New Zones and New Equipment

[Dulzuth]

I have a few things I need to say about the newer zones coming onto the MUD. I don't feel like the newer zones are trying to compete for being the hardest necessarily, more like the older zones aren't really difficult anymore, so to keep things fun we need more hard zones.

Now EQ inflation.. Well, people complain when something old, that was too easy to get by new-world standards is uber, like roots belt, then downgrade it, make a new zone with the same item. (or better) I see nothing wrong with this. How difficult is it to get the best hitpoint ring in the game? Not very, and people complain if they die/spank trying to get it.

I personally find it extremely boring doing the same zones over and over and over again, and only dying to mistakes, either mine or somebody elses.

Lately, we've been doing the hard zones fairly often, and doing very good. We've been doing scorps, clouds, and occasionally avernus. I've actually heard people say on their first time that these zones didn't seem so difficult. Now that's saying something.

My opinion is that these zones are still difficult, it's just since we've done them so many times we have a proven strategy, plus we're all twinked beyond imagining.
People don't like lots of dragons because they can be cheesy, especially if you make the zone hard by having lots of dragons. I usually dislike a lot of dragons, except for Tiamat, that I like.

I led the outer grid part of Muspelheim, and we actually spanked on a dragon, infact I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, the dragons aren't there in such a way as to make it cheesily hard. The Jabberwock in TF.. It can be a hard fight, depending on your group. Personally though I think even spanking on it is worth it for the ring. If a new zone with harder fights had an 80hp ring, it's called inflation, and yet jabber is relatively easy now, and is practically farmed. I know people still need the rings, but it's not that hard to get. I mean the best ring in the game is easy compared to the best hitter gloves (no comment), or the best mage sleeves.

Ok basically what I'm trying to say is this, the hard zones are no longer as hard as they used to be, when new zones come in that are harder and have better eq people complain, either because they die too much or because of EQ inflation. EQ inflation is just a way to keep the player interested if his/her interest is getting eq.

I love demon fights, and *some* dragon fights depending.. because they are hard.
Really what makes a zone hard is the group you bring, dragons are difficult without good hitters, most rogues are outfitted in good eq so that makes them easier. People complain about magic resistance, say it's cheesy, why? It's another method for making a zone difficult, fun, gives rogues something to do besides disarm and pick locks.

Ok, enough rambling for me.. omg I doubt anyone will be able to understand that :P

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Verzul / Dulzuth - Jabbuk D'faer - Orbdrin D'oloth

[Azenilsee]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Dulzuth:
<B>
The Jabberwock in TF.. It can be a hard fight, depending on your group. Personally though I think even spanking on it is worth it for the ring. If a new zone with harder fights had an 80hp ring, it's called inflation, and yet jabber is relatively easy now, and is practically farmed.
</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmm true enough, Dezzex led a multiple zone group last night and when we reached TF guess what? Jabber was twinked. Pretty lame IMO.



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Azenilsee - Faern Dalharil - Orbdrin D'Oloth

[Yayaril]

How on earth do you twink Jabberwock?

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-Yayaril

[old depok]

We did TF last night (as well as Brass and Crypts). Jabberwock was not "twinked".

Would love to learn how you twink it though.

[Dezzex]

What Azenilsee means is that TF was untouched but the eldritch was gone. We decided to do the zone anyway for fun/xp and what was left over though... just no ring to take home.

Not making any statement on whether its twinky or not, hell I might've done the same thing if nobody needed anything else (why waste the time?) but it does go to Verzul's point about the ease of acquiring the best mage ring in the game.

[Ensis]

are you sure you didn't JUST check jabber?.. we did brass/crypts/TF last night. My cpu crashed at about 12:00am EST which was right when we left there to do Saks and call it a night.



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Ensis Inferni
Bish Enterprises Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 1999 Fydollaho Productions.

[Dezzex]

Think it was the night before.. must've been cause we had done Crypts that boot also.

[kiryan]

Soj3 is never supposed to have a wipe. I am hopeful, but not stupid. Each time a new piece of uber ass eq goes in the game I see a ever larger pwipe loom on the horizon. The potential alternative, I suppose is a stagnant game that folks quit out of boredome once their need to have what other's don't expires.

I don't want that either, but I would argue that we are caught in a vicious cycle where zone must have more and more insane eq because the existing eq has no negatives. If we were to create 3 dam -9 dex gauntlets would anyone go do it? If we were to imp a set of gloves that was 2/2 ac10 PFC 15 hps 9 agi, what new set of gloves could rival it?

Id rather see elite eq sets fall into different categories... a top HP mage have major liabilities, a mid HP mage have strong all around defenses, and a low HP mage have some uber defenses not top HPS great SAVES and throw in some bonus procs like STONE.

Then you could tailor zones to take advantage of the weaknesses or strengths of each style. Furthermore, this provides for greater diversity and uniqueness in eq and the folks who enjoy getting eq will suddenly find themselves striving to complete multiple sets of eq. This already happens to some degree, however, there are some items that just have too many positive stats and no negatives.

One last thought, each zone should only be able to add one top piece of eq to the game. I can see some exceptions for extremely long zones, say manscorps for instance, but it has what 3 pieces of top end eq (4 if you count cloak)? If you do all of clouds, say 5 hours, how many top pieces of eq do you get? These may be hard zones, but people would still go if there weren't 4+ top pieces of eq in each zone. 1-2 top end + a few avg high end eq would be more than enough motivation for most zones and would mean that more zones could offer compelling reasons to be done. How often is brass done soley for the amy ring? Is there a reason to do SG other than sanguin crown? If the next zone has a 2/2 crown in it, how often you suppose people will go do SG thereafter?

[This message has been edited by kiryan (edited 07-03-2002).]

[Auril]

There are ways to get rid of gear, watch for them.

[moritheil]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Auril:
There are ways to get rid of gear, watch for them.</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

mmmMMMMmmmMMMmmm. Spankalicious.

I envision a group coming out of a zone with less eq than they went in with :/

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Touk says 'know you not I am Touk, slayer of stupid giants?'

[Snurgt]

You have to be cautious also, of designing the game/zones/etc with only the ub3rl337
players in mind.

Sure, there are groups of players who have full sets of the best eq for all of their alts, but some/most people dont even have the best, or nearly the best eq for their 1 prime char.

You don't want to penalize the average player in order to keep the most elite players interested. Its a fine line.

Snurgt take no prisoner

[Zoldren]

in general the "average" player will never go to those zones anyway

[Daz]

Your solution of getting rid of good gear by making it part of quests for even better gear does absolutely nothing for the saturation of the game. It just makes the elite players more elite, and the less elite players less elite. At one point the gear My character now has would be considered damn impressive. Now, it is nothing but leftovers and handouts. I have like a 30/30 hr/dr and its all junk eq.

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-Daz "<^> (*¿*) <^>" Proudwolf

[cherzra]

I have a 24/25 hit/dam atm. Who cares!

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[Tanji Smanji]

Dunno what you consider 'twinking tf' to be. But often we skip the grey-greens area unless we got a pretty hefty group. Too risky and too much of a pain to do it every time we do the zone. And we skip Xar unless someone actually needs the items.

[Kegor]

I agree with you fully Dulz. The game does need more high level zones to challenge and reward people. Right now I'm doing ship exp _again_ leveling yet another alt.. because the boot time is 35 some hours and all the fun more difficult zones have been done already. All the other ones are done too even.. except for the ones that lack excitement or incentive.

[Dugmaren]

The trend of late in areas has been to diversify equipment. Different stats, saves, abilities with about the same hitpoints. Hit/Dam traded for function on weapons etc. We hope this will make people still want to zone to get equipment that fits their character better, without causing the inflation.

Also, we're not trying to make harder zones in terms of straight up fire power, we're trying to make the zones smarter, so that you have to be a better player to do it, not so you need to bring 6 invokers :P

Dug

[This message has been edited by Dugmaren (edited 07-05-2002).]