WTF? Everquest... 3?

Pharone

Pharone

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Elidroth said:
Oh.. someone mentioned LDON.. Yeah.. no.. Fuck that. LDON was endless grind. There was nothing fun about running the same shit over and over ad nauseum. People did it because it was the path of least resistance, but Jesus that was mind-numbing tedium. I wish I could do away with the 'Quest Here' markers like the ! over NPCs heads and make players actually go out and discover shit.. Unfortunately, thanks to the 100 websites that will pop up before the game even launches, with cookie recipes on how to do every damned thing.. that's kind of pointless. I definitely would want to do some epic level quests though that aren't explicitly called out on the quest hub NPCs for players who care to actually read and investigate stuff.. I think back to the frenzy of exploration/cooperation of the early EQ epics as an example. I'd love to bring that shit back somehow..
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I hole heartedly agree that LDON was pure ass shit.

Leading up to the release of that expansion, I was really psyched to get in to it because it was advertised as exploring undiscovered dungeons on Norrath, and to me, that meant more awesome dungeon experienced like Guk, Sol A/B, etc. Instead what we got was a tread mill dungeon run system with chuckee cheese tickets you take back to the prize booth vendor to get your toy.

I absolutely hated it. It took everything that made EverQuest special, and threw it out the window replacing it with a multiplayer online game kind of feel.

I wanted unique hand crafted dungeons with interesting camps, rare mobs, and uber rare drops to camp. That didn't happen.

As to your list for what you would do if you made an EverQuest 3, I would like to propose the same thing to you that I proposed to you in a panel many years ago at a Fan Faire. I want people to know I kicked ass in xyz dungeon purely based on the equipment I am wearing. The first time I saw an ogre warrior wearing cobalt armor back in the day, I was like, "Holy fuck I want that. What are you wearing?"

Dungeons should drop special armor looks that are unique to that dungeon and rare mob. People should know you are a bad ass purely based on what you are wearing. The age of massive glowing sparkly shoulder pads and throwaway skittle colored armor should go to Hell and stay there. Make armor unique, rare to get, recognizable, and not something you throw away after every other dungeon run (ala WoW crap).
 
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Utnayan

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One main ticker here. First person only. :) Up close with limited FOV to make things up close and personal.
 
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Fight

Fight

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Utnayan said:
One main ticker here. First person only. :) Up close with limited FOV to make things up close and personal.
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This is so important to the experience. The game should be designed from the ground up from the first person perspective. See the scale, grandeur, and danger from your own two eyes.

Unfortunately, fucking Fortnite and WoW have ruined everything, forever. How are the kids supposed to see their sweet cosmetics they paid $4.99 for, if they are in first person...
 
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Flobee

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I want to think that a first person MMO is a good idea but there really are a lot of issues with it. This is something I've been thinking about lately and below is a quick pro/con list off the top of my head.

Pros:
More immersive
Allows for more interesting dungeon design
Limits player's ability to be situationally aware
Forgoes annoying camera issues

Cons:
Limits player's ability to be situationally aware
Players don't get to look at their cool gear / animations
Spend a lot of time looking at an ogre's balls or whatever
Enforces keyboard turning playstyle - fixable perhaps
People just seem to hate the idea. The vocal ones at least
A lot harder to have interactive combat unless you use a For Honor / FPS style combat. Auto attack/Wow style will be tough

I would love to be proven wrong on this btw, but the cons always outweigh the pros when I think about it. May be some obvious stuff I'm overlooking.
 
mkopec

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Elidroth said:
So yeah.. I completely forgot about the CC roles.. lol. I definitely remember how amazing a well-played Enchanter was in EQ, but at the same time, that can be a trap.. because if you then have dungeons that require a CC player, then if one isn't available at that time, you can't do that content. I think the best solution there is rather than have a specialized CC class (although I'm not against it), giving various classes CC options/abilities might be better.
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There were other classes in EQ that could CC. And while sure, the enchanter was the best at this role, later having the ability to AE CC, and bringing other shit to the table such as charm, which was super powerful because EQ mobs were really powerful, also mana regen which was also super powerful because mana meant something in EQ. But there was other ways to CC in EQ, like Root for example. Many classes had the ability to root and no it was not enchanter mezz, it was a ghetto way to take mobs out of the picture for a while while you deal with other adds.

So it definitely was not a requirement to have an enchanter in the group, but it sure made things easier with a well played one.
 
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Utnayan

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Flobee said:
I want to think that a first person MMO is a good idea but there really are a lot of issues with it. This is something I've been thinking about lately and below is a quick pro/con list off the top of my head.

Pros:
More immersive
Allows for more interesting dungeon design
Limits player's ability to be situationally aware
Forgoes annoying camera issues

Cons:
Limits player's ability to be situationally aware
Players don't get to look at their cool gear / animations
Spend a lot of time looking at an ogre's balls or whatever
Enforces keyboard turning playstyle - fixable perhaps
People just seem to hate the idea. The vocal ones at least
A lot harder to have interactive combat unless you use a For Honor / FPS style combat. Auto attack/Wow style will be tough

I would love to be proven wrong on this btw, but the cons always outweigh the pros when I think about it. May be some obvious stuff I'm overlooking.
Click to expand...

Quick thought on your cons.

1) You can create situational awareness within the scope of the player designed FOV in content creation. That's easy to do.
2) True. But that would be forced so you wouldn't have a dye system or whatever other garbage cosmetics that the publisher forces you to toss in that make you look different than what you earned. Throw a portrait in the inventory screen. :)

3) Interactive combat doesn't need to be 3rd person to be interactive. If you mean you cannot see your player whirling around like Drizzt on a meth bender, I'd say 99% of people aren't looking at that anyway in the scope of today's design. They are too busy avoiding seizures while making sure they stand in circles, dodge random mob abilities, try to see through the light show of effects, or using something like DBM and just paying attention to that. When you need a 3rd party UI Mod to tell you what you need to do in an encounter, the encounter is Aids.

1st person combat can be completely interactive based on design of the encounter and be made to have situational awareness based on that same design. With fun abilities, fun encounters, while creating a more immersive experience. But mainly, if you want unique armor pertaining to achievement, you cannot have the things you have today. Dye systems, doll house dress up, etc.
 
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Flobee

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Utnayan said:
3) Interactive combat doesn't need to be 3rd person to be interactive. If you mean you cannot see your player whirling around like Drizzt on a meth bender, I'd say 99% of people aren't looking at that anyway in the scope of today's design. They are too busy avoiding seizures while making sure they stand in circles, dodge random mob abilities, try to see through the light show of effects, or using something like DBM and just paying attention to that. When you need a 3rd party UI Mod to tell you what you need to do in an encounter, the encounter is Aids.

1st person combat can be completely interactive based on design of the encounter and be made to have situational awareness based on that same design. With fun abilities, fun encounters, while creating a more immersive experience. But mainly, if you want unique armor pertaining to achievement, you cannot have the things you have today. Dye systems, doll house dress up, etc.
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You make some good points and I'll be the first to admit that the current way of doing things is a bit stale and a callback to earlier methods may be the best thing, at least until VR is in a place to overtake this market.

However I wanted to specify what I meant about interactive combat. Currently a lot of games rely on DDR mechanics and other visual notifications to let the player know what is going on as you pointed out. I think that this becomes MUCH more challenging in a first person game. Really anything that relies on movement to counteract.

Maybe you could rely on animations, audio cues, and spell effects to communicate more information? Otherwise you're relegating the player to staring at a text box ala EQ. While I don't hate this personally I'm not sure how well that would play out in 2019. Then again the original doom for example used the three above pretty effectively to give players feedback to their actions so maybe it really would be enough.

I'm sure there are some creative ideas out there about how to communicate to the player outside of UI elements and I would be interested to hear them.
 
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Utnayan

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I was thinking leveraging all of them and then forcing class interdependence along with it in varying ways.

Example.

No text: Voice actor audio.

Cazic Thule shouts, "AND NOW... YOU COWER IN FEAR!" (Obviously voice acted by Tony Todd)

That sound byte (Queue for the raid) sparks an ability in which all players are now feared. (Animation Frozen and cowering not able to move or cast)

Except Necro's. They are immune. Who now must dispel fear on all Raid members (Smaller raid compositions as well) Need a necro (Or a couple) or you won't be able to defeat CT. After dispel:

No Text: Voice actor Audio.

Cazic Thule shouts, "WORSHIPPERS DEFEAT (Enter the Necro names) !"

At that point, another audio Queue to let the rest of the raid know they have to do whatever they can, as fast as they can, to kill the threat to the necro's.

At the same time, Screen Queues. Same fight - the ground shakes, the screen for the player seems like an Earthquake.

At this point you know (Or will learn) that this means the Minions are no longer after the Necros, their master, an Amygdalon Knight has been awakened which starts a new encounter - and so on and so forth with varying variables until CT dies.

Basically, as you said it, taking away all this "Look at graphics" and pay attention to the world - and obviously giving enough time for players to react. You can insert anything you want into those queues which work in a 1st person limited FOV environment, and the creative encounters would be endless (And fun as shit to design) and fun for players.
 
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Lambourne

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I liked LDoN for being accessible, for having players actually move and fight through a dungeon, and for having an inherent time limit on them. I didn't like the points system and it wasn't visually interesting, although the default "sit in one room and camp" style of play is arguably even worse in this aspect. There were so many places in dungeons that I never even saw until I played a pulling class.

As Ukerric pointed out above, the points turn everything into a grind. The dungeon gameplay should be its own reward (meaning XP, plat and maybe a shot at a named or two), not something to get done as a means to an end (much like how WoW turned faction from a world-building element into a meaningless bar you have to fill up to progress).

Again, not saying it should completely replace open world dungeons, but as a parallel path the concept has merit.
 
Ravishing

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LDON was dogshit for a lot of reasons and I don't know how anyone could say they enjoyed it or want it back.

Instanced raids in later expansions became a better LDON.
LDON was their first foray into instanced content and they learned from it.
I don't fault them for it really, they tried and it was new tech at the time.
But things have improved since then.

Just because it says "Dungeons" in the name doesn't mean that's what it was. When I think of a Dungeon I'm thinking multi-tiered content that you could spend a good portion of time in and as your character progresses, so does your engagement with the dungeon. LDON was fast single-tiered content for smaller groups & raids.
 
Lambourne

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Yea the esthetics weren't interesting and the copy/paste design didn't help either. But I could see having your own personal instance of say, lguk, where you fight and clear your way to lord as the end boss. There's some optional areas you can clear to to get to other nameds / minibosses. It's basically what BRD was in vanilla WoW and that's probably the dungeon most people cherish the most from that game.
 
kaid

kaid

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Ravishing said:
LDON was dogshit for a lot of reasons and I don't know how anyone could say they enjoyed it or want it back.

Instanced raids in later expansions became a better LDON.
LDON was their first foray into instanced content and they learned from it.
I don't fault them for it really, they tried and it was new tech at the time.
But things have improved since then.

Just because it says "Dungeons" in the name doesn't mean that's what it was. When I think of a Dungeon I'm thinking multi-tiered content that you could spend a good portion of time in and as your character progresses, so does your engagement with the dungeon. LDON was fast single-tiered content for smaller groups & raids.
Click to expand...


Honestly I enjoyed LDON quite a bit. It was the last expansion I really played with my guild mates a lot with. We had a pretty solid core group where it was easy enough to find a filler DPS guy to round us out and the LDON stuff was pretty enjoyable stuff to go through that was pretty rewarding and worked well for the group we had. It was the first iteration for that tech and it was decent enough for what it did. That expansion extended my everquest 1 game time by almost a year before the guild finally fell apart as people moved on to newer games.
 
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