How hard good shit is to get

[Draugor]

Hai!

I am starting this thread mainly to ask why most of the uber nice shit is so easy to get

Take runies for example, seriosly those elves are complete wimps, Loran with the Gigantic steel broadsword also a sissy. Knight with skullplate and beast with his weapons... seriously not hard
One can pretty much go and solo hunt gear, how about making people atleast be two people in the team? Some of the best things in the game are guarded by NPCs that are about as hard as the xp elves in Qualinost XPing requires more size and tactics than getting gear. Verminnard is an NPC that I feel is on the line with risk vs gear since he can have a really nice sword or a sweet club, along with that shithead dragon its an actual fight. Make the uber gear alittle hard, I know some people are gonna whine and ask me how the hell I can suggest something like this, well a hero sized char of almost any guild can kick Lorans ass with ease and get a REALLY insane sword, lets say they atleast have to be two or three heroes to do this? Might encourage teaming some during EQ raids.

[Cherek]

I totally agree.

Dont make more uber-XP areas, but make some more single uber-NPCs instead. That require team and preparation to take down. Reinstating Mergula was nice, and that Orc captain too, with him you can only do it alone so it kinda takes away the whole social thing of course. But its a nice addition nontheless.

But for the most part EQ-hunting is something a majority of the population can do alone, and do it easily. Would be fun if it required a team and preparation again.

When I was I wiz I really wanted to add some super-cool super hard NPCs that would not only provide nice gear, but actually provide some serious experience too, so there was an alternate way of gaining decent progress except killing thousands of trolls. If one super-hard-NPC would equal 100, or 500, or 1000 trolls, it would perhaps be a more fun way to gain experience. Now we're talking seriously super hard to kill of course. Personally I think it would be more fun to spend 2 hours gathering the right team and items/herbs etc, to take down one NPC, than spending two hours grinding trolls in a zombie/trigger-team, for the same amount of progress in the end.

I still think its a good idea, but its one thing to have ideas and a whole other thing to code them. Which clearly I did not.

Well actually, I did code one NPC with the goal of him needing about two champs to kill. Nothing really uber, but it was my first so I had to start somewhere. Sadly I didnt get any further. I am happy though that my estimation and testing turned out pretty correct, and even though it was atleast 3-4 years ago, he is still a challenge even for champions and legends.

Now I feel I wanna code a cool NPC again, guess I am not really remembering the hard part of coding I guess..

[Laurel]

right - make it harder, cause there's ALWAYS plenty enough ppl around to team with ... especially in the guilds/sizes available (same align) and supportive (instead of "drag me pl0x") for any given player who logs on

[Cherek]

Laurel: The whole point of my idea is that more people would think it would be more fun to play, actively, without being on triggers, etc. People do that because its boring...

There is still PLENTY of things to do and gather when you're alone, but its very little that requires a team, or is made for a team effort.

And we'll have to design a game that is supposed to be fun for more people, not design a single player game. If we do, we will eventually have a single player game since thats what we made. Gotta turn it around at some point.

[Amberlee]

Should have tried the DK pre-nerf then ;p

[Bromen]

I'm a titan and Loran still kicks my ass...

As for harder Npc's, I'm all for it. There's still no better mmorpg feeling than taking down your first Onyxia, Rag, or Vael. Legendary Npc's should always have some company around and a heal or two up their sleeves.

B

[Laurel]

from my char's perspective:

please go die

I can't kill shit alone, or it takes ages (as in 20+ minutes?) to kill 1 opponent; some shit happens to endure 2 of my guildmembers for up to 45minutes (Ash for example); my guild mates usually have noone to team with (for various reasons) except eachother

point a:
it's hard/impossible to get some of the super items solo
point b:
it's hard to get some super items even in teams of 2
point c:
low playerbase (even lower with align and RP restrictions)

and your point is:
a+b+c should mean "make a and b EVEN harder" ...

well - a+b (no recode) + c (friends leaving) = for me, I more or less stopped playing
if you want to - drive more people away by putting them into a similar position
it's kind of frustrating to NOT be able to kill shit you were able to solo over and over again with one hand in your pocket

[Recoba]

With the eventual (and planned) removal of brute from the game and the accompanying big xp rewards for quests, I can foresee a solution to your problem. I guess there is no reason why a lot more quests can't be coded then, and given enough difficulty level they could be big xp events that gives you exactly the thing you are asking for here.

I totally agree.

Dont make more uber-XP areas, but make some more single uber-NPCs instead. That require team and preparation to take down. Reinstating Mergula was nice, and that Orc captain too, with him you can only do it alone so it kinda takes away the whole social thing of course. But its a nice addition nontheless.

But for the most part EQ-hunting is something a majority of the population can do alone, and do it easily. Would be fun if it required a team and preparation again.

When I was I wiz I really wanted to add some super-cool super hard NPCs that would not only provide nice gear, but actually provide some serious experience too, so there was an alternate way of gaining decent progress except killing thousands of trolls. If one super-hard-NPC would equal 100, or 500, or 1000 trolls, it would perhaps be a more fun way to gain experience. Now we're talking seriously super hard to kill of course. Personally I think it would be more fun to spend 2 hours gathering the right team and items/herbs etc, to take down one NPC, than spending two hours grinding trolls in a zombie/trigger-team, for the same amount of progress in the end.

I still think its a good idea, but its one thing to have ideas and a whole other thing to code them. Which clearly I did not.

Well actually, I did code one NPC with the goal of him needing about two champs to kill. Nothing really uber, but it was my first so I had to start somewhere. Sadly I didnt get any further. I am happy though that my estimation and testing turned out pretty correct, and even though it was atleast 3-4 years ago, he is still a challenge even for champions and legends.

Now I feel I wanna code a cool NPC again, guess I am not really remembering the hard part of coding I guess..

[Recoba]

Hai!

I am starting this thread mainly to ask why most of the uber nice shit is so easy to get

Take runies for example, seriosly those elves are complete wimps, Loran with the Gigantic steel broadsword also a sissy. Knight with skullplate and beast with his weapons... seriously not hard
One can pretty much go and solo hunt gear, how about making people atleast be two people in the team? Some of the best things in the game are guarded by NPCs that are about as hard as the xp elves in Qualinost XPing requires more size and tactics than getting gear. Verminnard is an NPC that I feel is on the line with risk vs gear since he can have a really nice sword or a sweet club, along with that shithead dragon its an actual fight. Make the uber gear alittle hard, I know some people are gonna whine and ask me how the hell I can suggest something like this, well a hero sized char of almost any guild can kick Lorans ass with ease and get a REALLY insane sword, lets say they atleast have to be two or three heroes to do this? Might encourage teaming some during EQ raids.

I think this leads us onto the issue of difficulty standardization. So let me quote myself from another thread this morning:

From: http://www.genesismud.org/forums/viewto ... =30&t=1220

You're right, but the problem is much much deeper than just combat roles.

To begin with, Genesis combat design also allows individual players to become bigger and stronger than the big NPCs. This is the first thing that eliminates the need for teaming.

All the big commercial games have level caps to control player growth. And they have standardized NPC sizes and powers and xp rewards and everything. Genesis has had nothing of this.

The most important characteristic of Genesis historically is the decentralized design. This has been great for allowing the game to grow initially (and goes along with the whole reason for the invention of LPC), but has also made it impossible to even have a coherent combat design in the first place, in the true sense of the word. One domain can design a guild with certain powers, then another domain designs NPCs and items that work in a weird way against that guild, then the central combat design changes and the guild's powers start to work differently. These things heavily affect Genesis combat, and they have been both uncoordinated and difficult to get an overview of.

Not to mention that the whole decentralization thing has meant the Big Guild Recode Project has taken years and is still not finished. That's not years of redesign but simply years of recoding because nothing is standardized and everything works differently.

Partially this is what makes Genesis more interesting, I've always felt that the individuality and non-standardization of things makes the game world feel more real and unpredictable and chaotic, more like the Real World. But game design-wise and in terms of controlling how the game works it's a nightmare.

But as I understand, a priority of Gorboth and friends lately is to centralize things more to make the game more manageable design-wise. This is very important and will help make the game much better in the future.

It's all down to the basics of how the game is designed. These are important things that need fixing for sure, and I assume they will be fixed. But the workforce is pretty small so it might take some time

[OgreToyBoy]

Make new friends
Since I'm pretty much done with the insane skullcrusading I'm open for business.