Kambic
07-10-01, 04:59 PM
http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000238.html
Rilauven wrote:Hi, I've recently gotten back into EQ and just heard about the Rolepaying Server ideas. Overall I think it's a great idea and I'll definately be making a character there when it goes up, but a couple things worry me. First is the langauge barriers. In concept, they're an excellent idea to encourage RP and racial differences. However, I've played on many mud & mush's with language code in place and the reality is that it tends to be a very frustrating detriment to rp. A typical conversation usually goes like this:Human: Hello!
Elf: vgbbz!
Human: what?
Elf: Y gfan, Vgbbz!
Human: Huh??
Elf: hgn'y ubq klaop gntbxzy!?!
Human: what the heck are you saying!?(At this point both parties give up and go off to roleplay with members of their own race) I'd suggest putting a common tounge that's easy to learn even at low levels. Or at the very least, leave in the /ooc channel. Which brings be to the second point. The /ooc channel should be left in! Partially for the reason above, so people have some chat system in place, even if it's just ooc. Groups of friends need a way to find each other to roleplay together. Without an ooc channel, they have no choice but to wander around and hope they bump into someone interesting. This is what the /ooc channel should be for. In the event that this doesn't happen anyway, will we at least have /tell and guildchat that can break language barriers? I understand that there needs to be some kind of rule/understanding that ooc, tells and guildchat are strictly ooc, but if ooc communication is taken out completely, it will make finding prefered people to roleplay and group with very, very difficult! Please take these points into condsideration, and thank you for your time.
You said something that went *ding* for me. quote:
(At this point both parties give up and go off to roleplay with members of their own race)
Actually, that's rather the goal of language restrictions. Races in Norrath are rather insular. We want people to spend their lower levels dealing primarily with people of their own species. This promotes community among the races and means that those that can communicate with others outside their race have spent the time and effort to do so. This is exactly what we're looking for.Sure, some people will find it frustrating that they have trouble grouping with and communicating with people outside their species. That's unfortunate. But, just like many of our alternate rules servers, the idea here is to make things different in order to promote certain play styles. Here we want to make it harder for people that don't care about the race they have chosen to play as much as they care about getting experience in the most efficient group.So, at least in this area, frustrating is just fine.
Choadian wrote:Something that popped into my mind as a potential problem which may escalate to GM/Guide involment is this: How to two groups which don't have a common method of communication work out who is fighting what in an certain location?For example lets say you have two groups in Dalnir's, one, all Iksar, are fighting lumpy goos and the other, all non-evil and fresh off the boat wish to hunt nearby. How do they work out things like sharing an area, avoiding trains, how long a group is going to be in a particular area, etc? With no civilized method of working this out ahead of time you're very quickly going to have accidental (?) violations of the Play nice policy. Of course there is always /wave /point and /rude to fall back on.Good point. That's something we'll have to figure out. Though I suspect that by the time anyone is fighting in Dalnir's at least one member of each group will know a language that a member of the other group knows. But we will certainly have to look at this issue when it comes time to decide on the customer service aspects of the server.
Furloaf wrote:I am wondering how some of the out of character commands will be dealt with on this new server. One that comes to mind is the /location command. Most often this command is used as a cheap guide to easily find an area or place, that is supposed to be hard to find. Limiting this command in some way I think would encourage role-playing, as players will ask other players for help to reach a destination they aren't familiar with. Completely removing the command may not be the best action, because it is very helpful in locating specific area bugs inside a zone. Maybe perhaps limiting the amount of times the /location command can be used in a time period, i.e. adding a "recast" time to the command, like Lay on Hands. Another idea that springs up from the limitation of /location, is to allow Rangers to use the command, or perhaps the classes that can Track. The ability (lowering of the "recast" time) to use /location could be based off of the Track skill.Other out of character commands I am wondering about deal with communication. Specifically the Inter-zone and long distance means of communicating. Tell and Guild Chat being the most extreme. These two, as well as Group Chat, from a role-playing perspective make no sense. These commands are hard to recommend changes to. Here roleplaying may have to be bent so that gameplay does not suffer. I myself an unsure on Tells and Guildchat. Group say might be able to change to a more roleplay fashion, without harming gameplay. I envision it not being limited to the members of the group, able to be heard by all around. The area of it will be the same as shout. The difference being that the members of the group would retain the chat color set for /group, so to not make it more difficult for players to group together.I am eagerly looking forward to this new proposed server. Please look over my concerns, and do your best to answer. Thanks.Some good points. I don't think we discussed /loc at all. I'll bring that up. As far as I'm concerned, we don't need it on the RP server. People can navigate by landmarks, and where there aren't landmarks they can get lost… I'll circulate the /loc thing around and see what the team thinks./tell we talked about extensively. Honestly, it's just too useful to remove. People are still playing EverQuest as a game. Many folks will just want to chat with a friend when on line. /tell let's them do that. And sometimes, just for the sake of gameplay, you need to talk to someone on the other side of Norrath.I'm personally indifferent on guild chat. I see it as a totally ooc channel for friends to babble at each other over. I've heard suggestions that we limit guild chat to city zones only, to sort of represent the guild house, where they can gather and chat… but I don't see that.But I really like your group chat idea. I've always been bothered by seeing groups of people sitting around in zen lotus positions just staring at each other. It's kind of creepy. It's even creepier when you know that they're chatting to each other mentally while they're at it.So adding a /say component to group chat is a brilliant idea. Heck, some of the funniest things I've ever heard have been said over group chat, and it's a shame that everyone in the area didn't get to hear them…Thanks for the ideas.
This next one is long, so I'll respond within the text.CohibaAl wrote:I sent this in yesterday to the Dev Comment link, not sure if that was the correct one to post to. I will resend my comments here to this link again. Please forgive me if this turns up as a repeat then.I didn’t have time to read all of them yesterday, sorry.I intend to outline several flaws of the proposal to make a server-wide Warrens Loot Code (WLC) combined with universally tradeable items with an example and then discuss several advantages of an alternate method. Please bear with me on the lengthy comments! The situation you have then would be that items couldn't be farmed by higher levels since the magic items wouldn't drop, yet could be bought from the lower level player that does get it. It sounds great! But for some quest items, the natural rarity of the item, combined with the much more limited pool of possible players to achieve it, would skyrocket the price of many items. This may look good for helping the young players make some money, but with the WLC and the absense of farming the platinum resources of most players would be significantly reduced.If items become more rare on this server, I see that as a good thing.Let me give an example to outline this. In my experience I hate farming, worse I hate selling in G-bay (Greater Faydark). So I have sold maybe 4 or 5 items in my whole career total. I have a 50 paladin, a 46 druid, and all total I just now have 4k plat in the bank. Let's pretend this isn't an unreasonably low amount for someone who has played as long as I have, under your new coding.1) I have a mid-level druid under the new server. I decide I would like to get a <quest item in question> (which sells on Tunare for 5k or so). However I don't have 5k or more to buy one outright, and my ability to make money is limited as I can't "farm" anything to sell in order to raise the cash. I start anyway. I hunt in <some place> and get <item #1>, <item #2>, and <item #3>. I move to <another place> to camp <some NPC> for the <item#4> only to discover in frustration and dismay (after 5 hours of sitting) that <some NPC> is green and doesn't drop <item#4> for me. This worsens my disgust of "evercamp" as any such time spent is now at risk of producing nothing.Examples edited out… no spoilers here! So you have to buy <item #4> from someone of the appropriate level to get it. I don't see that as an issue. You might even be encouraged to help them hunt in <another place> for a while so they can get it. That's a good thing.2) I look to buy <item #4> that a lower level has gotten. Supply and demand shows that there really aren't many lower level players that are looking for <item #4> and so it isn't really camped by them. This drives the price UP (currently <item #4> alone can sell for 1k). An enterprising young camper realizes this and camps and loots the ring. Supply and demand state he can ask a considerably higher price for it, as most all <class> want a <quest item in question> at some time but only a small level range of players can get <item #4>, and thus there are far fewer available.As I said, it's not a bad thing if items become more rare on this server. In fact, I'd call it a good thing. Players on this server might have to adjust and accept that just because they want <quest item in question> does not mean that they will ever get it. I would love to see a server where the items that people think of as 'required' are sometimes just not obtainable. People will quickly discover that those items aren't as indispensable as they think they are. And people that have such items will be that much more unique.3) Economics shows that he could easily sell for an asking price outside of my range. he would end up selling to a level 55 or 60 player that has access to such a powerful pool of loot to sell or trade, or just more mobs that drop larger amounts of coin. I really wouldn't be able to afford <item #4> and complete my quest until I was nearly at the end-game.If that becomes true, then that item is end-game (if you must use that term) loot. If people at 55+ level think it's good enough to buy for their own use, then maybe it should be something that they can't afford until they are higher level…But, most likely people will just be more careful, and make sure to get the quest components for items they know they will want when they are of the appropriate level to get it.4) Enough examples of this and players become very discouraged at questing. Especially the ones that want to experience the game WITHOUT the use of spoiler sites listing the exact levels required to do quests, the ones that want to discover the game on their own as you originally designed it.That is a problem. But the problem is that folks think they 'need' stuff that they've read about on spoiler sites, or that their character on some other server has. That's just not the case. It's certainly easier to defeat enemies with better arms and armo(u)r, but it's certainly not required that you have all the best stuff to do anything in EverQuest. Again, maybe this is something that folks playing on this server will have to learn if they want to play there.I really do see the prices for many quest items skyrocketing out of the range for anyone but the very high levels to attain. This plan would handicap people; prevent them from playing the game as it was intended and worsening the schism between rich uber players and poor average players. Hill Giants would become very very scarce just because they are a mid-level source of money needed to purchase.Sorry, but maybe you and I disagree on 'as it was intended'. Powerful items being rare and expensive isn't against any part of 'as it was intended' that I know about…THE SOLUTION: make nearly every item NO-DROP! With the exception of player made items, and other things specifically made to be traded, all items being No-Drop would ALSO:a) PREVENT FARMING, bottom-feeding or the rest of the goals that your WLC has attempted to fix. No more level 60's farming their 15th FBSS, it's no drop. No more level 60's farming Yakesha swords, they are no drop. This may stabilize the server economy as well.You're not exactly correct. It would just produce a different kind of farming. Let's say that a high level character (or guild) wants to get some stuff for his lower level friends or guild members. Rather than bottom feeding the stuff solo, he'll just bring his lower level friends into the zone and have them loot the stuff. Slightly more complicated, but certainly not hard. There would be no less bottom feeding or farming, there would just be more people sitting around watching it happen. The anti-bottom feeding code actually prevents bottom feeding altogether by making it nearly impossible.b) SOLVE LOOT DISPUTES. No more hassle over why wizards are randoming warrior equipment or why warriors are randoming caster stuff, it's all no-drop. That's true, all no-drop would fix this. However, the real fix to this is that players get along. If there's a warrior in the group that needs an item, let him have it. That's how I play.c) IMPROVE TRADE SKILLS. Well, more work needs to be done to make the products of many tradeskills financially viable. This would however improve its chances. More people may buy the racially smithed armor if they can't walk to the nearest bazaar and buy a full suit of rygorr, or worse the mid-level quest armor that was made for questing (that one really blew my mind, buying quest armor: Bah!).At the same time, you'd destroy the ability of most tradespeople to even make stuff. They could no longer purchase simple items like ruined pelts. Even with the anti-bottom feeding code they will have trouble getting any magical components. Those are going to get expensive, but then so will the items made from those components…c) SOLVE TWINK ISSUE. If you believe that twinking is wrong this would solve that.Not really. People would twink just like they would bottom feed; have the twink in the area to loot the item.d) AVOID PUNISHING PLAYERS FOR LEVELLING. It allows anyone to finish any quest, regardless of level, and thus not punishing players for simply not having discovered a certain quest until too late! True, and this is the major drawback of the anti-bottom feeding code. I don't, however, think that this one selling point makes the idea of turning all items no-drop better than the anti-bottom feeding code.e) ENCOURAGES LONG TERM PLAYING. NO-DROP is why everyone wants to level and get into Temple of Veeshan or Sleepers Tomb someday... they see the stuff that comes out of there but can't have any unless they earn it themselves because much of it is not tradable.But then, if you've fought your way into the Temple of Veeshan, maybe you deserve the right to give away the stuff you found there. And, well, if seeing the Temple of Veeshan in person isn't enough of a reason to go there, then maybe a roleplaying server isn't the right place for that person to play. Going to a place like that shouldn't be about the loot.f) REDUCE PLAYER SCAMS. How many of your Customer Service (CS) responses are due to trade scams? How many are due to people claiming someone logged on their account and traded everything away before de-levelling them 5 times? How much CS time would be saved with the no-drop plan?No drop items don't change that. Those people would just destroy the items in question. We're talking about disgruntled spouses, guildmates, roommates, friends…And people that try to scam the GMs by giving items away and then claiming they were scammed… they don't play EverQuest anymore. While it's a noble idea to try to reduce the workload on the customer service staff, that's not really an issue.I can't begin to tell you how viable this is, providing you find the right balance of what you determine should be tradable. The game, IMO as it stands now, is often less about playing as it is about the "phat lewt". It's sad, so much of the game is missed with that mindset. Yet the no-drop items would make each player actually earn and feel proud about the armor and items he or she wields and thus return some of the original glory and amazement back to the game.Everquest is about adventuring. Not sitting in East Commons or Greater Faydark for days on end trying to buy low and sell high. Atleast this is my vision of the game, and I suspect close to yours too.Sure, it is viable. I just don't think it's superior to the other plan, which I'm still not sure I like. Making things no-drop certainly wouldn't change anyone's focus away from the Phat Lewt, if that is their focus. And for some people, playing EverQuest is about sitting in East Commons buying low and selling high. No, that's not what I do when I play. But for some that's the fun part. The no-drop thing really critically impacts trade skills in such a way that I just can't see it working.
I love the ideas so far - but a couple of others that make the "no no-drop" more workable imho:a) Must be grouped to trade - this prevents evis from trading with goods - but neutrals could still act as go betweens.
b) Trading allowed only in city zones - goes along with the auction channel theme and means evils and goods can trade, but only if they have similar faction somewhere so they dont "hate" each other.
c) Trading of lore and formerly no drop items allowed only in city zones (can still trade food or summoned items in the field).Love the rule set generally - would make a great server.GypsumI don't really like a). But it's an interesting idea.b) is pretty darn restrictive… but it's also an interesting idea.c) borders on brilliant, and might be something that can actually be done in code (not that I know, I'm not a programmer…)Thanks for the ideas, I'll pass them on.
Beldukil wrote:Wouldnt there be a problem with neutrals having too much flexibility. There should definitely be an advantage to being good or evil just as neutrality has its advantages.Also some classes are almost necessary for the high end game, like rogues. Are rogues necesarily evil?Yes, it might be important to add some incentive to being extremely good or evil. That's certainly on our list of things to look at.And rogues might very well range from good to evil, I don't know. But I don't see why they would have to be evil. Robin Hood wasn't evil… We haven't worked out the alignment chart yet, so I can't answer that for sure.
Sengan wrote:Well a couple of things seem to be off with the rules suggestions. First, if neutrals can be buffed and healed by anyone, why would someone play a non-neutral? Sure, many will, but the neutrals are likely to way outbalance the non-neutrals, particularly if they include the main classes (cleric,caster of some form, warrior of some form).Languages,/ooc,/auction/shout - sounds like a move to make this a server of isolation rather than commmunity. I can easily see groups of trolls, who could care less about interacting with humans, etc. In a PvE environment, no reason for them to interact. They form a troll guild, travel in troll groups, take care of their factions with the npcs so they can travel pretty much anywhere, take down dragons and other high level things with trolls only, etc. There is little incentive to work with the human,dwarf etc players. They can go anywhere (once they establish some faction with the local merchants or guards) and have no need to interact with people from the other races. Rather than making a community, the proposed rules sound like they are designed to make many smaller communities on the server with none of them having any great need to interact with the other communities. In a PvP world like Sullon, the trolls could be attacked by the human players, in a PvE world though, the players are irrelevant and the npc's are what matter. Some of the things one does in the game would be easier if you took the time to learn the other peoples languages, but not easier enough to necessarily make it worth while doing. Likewise trading - you can sell to another troll as easily as you can sell to a human, so if you dont want to take time learning human speech, just sell to your own isolated community.Maybe it is just me, but the strengths of the game have always been the community, the commmunications, the interaction. Too many of these rules seem designed as being the opposite of all of those. If the proposed rules indicated that npc's were going to be downgraded, it sounds like the kind of rules you would make for a solo player server more than a role-play server.Well, it also seems more natural to me that the majority of the world be neutral. But we're hoping that enough people will play on the extremes to keep things fun. I suspect that a lot of the people that choose to play on this server will choose to be something extreme, like a paladin or a cleric to Innoruuk. But, as I mentioned, we'll certainly keep our eyes open for the need for incentives to play evil and good.And we're not taking about creating solo play here, what we're doing is reducing the size of the community for the lower level characters. Trolls will hang out with trolls. Ogres will hang out with ogres. That seems more natural than having Trolls work their faction up with some group so that they can more easily group with humans… We want a more insular feeling, more of a dedication to your race than you might see on other servers. If a lot of dwarf only, elf only, troll only guilds form on this server, that's great.We're not eliminating the community at all, we're just cutting it up into smaller pieces.
How would the language change affect those classes (rogue, bard, enchanter) that are capable of taking on the guise of another race? Part of the aspect of roleplay for these classes would be to master illusions in certain situations, yet their language would impair them from being able to completely pull it off.-JadeGreat, isn't it!Yes, if you want to pretend to be a dark elf, you might want to learn the language…
I'm happy to hear that this idea is moving forward. But in terms of practicality, given that everyone will be anonymous and shout being reduced in range, won't it be difficult to find groups in the larger zones?--
Orfeo Calliopen
30 Bard
Ayonae RoIt sure will. Maybe, just maybe, on this server people will be meeting in town to gather their groups to go adventuring. Leveling will probably be slower on this server, and that's fine too. Remember, when roleplaying it is the journey that is the adventure, not how fast you make it.
To answer a couple of questions that I've seen but didn't want to paste the whole comment here: Yes, there will be agnostics on this server. No, we don't know when this will go live. I wouldn't expect it soon. Just like Sullon, this server will take a lot of special coding and testing. While we're enthusiastic about this idea, we have a lot of stuff to work on right now that will probably take priority over such a server. Thanks for the 427 comments you've sent in so far. It's sure kept me busy reading… Alan Wang, Anonymous Gnome of Sullon Zek, Anarchia
Canbik Virulentus, 40th Halfling Rogue of Rallos Zek, Order of the Black Rose (Retired)
Joyous Mackdaddy, 23rd Human Enchanter of Sullon Zek [Test], Anarchy (Player Wiped)
"Just gimme my gun."
"Sorry, the law requires a five day waiting period... we've got to run a background check."
"Aww, but I'm mad now." - Homer Simpson, buying a gun
Rilauven wrote:Hi, I've recently gotten back into EQ and just heard about the Rolepaying Server ideas. Overall I think it's a great idea and I'll definately be making a character there when it goes up, but a couple things worry me. First is the langauge barriers. In concept, they're an excellent idea to encourage RP and racial differences. However, I've played on many mud & mush's with language code in place and the reality is that it tends to be a very frustrating detriment to rp. A typical conversation usually goes like this:Human: Hello!
Elf: vgbbz!
Human: what?
Elf: Y gfan, Vgbbz!
Human: Huh??
Elf: hgn'y ubq klaop gntbxzy!?!
Human: what the heck are you saying!?(At this point both parties give up and go off to roleplay with members of their own race) I'd suggest putting a common tounge that's easy to learn even at low levels. Or at the very least, leave in the /ooc channel. Which brings be to the second point. The /ooc channel should be left in! Partially for the reason above, so people have some chat system in place, even if it's just ooc. Groups of friends need a way to find each other to roleplay together. Without an ooc channel, they have no choice but to wander around and hope they bump into someone interesting. This is what the /ooc channel should be for. In the event that this doesn't happen anyway, will we at least have /tell and guildchat that can break language barriers? I understand that there needs to be some kind of rule/understanding that ooc, tells and guildchat are strictly ooc, but if ooc communication is taken out completely, it will make finding prefered people to roleplay and group with very, very difficult! Please take these points into condsideration, and thank you for your time.
You said something that went *ding* for me. quote:
(At this point both parties give up and go off to roleplay with members of their own race)
Actually, that's rather the goal of language restrictions. Races in Norrath are rather insular. We want people to spend their lower levels dealing primarily with people of their own species. This promotes community among the races and means that those that can communicate with others outside their race have spent the time and effort to do so. This is exactly what we're looking for.Sure, some people will find it frustrating that they have trouble grouping with and communicating with people outside their species. That's unfortunate. But, just like many of our alternate rules servers, the idea here is to make things different in order to promote certain play styles. Here we want to make it harder for people that don't care about the race they have chosen to play as much as they care about getting experience in the most efficient group.So, at least in this area, frustrating is just fine.
Choadian wrote:Something that popped into my mind as a potential problem which may escalate to GM/Guide involment is this: How to two groups which don't have a common method of communication work out who is fighting what in an certain location?For example lets say you have two groups in Dalnir's, one, all Iksar, are fighting lumpy goos and the other, all non-evil and fresh off the boat wish to hunt nearby. How do they work out things like sharing an area, avoiding trains, how long a group is going to be in a particular area, etc? With no civilized method of working this out ahead of time you're very quickly going to have accidental (?) violations of the Play nice policy. Of course there is always /wave /point and /rude to fall back on.Good point. That's something we'll have to figure out. Though I suspect that by the time anyone is fighting in Dalnir's at least one member of each group will know a language that a member of the other group knows. But we will certainly have to look at this issue when it comes time to decide on the customer service aspects of the server.
Furloaf wrote:I am wondering how some of the out of character commands will be dealt with on this new server. One that comes to mind is the /location command. Most often this command is used as a cheap guide to easily find an area or place, that is supposed to be hard to find. Limiting this command in some way I think would encourage role-playing, as players will ask other players for help to reach a destination they aren't familiar with. Completely removing the command may not be the best action, because it is very helpful in locating specific area bugs inside a zone. Maybe perhaps limiting the amount of times the /location command can be used in a time period, i.e. adding a "recast" time to the command, like Lay on Hands. Another idea that springs up from the limitation of /location, is to allow Rangers to use the command, or perhaps the classes that can Track. The ability (lowering of the "recast" time) to use /location could be based off of the Track skill.Other out of character commands I am wondering about deal with communication. Specifically the Inter-zone and long distance means of communicating. Tell and Guild Chat being the most extreme. These two, as well as Group Chat, from a role-playing perspective make no sense. These commands are hard to recommend changes to. Here roleplaying may have to be bent so that gameplay does not suffer. I myself an unsure on Tells and Guildchat. Group say might be able to change to a more roleplay fashion, without harming gameplay. I envision it not being limited to the members of the group, able to be heard by all around. The area of it will be the same as shout. The difference being that the members of the group would retain the chat color set for /group, so to not make it more difficult for players to group together.I am eagerly looking forward to this new proposed server. Please look over my concerns, and do your best to answer. Thanks.Some good points. I don't think we discussed /loc at all. I'll bring that up. As far as I'm concerned, we don't need it on the RP server. People can navigate by landmarks, and where there aren't landmarks they can get lost… I'll circulate the /loc thing around and see what the team thinks./tell we talked about extensively. Honestly, it's just too useful to remove. People are still playing EverQuest as a game. Many folks will just want to chat with a friend when on line. /tell let's them do that. And sometimes, just for the sake of gameplay, you need to talk to someone on the other side of Norrath.I'm personally indifferent on guild chat. I see it as a totally ooc channel for friends to babble at each other over. I've heard suggestions that we limit guild chat to city zones only, to sort of represent the guild house, where they can gather and chat… but I don't see that.But I really like your group chat idea. I've always been bothered by seeing groups of people sitting around in zen lotus positions just staring at each other. It's kind of creepy. It's even creepier when you know that they're chatting to each other mentally while they're at it.So adding a /say component to group chat is a brilliant idea. Heck, some of the funniest things I've ever heard have been said over group chat, and it's a shame that everyone in the area didn't get to hear them…Thanks for the ideas.
This next one is long, so I'll respond within the text.CohibaAl wrote:I sent this in yesterday to the Dev Comment link, not sure if that was the correct one to post to. I will resend my comments here to this link again. Please forgive me if this turns up as a repeat then.I didn’t have time to read all of them yesterday, sorry.I intend to outline several flaws of the proposal to make a server-wide Warrens Loot Code (WLC) combined with universally tradeable items with an example and then discuss several advantages of an alternate method. Please bear with me on the lengthy comments! The situation you have then would be that items couldn't be farmed by higher levels since the magic items wouldn't drop, yet could be bought from the lower level player that does get it. It sounds great! But for some quest items, the natural rarity of the item, combined with the much more limited pool of possible players to achieve it, would skyrocket the price of many items. This may look good for helping the young players make some money, but with the WLC and the absense of farming the platinum resources of most players would be significantly reduced.If items become more rare on this server, I see that as a good thing.Let me give an example to outline this. In my experience I hate farming, worse I hate selling in G-bay (Greater Faydark). So I have sold maybe 4 or 5 items in my whole career total. I have a 50 paladin, a 46 druid, and all total I just now have 4k plat in the bank. Let's pretend this isn't an unreasonably low amount for someone who has played as long as I have, under your new coding.1) I have a mid-level druid under the new server. I decide I would like to get a <quest item in question> (which sells on Tunare for 5k or so). However I don't have 5k or more to buy one outright, and my ability to make money is limited as I can't "farm" anything to sell in order to raise the cash. I start anyway. I hunt in <some place> and get <item #1>, <item #2>, and <item #3>. I move to <another place> to camp <some NPC> for the <item#4> only to discover in frustration and dismay (after 5 hours of sitting) that <some NPC> is green and doesn't drop <item#4> for me. This worsens my disgust of "evercamp" as any such time spent is now at risk of producing nothing.Examples edited out… no spoilers here! So you have to buy <item #4> from someone of the appropriate level to get it. I don't see that as an issue. You might even be encouraged to help them hunt in <another place> for a while so they can get it. That's a good thing.2) I look to buy <item #4> that a lower level has gotten. Supply and demand shows that there really aren't many lower level players that are looking for <item #4> and so it isn't really camped by them. This drives the price UP (currently <item #4> alone can sell for 1k). An enterprising young camper realizes this and camps and loots the ring. Supply and demand state he can ask a considerably higher price for it, as most all <class> want a <quest item in question> at some time but only a small level range of players can get <item #4>, and thus there are far fewer available.As I said, it's not a bad thing if items become more rare on this server. In fact, I'd call it a good thing. Players on this server might have to adjust and accept that just because they want <quest item in question> does not mean that they will ever get it. I would love to see a server where the items that people think of as 'required' are sometimes just not obtainable. People will quickly discover that those items aren't as indispensable as they think they are. And people that have such items will be that much more unique.3) Economics shows that he could easily sell for an asking price outside of my range. he would end up selling to a level 55 or 60 player that has access to such a powerful pool of loot to sell or trade, or just more mobs that drop larger amounts of coin. I really wouldn't be able to afford <item #4> and complete my quest until I was nearly at the end-game.If that becomes true, then that item is end-game (if you must use that term) loot. If people at 55+ level think it's good enough to buy for their own use, then maybe it should be something that they can't afford until they are higher level…But, most likely people will just be more careful, and make sure to get the quest components for items they know they will want when they are of the appropriate level to get it.4) Enough examples of this and players become very discouraged at questing. Especially the ones that want to experience the game WITHOUT the use of spoiler sites listing the exact levels required to do quests, the ones that want to discover the game on their own as you originally designed it.That is a problem. But the problem is that folks think they 'need' stuff that they've read about on spoiler sites, or that their character on some other server has. That's just not the case. It's certainly easier to defeat enemies with better arms and armo(u)r, but it's certainly not required that you have all the best stuff to do anything in EverQuest. Again, maybe this is something that folks playing on this server will have to learn if they want to play there.I really do see the prices for many quest items skyrocketing out of the range for anyone but the very high levels to attain. This plan would handicap people; prevent them from playing the game as it was intended and worsening the schism between rich uber players and poor average players. Hill Giants would become very very scarce just because they are a mid-level source of money needed to purchase.Sorry, but maybe you and I disagree on 'as it was intended'. Powerful items being rare and expensive isn't against any part of 'as it was intended' that I know about…THE SOLUTION: make nearly every item NO-DROP! With the exception of player made items, and other things specifically made to be traded, all items being No-Drop would ALSO:a) PREVENT FARMING, bottom-feeding or the rest of the goals that your WLC has attempted to fix. No more level 60's farming their 15th FBSS, it's no drop. No more level 60's farming Yakesha swords, they are no drop. This may stabilize the server economy as well.You're not exactly correct. It would just produce a different kind of farming. Let's say that a high level character (or guild) wants to get some stuff for his lower level friends or guild members. Rather than bottom feeding the stuff solo, he'll just bring his lower level friends into the zone and have them loot the stuff. Slightly more complicated, but certainly not hard. There would be no less bottom feeding or farming, there would just be more people sitting around watching it happen. The anti-bottom feeding code actually prevents bottom feeding altogether by making it nearly impossible.b) SOLVE LOOT DISPUTES. No more hassle over why wizards are randoming warrior equipment or why warriors are randoming caster stuff, it's all no-drop. That's true, all no-drop would fix this. However, the real fix to this is that players get along. If there's a warrior in the group that needs an item, let him have it. That's how I play.c) IMPROVE TRADE SKILLS. Well, more work needs to be done to make the products of many tradeskills financially viable. This would however improve its chances. More people may buy the racially smithed armor if they can't walk to the nearest bazaar and buy a full suit of rygorr, or worse the mid-level quest armor that was made for questing (that one really blew my mind, buying quest armor: Bah!).At the same time, you'd destroy the ability of most tradespeople to even make stuff. They could no longer purchase simple items like ruined pelts. Even with the anti-bottom feeding code they will have trouble getting any magical components. Those are going to get expensive, but then so will the items made from those components…c) SOLVE TWINK ISSUE. If you believe that twinking is wrong this would solve that.Not really. People would twink just like they would bottom feed; have the twink in the area to loot the item.d) AVOID PUNISHING PLAYERS FOR LEVELLING. It allows anyone to finish any quest, regardless of level, and thus not punishing players for simply not having discovered a certain quest until too late! True, and this is the major drawback of the anti-bottom feeding code. I don't, however, think that this one selling point makes the idea of turning all items no-drop better than the anti-bottom feeding code.e) ENCOURAGES LONG TERM PLAYING. NO-DROP is why everyone wants to level and get into Temple of Veeshan or Sleepers Tomb someday... they see the stuff that comes out of there but can't have any unless they earn it themselves because much of it is not tradable.But then, if you've fought your way into the Temple of Veeshan, maybe you deserve the right to give away the stuff you found there. And, well, if seeing the Temple of Veeshan in person isn't enough of a reason to go there, then maybe a roleplaying server isn't the right place for that person to play. Going to a place like that shouldn't be about the loot.f) REDUCE PLAYER SCAMS. How many of your Customer Service (CS) responses are due to trade scams? How many are due to people claiming someone logged on their account and traded everything away before de-levelling them 5 times? How much CS time would be saved with the no-drop plan?No drop items don't change that. Those people would just destroy the items in question. We're talking about disgruntled spouses, guildmates, roommates, friends…And people that try to scam the GMs by giving items away and then claiming they were scammed… they don't play EverQuest anymore. While it's a noble idea to try to reduce the workload on the customer service staff, that's not really an issue.I can't begin to tell you how viable this is, providing you find the right balance of what you determine should be tradable. The game, IMO as it stands now, is often less about playing as it is about the "phat lewt". It's sad, so much of the game is missed with that mindset. Yet the no-drop items would make each player actually earn and feel proud about the armor and items he or she wields and thus return some of the original glory and amazement back to the game.Everquest is about adventuring. Not sitting in East Commons or Greater Faydark for days on end trying to buy low and sell high. Atleast this is my vision of the game, and I suspect close to yours too.Sure, it is viable. I just don't think it's superior to the other plan, which I'm still not sure I like. Making things no-drop certainly wouldn't change anyone's focus away from the Phat Lewt, if that is their focus. And for some people, playing EverQuest is about sitting in East Commons buying low and selling high. No, that's not what I do when I play. But for some that's the fun part. The no-drop thing really critically impacts trade skills in such a way that I just can't see it working.
I love the ideas so far - but a couple of others that make the "no no-drop" more workable imho:a) Must be grouped to trade - this prevents evis from trading with goods - but neutrals could still act as go betweens.
b) Trading allowed only in city zones - goes along with the auction channel theme and means evils and goods can trade, but only if they have similar faction somewhere so they dont "hate" each other.
c) Trading of lore and formerly no drop items allowed only in city zones (can still trade food or summoned items in the field).Love the rule set generally - would make a great server.GypsumI don't really like a). But it's an interesting idea.b) is pretty darn restrictive… but it's also an interesting idea.c) borders on brilliant, and might be something that can actually be done in code (not that I know, I'm not a programmer…)Thanks for the ideas, I'll pass them on.
Beldukil wrote:Wouldnt there be a problem with neutrals having too much flexibility. There should definitely be an advantage to being good or evil just as neutrality has its advantages.Also some classes are almost necessary for the high end game, like rogues. Are rogues necesarily evil?Yes, it might be important to add some incentive to being extremely good or evil. That's certainly on our list of things to look at.And rogues might very well range from good to evil, I don't know. But I don't see why they would have to be evil. Robin Hood wasn't evil… We haven't worked out the alignment chart yet, so I can't answer that for sure.
Sengan wrote:Well a couple of things seem to be off with the rules suggestions. First, if neutrals can be buffed and healed by anyone, why would someone play a non-neutral? Sure, many will, but the neutrals are likely to way outbalance the non-neutrals, particularly if they include the main classes (cleric,caster of some form, warrior of some form).Languages,/ooc,/auction/shout - sounds like a move to make this a server of isolation rather than commmunity. I can easily see groups of trolls, who could care less about interacting with humans, etc. In a PvE environment, no reason for them to interact. They form a troll guild, travel in troll groups, take care of their factions with the npcs so they can travel pretty much anywhere, take down dragons and other high level things with trolls only, etc. There is little incentive to work with the human,dwarf etc players. They can go anywhere (once they establish some faction with the local merchants or guards) and have no need to interact with people from the other races. Rather than making a community, the proposed rules sound like they are designed to make many smaller communities on the server with none of them having any great need to interact with the other communities. In a PvP world like Sullon, the trolls could be attacked by the human players, in a PvE world though, the players are irrelevant and the npc's are what matter. Some of the things one does in the game would be easier if you took the time to learn the other peoples languages, but not easier enough to necessarily make it worth while doing. Likewise trading - you can sell to another troll as easily as you can sell to a human, so if you dont want to take time learning human speech, just sell to your own isolated community.Maybe it is just me, but the strengths of the game have always been the community, the commmunications, the interaction. Too many of these rules seem designed as being the opposite of all of those. If the proposed rules indicated that npc's were going to be downgraded, it sounds like the kind of rules you would make for a solo player server more than a role-play server.Well, it also seems more natural to me that the majority of the world be neutral. But we're hoping that enough people will play on the extremes to keep things fun. I suspect that a lot of the people that choose to play on this server will choose to be something extreme, like a paladin or a cleric to Innoruuk. But, as I mentioned, we'll certainly keep our eyes open for the need for incentives to play evil and good.And we're not taking about creating solo play here, what we're doing is reducing the size of the community for the lower level characters. Trolls will hang out with trolls. Ogres will hang out with ogres. That seems more natural than having Trolls work their faction up with some group so that they can more easily group with humans… We want a more insular feeling, more of a dedication to your race than you might see on other servers. If a lot of dwarf only, elf only, troll only guilds form on this server, that's great.We're not eliminating the community at all, we're just cutting it up into smaller pieces.
How would the language change affect those classes (rogue, bard, enchanter) that are capable of taking on the guise of another race? Part of the aspect of roleplay for these classes would be to master illusions in certain situations, yet their language would impair them from being able to completely pull it off.-JadeGreat, isn't it!Yes, if you want to pretend to be a dark elf, you might want to learn the language…
I'm happy to hear that this idea is moving forward. But in terms of practicality, given that everyone will be anonymous and shout being reduced in range, won't it be difficult to find groups in the larger zones?--
Orfeo Calliopen
30 Bard
Ayonae RoIt sure will. Maybe, just maybe, on this server people will be meeting in town to gather their groups to go adventuring. Leveling will probably be slower on this server, and that's fine too. Remember, when roleplaying it is the journey that is the adventure, not how fast you make it.
To answer a couple of questions that I've seen but didn't want to paste the whole comment here: Yes, there will be agnostics on this server. No, we don't know when this will go live. I wouldn't expect it soon. Just like Sullon, this server will take a lot of special coding and testing. While we're enthusiastic about this idea, we have a lot of stuff to work on right now that will probably take priority over such a server. Thanks for the 427 comments you've sent in so far. It's sure kept me busy reading… Alan Wang, Anonymous Gnome of Sullon Zek, Anarchia
Canbik Virulentus, 40th Halfling Rogue of Rallos Zek, Order of the Black Rose (Retired)
Joyous Mackdaddy, 23rd Human Enchanter of Sullon Zek [Test], Anarchy (Player Wiped)
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