work to actually create all the quests, text strings, localization, NPC locations/placement would be thrown out by most publishers today when presented.

If you don't do dynamic scaling content you end up games like FFXIV. Great game mechanically, poor design decisions on how content is created. I wonder how much profit they are making with how big their development team is. I'd imagine they have similar subscriptions to EQ2 in its prime (330kish users), and they have microtransactions, assuming every person brings in an ARPU of about $50 per month, that's still only 15 million and you're staffing what I'd assume is 200-300 employees all paid a California salary. ($75k+ a year minimum) - it's hard to imagine how much money they are making and how much they are burning out their team.

Though arguably the biggest risk is far beyond that... if you're a publisher and are pitched a game with a team that hasn't made a game together before, let alone an MMORPG, you'd run for the hills.

I still stand by the notion that an MMO title made in an already existing engine in pre-release can be staffed by 30 people or sometimes less, provided they are the right people for the job. Adding in an engine programmer or 10 like EQ has to maintain aging tech is one of those needed evils that really hurts any company's bottom line. And post-release, you only need a team of about 10-15 including producers, developers, community and liveops.

I think it might help to better define Dynamically scaling content. The way I'm reading it is a scaling system ala GW2. I imagine you mean it with a bit more nuance though so I would be curious to have you expand. The problem with content scaling with player power is the lack of power progression from the perspective of the player. You can make an RPG with a relatively flat power curve I imagine but I haven't played many that are very rewarding. There are some puzzles that need to be solved for that experience to feel as good from a player perspective as a linear 1-60 leveling process for example.

Killing the problems that face the designer isn't worth it if the cost overly affects players imo.

Ukerric - ehh... yes and know in terms of "balance the scaled content to your weakest class"

Again I think EQ being "not" balanced is key and them NOT catering to PVP - Wow has to cater to PVP sooooo much.

I played a SK on EQ live from 1999 classic till the great OOW/GOD downfall - then I was a Warlock in classic WOW, skipped BC, came back in Wrath and also did DK.

SK's are a great example of a balanced non-balanced class...

The holy trinity should never be able to "solo" most content - that INCLUDES pure DPS... usually the idea of balance in that is Warrior - Cleric... the pure DPS should not be able to just kill stuff so fast they can "solo" most stuff (looking at you monks in velious+)

EQ was actually very well balanced in PVE between all the many classes - because it was not "balanced"

I'm not talking about scaling like Destiny, Anthem, or WoW story scaling. I'm talking moreso about how you can choose the difficulty of the content you are facing and get rewarded equally proportionate to the level of challenge you are taking on. For example, a level 10 player (in EQ terms) should be able to grind in Blackburrow with their group well after the mobs turn grey. They should be scaling to the leader of the group, and the player should also scale relative to the leader. That avoids the whole "The world is always the same difficulty and I don't see power increases" - which is exactly the issue we fixed on the classless EQ emulator server. You can additionally turn off the scaling and farm things, but it gives no rewards beyond loot for the mob's original level.

Also I'd like to mention that the #1 thing people do wrong with scaling is that they add it to games with no meaningful power increases. That's why we had to fundamentally change that in our server. A game like EQ's stats are fundamentally worthless outside of AGI, DEX, STA, AC, Mana, and WIS. Nothing else really matters. And some stats do nothing for some classes, that's a problem. Stat-based gameplay where each little stat sees a power increase is the solution to that. Not this overcomplicated D&D bullshit that EQ has (what the fuck does the Purity stat do again; someone wanna tell me?)

Perhaps we'd be able to use that tech we made for Classless in a commercial product... that'd be my dream.

Being able to grind the same zone until level cap seems like a bad idea in terms of getting players out of their comfort zone and experiencing new things. It also seems like it'd be difficult to balance because you have to account for abilities that players gain throughout the levels. Are you going to have multiple versions of fippy darkpaw that have different abilities or you just going to increase his level? Not to mention playtesting all that to make sure the zones work as desired at multiple levels.

If I'm understanding your idea, that sounds to me like you'd need little more than a handful of zones. Just design them to scale up/down according to level or difficulty?

The problem with that is that areas now lose their identity. Blackburrow was great because it was difficult at its level and players created memories of their time during those levels. Eventually though, players should want to move on to other, more difficult areas, such as Upper Guk and Kaesora, and then eventually on to Lower Guk, Karnors and Sebilis, and so on. That each of those places were designed for specific level ranges helped give them part of their identity. If you simply added a scaling mechanic to all of them, then none of them stand out anymore aside from simply being a different theme.

"Hey guys, what dungeon are we doing, Easy, Medium, Hard, Epic?"

"Let's do Hard."

"Cool. Which theme do you want? Gnoll lair, froglok dungeon, spider tunnels, or Drolvarg castle?"

"Who cares."

This sounds a LOT like another expansion Sony did way back when, and it wasn't exactly well received.

Sounds like wow

Imagine they did EQ3 … *in a browser*

Pretty sure nobody has ever thought of doing that.

I played some of BFA, and I will NEVER play a game with content that auto scales up to my level again.

It was the stupidest thing I've ever experienced. There literally was no point to even having a leveling system in the game.

It was the worst decision ever made in the history of WoW in my opinion.

Neranja said:

So it's just like the level syncing system in WoW where the zones have a minimum level, but mobs always scale up to your level?

Also, why should you be able to grind in Blackburrow well after the mobs turn grey? Because this sounds just like something for turbo autists, who don't want to experience new things and explore and just repeat once learned movements ad infinitum.

And what should those "increased rewards" be? Once you hit 50 in Blackburrow stuff like FBSS drops from there, too? That said, I'm not sold on the "bigger challenge more rewards" thing, because it was usually "bigger risk" in EQ, which was implemented as either "you need more people to be succesful" (aka raids), or "the geography/dungeon makes it more risky". Especially if you fuck up and may not be easily able to retrieve your corpse.

Whats the risk in your scaled Blackburrow? If you die you can just disable content scaling and drag your corpse to the entrance.

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Corpses would obviously not be a thing in a scaling stat-based server. That kind of shit is tedious, not challenging. We're adults here, we need to treat players like adults who have lives.

Having the convenience of staying in Blackburrow a few more levels past its prime, while receiving reduced rewards, is the way to go. Obviously you won't get as good exp or loot as grouping in a level 50 zone, but you shouldn't be punished for playing where ever you are.

Increased rewards should be focused around stats and stats only; if you start adding in raw, inflated linear stats like HP/Mana/Endur/AC then it's a huge issue. EQ historically has only a few stats that are relevant, the rest are kind of... filler garbage that doesn't really matter. I'd argue that the only stats in classic that matter are AC, STA, HP/Mana/Endur and the class you pick's skill caps and spells available. How many times in classic EQ have you said, "Damn, I wish I had more AGI"?

The rewards should be proportionate to the content you are facing. If you choose to do Blackburrow at 50, you should only get rewards up to level 50 and they should have a higher chance of dropping lower level statted items. The zone itself should have modifiers that increase the base rewards and difficulty of the scaled-up NPCs that are proportionate to the modifier.

Additionally, I'd say that NPCs themselves need the ability to have a difficulty and scripted mechanics, so that not everything is a 'throw more NPCs/players' at it game.

I think there's this huge misconception that EQ, as it currently stands, is set up in any way mechanically to support this system. I am not proposing using EQ's combat or gameplay mechanics, I am using them as an familiar example.

What is the risk in a scaled Blackburrow? Not as much as a level appropriate zone where NPCs would have a higher base difficulty. The NPCs in higher level zones would award experience and loot proportionate to their difficulty.