Sequel to SoD - Input Requested

Greetings Programs, it has been awhile.

Life has released its relentless grasp somewhat, and I'm at the stage now where I can begin to have a sort-of life again. As that has happened, of course my thoughts turn to SoD.

What I realized is what many of us know - the game is old and hampered by some old decisions and technology. That sucks. But the story of Dalaya, IMO, is incredibly compelling and enjoyable.

For awhile, I've contemplated building a sequel to the game. Same platform (EQEmu with some modifications), but one that tracks to the EQEmu master code so our game can adapt as EQEmu does. The old hodgepodge of ours-and-theirs sucks, for us AND them. Imagine a working task system. Instancing of dungeons (!). Not to mention a chance to start over on classes and races. I just think it's a neat idea.

I am in the early stages of planning. I have a rough story (it takes place a few hundred years after the current SoD). It is a greenfield game, meaning nothing will carry over beyond some story elements, lineages and other things. Everyone will start over, though I'm open to ideas about BALANCED ways of rewarding people for being SoD players.

So here's what I want to do. Tell me what you like about SoD. Tell me what you don't like. Within the limits of the "EQ system," what are things that would be really cool to have?

This is not a democracy. *IF* I do this (and it's possible I won't, though I'm enjoying this phase of things), I still get to decide what it looks like. :) Some things that players want, frankly, just aren't feasible or realistic in terms of long-term survival of a game. That said, over the years I have heard some great suggestions over the years, many of which just can't be done because of balance, technical infeasibility or other reasons. We have a chance to re-examine those with a new game.

If this happens, it will take a lot of work. When we get to that point, I'd love to enlist some help from folks - think about how many new NPCs, quests, items, etc. need to be created, not to mention actually adminning the game. Then there are costs. It's daunting, but I think doable, too. Give it some thought, PM me here or reply to the thread. If you're an asshole, I will just delete your comments, so don't waste both our time, ok?

A few things to consider:

- What level limit?
- How can we make the game more fun for non-raiders? How do we accommodate different play styles better?
- Progression - what methods are most fun and how do they scale?
- Substories. There is one major overarching theme to the game (like Kaezul was in SoD), but other things will be long gone or forgotten. Vah quest won't be a thing anymore. Silver Crown and the like have long disbanded. Relationships built around the Kaezul struggle are largely a thing of the past. With all this - what else makes the world go round? What makes it interesting? One concept being floated at present is that it is the good guys who are the outcasts - various forms of evil-aligned groups run most things, and there's a lot of blending-in that needs to happen to get anything done if you are good-aligned. A significant thought in the game is allowing good to begin to retake some ground, through one-time quests, GM events, etc., but what else can we do here?
- Races and classes. IMO, one of the more uninteresting parts of SoD right now. I'm looking at a complete revamp - what are some of your ideas?

Good to see you all again, I'll probably pop in game at some point to talk more about ideas.

--t

Okay, here we go

Level limit? Mostly irrelevant and arbitrary. Given that aa's are a thing, and can pretty much be expanded. I'd put it at a nice round number though just for aesthetics, maybe 80, or 100.

Things I liked about SoD:

Social component in groups. This was actually a pretty big thing. Brimz mentioned it to me recently and I'd have to say I agree. Most of the regular grouping content in SoD kind of gets steamrolled, which I think in the kind of game that this is, is absolutely fine. It allows for heavy socialization, and makes grouping one of the most fun things to do in this game as a whole. This is an attractor almost completely independent of most content development, and keeps people playing for an extremely long time. Having had a healthy amount of experience in games that make things substantially harder, the same kind of opportunity isn't really there for most (GW2 as an example, where higher level fractals require a lot of concentration and coordination, and dungeons are mostly rush through as fast as possible and skip everything with a pug), as they are concentrating on the fights. SoD for the most part, did grouping right. The 6 man content notsomuch, but that's another story, as was the reward structure.

Boxing: There are likely people that disagree about this, but quite frankly I very much enjoyed boxing when I started doing it, and playing a single character became extremely boring for me after doing it for so long. It's not for everyone, but I think it extends the life of the game for some, and helps fill out groups that otherwise might be lacking. It also helps address deficiencies in classes, one of the reasons I started to in the first place was the crippling of mages with the nerf of pet heal.

Bounties are great. Rewards could stand to be a bit more useful, though keep in mind that's coming from the perspective of playing Aisling. They probably were very useful to people earlier on.



Things SoD did poorly

$ sinks. I'll just come right out and say it. Charms are a shitty $ sink. They always have been, and always will be, and generate a ton of money that wouldn't even be generated if not for their presence, which is part of the problem. What you want to do with these is not take half a mil chunks of plat out of the economy at once. Think death by a thousand cuts here. You want to dye your armor? Okay pay 50pp/piece by buying some halfassed reagent from an npc. You want to get somewhere halfway across the globe relatively easily and quickly instead of running across several zones? Pay a small toll, and voila, there instantly, or right outside, etc. There are tons of ways to do this, and have people barely even notice it. What they do notice is a half a million in currency they need to farm up. It is bad, and it feels that way too.

More quests, and quests with useful rewards that don't require you to monopolize raid bosses. This is somewhat difficult, but there are a plethora of ways to have useful items with niche uses introduced to the game, clickies of course being a personal favorite of mine. needs epics too, like the shaman mask,but for all classes. Perhaps also a way independent from the wiki to indicate someone does have a quest for you, rather than repeatedly hailing every npc with an actual name.

Solo, casual, and early balance. I started a pretty casual player, and this almost put me off the game entirely. It also put almost every single person I attempted to introduce to the game off the game in the first ten or so levels. This was not a small number of people. The difficulty in the beginning, needs a tone down from what SoD's is. That is, provided you want high retention, which I'm assuming you do. Don't immediately slap the player in the face when they start, because you have to realize there are a couple thousand other games out there that, even if they have a high difficulty, ease people into it. You also want to give them stuff that FEELS awesome. Not necessarily that is awesome, or even stuff that is absolutely mechanically awesome. Just that feels that way, right in the beginning. Through quests, or whatever. You want to engender those positive feelings of reward in people ASAP, then let the social interaction and gameplay keep them going, even when you do ratchet up the difficulty later. Thinkmeats at one point I believe touched on how a good percentage of the early loot was either garbage, useless or just plain felt bad (that's going a while back though).

As far as the balancing, in a game you really want most classes to be able to actually accomplish something on their own. Not as fast as a group of course, but they should be able to do some stuff, not just get their ass handed to them by blues. This can be a little difficult to balance, but I suggest at the very least indicating (if a text change is possible) which classes are solo friendly, so that at least players that are completely new can make an informed choice about what to expect from a given class. Perhaps some rankings from 1-10 in different categories that are more useful than the wordy class descriptions are in order there (things like DPS, HealingPS, Role, HP, soloability, difficulty of play, etc). I always find this to be a problem starting a given game, and always find myself scouring the web for info regarding it. Having it right there would be super user friendly. As far as general balancing, while there may be some difficult areas, maybe make cons mean something, instead of just by level. Sure there can be difficult areas, but if you present what is supposed to be an eventually powerful player character, getting their ass kicked by a bug right outside of the starting town, that they should be on at least even footing with? They are probably just going to immediately head elsewhere. Take a page from most mmos. Fighting a bunch of things at once makes you feel powerful, which in most storylines you are supposed to be. It feels great, and feeling great keeps people playing. Some of the most fun experiences I've had in this game were groups where we loaded up on AOE dps, a tank and a cleric and went to town pulling literally everything (mielech C and the rust I'm looking at you). Absolute chaos and absolutely fun. Sure there is something to be said for the tense fight against a mob trying not to pull adds and barely killing it, but on the whole that gets old fast when it is literally every few mobs for a large part of the playtime.

Enough with the summoning. It's a cheap gimmick, and made most CC absolutely useless. Everything and it's brother summoning sucks, and it removes a lot of creativity from player strategies. Should some things summon? Yes. But not every damn trash mob in a zone. Nor should absolutely every boss. If it phantom strikes for example, it probably has no reason to have summon. It's basically superfluous at that point.

A few asides

MORE SPEEEEELLLLSS: and fully flesh out the spell lines. You want options for characters, and options that are interesting. Don't have a spell line like scars of sigil that appears once, and never again.

Focus effort where the bulk of the people are. Should there be a dedicated team creating raid content? Sure. Just don't make it your #1 priority unless your game is 80% raiders. You will need an assload of early grouping content, and mid grouping content. A few high end zones. Go about it somewhat proportionately.

Many of the buff problems absolutely disappear when they aren't necessarily a requirement, which is entirely tied to difficulty and the philosophy of the game. SoD went on the higher side of difficulty, so leaving town without buffs wasn't a good idea, and so players buffed. Make it so this isn't an actual issue, and sure many will buff anyways, but it won't be such a hard and fast requirement.

Xp going towards currency isn't a terrible idea, but I'm not necessarily enamored of it replacing AA's. AA's were awesome. Give me more abilities. Let me expand my roles, change my class. Absolutely sign me up for that shit. Given an alternative to shift the xp into currency rather than that would seem a bit lackluster, and the rewards would have to be pretty great. I also wouldn't recommend a long grind before receiving anything. Even if it takes an equivalent amount of effort, and the effort required for the thing you are doing is suitable, you want players to have something to show for it sooner, rather than later. A long grind even if it makes a % bar increased, with nothing tangible to show, just feels bad, and that's what you want to avoid.

As for instancing I'm kind of divided on that. While I like it, I also have to point out there is something to say for the unique interactions I've had with people in various zones which wouldn't have been possible with instancing. Whether it was duoing lasanth for a quest piece and inviting a group early in the zone to do it with me, or the banter I've had in random zones with other people farming. Even the conflicts and the resolutions, or lack thereof contributed to the social environment of the game. /shrug, just something to think about.

Player engagement:


There are a few instances where this was done spectacularly. The rebuilding of athica, some events, etc. You want to engage players in the world, and in the story. In more than just a here we are RPing sort of way. Practical consequences of player choices to shape the world around them, whether it be through supporting a faction, or even naming something. You want them invested? Make the story about them. Not about some big foozle. Will you need some kind of foil for the story? Absolutely, but how to respond to it? That's on them. As a caveat one of the events I remember ended up giving unique rewards to a few people, and there is a problem in that. A few of those people poofed and never came back like a week later. If you run something like that, make it so that doesn't happen. Hand out a bunch, make it repeatable, whatever. It's just a thing to avoid so you can continue the line without retconning or handing out more stuff.

Select the most diplomatic/nicest person you have as a community manager. Seriously. This needs to be a position. You need a buffer, between yourselves, and the community for things like complaints, etc. Not a Gm, dev, or admin. Just a community manager. There is a reason these things exist, and part of that reason is so you don't have to read how an unpopular thing you created or a decision you made is made of aids every day. That can be pretty demoralizing, and while you should have someone saying to you, hey players aren't a big fan of this so you know that information, it's helpful to have a buffer so you can take a step back and not take the whole brunt of it. People who devote a lot of time and energy to a thing, whether it be through playing a game, or making content for it can get pretty emotional about it, because we are all people.

An additional idea. Given that I'm playing a game that could accurately be called fashion wars, something that always bothered me in SoD, was that the higher level we got, the more we looked like we just fished random shit out of a trashbin and decided to wear it. Seriously. My character looked like the very major model of a modern major murderhobo. Felyn looked like a rainbow had decided that it too could play a lute, every iksar in a robe looked like a creepy lizard dude inviting me to soak in his hot tub, and well I could go on forever about this. As far as ideas to mitigate that effect...

Augs. Keep the stats, on augs. The gear is augs. The looks, come from what are essentially weapon and armor blanks. That way you can essentially customize your character however you want. Want to wield an axe, sure, pop your awesome aug in whatever blank axe you want. Now you have the stats you want, with the look you want. Make swapping them a bit more expensive. There is an alternate plat sink. You get cool characters, that make visual sense, and you alleviate a hell of a lot of itemization woes in one shot.

Xpable items were also cool.

Pets: Not like, mage pets, or beastlord pets or whatever. I'm talking things like froggy's jar, the mummy guy. More of that (perhaps as a rare drop AND a use for that xpable currency, or a bounty reward, or all 3). Lots of them, some could be cosmetic, some give minor buffs. Go nuts. People will collect them. It will also likely function as a plat sink. To encourage collection, make them not so much and item, and more of a /keyring sort of function alleviating storage space woes that might prohibit collecting.

I'm probably missing some stuff here, but off the top of my head these are my initial thoughts.
 
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AFAIK, the client enforces no race/class combos. That is a server decision, so we should (in theory) be able to allow anything
 
all i have to suggest is more 6-man and 12-man of many tiers. focus on small groups. the more smaller groups there are, the more willing they will be to log in. but i don't run a mmo so it's just my opinion
 
I'd be delighted to see race/class combinations widened greatly or even removed altogether. The one problem comes from aesthetics, in that an Ogre Wizard (like Thog, for instance), would spend his entire life running around with a bare chest due to the lack of robe reference data for that race. An alternative could be to add a duplicate for every robe in the game in the form of a leather/chain/plate/Velious alternative so that players without robe graphics don't have to roam Dalaya naked through end game.

People will see this suggestion coming from me a mile away, but the thing I'd encourage most strongly to set a sequel apart from the parent game -- and to set it apart from any competition -- would be for the staff to be bold with retexturing. If you want to give a convincing impression that the new Dalaya is set in a different time, rework old zones that SoD/EQ veterans have come to regard as passé. Imagine Fearstone with lava for water and all the trees stripped of leaves, Underhill with cobblestone walkways and shiny gems lodged in all the walls, or Centaur Hills covered in snow. Factions will have shifted, civilizations will have waned or risen, natural disasters may have ravaged the land, forests may have receded or overgrown in the years since Shards of Dalaya -- let the landscape reflect that.
 
Also...Sup everyone?! Been awhile! =D

ODYN HI ITS DEMI, lets go get some ice cream again sometime!

- What level limit?

Well that's the thing, we as the people who have been playing for forever have streamlined the leveling process to the point where we just power level an alt toon. Some people have power leveled completely new to the community players to the point that they skip questing from level 1 to max. If the leveling process can be made fun and rewarding, then we can adjust a limit, unless there is none, from there.

How can we make the game more fun for non-raiders? How do we accommodate different play styles better?

Well, you did say dungeon instancing :D Perhaps separate rewards for raiding than grouping, such as more xp in dungeons and more loot in raid zones. Yeah its like that now, but make the differences more extreme. Something like that?

Progression - what methods are most fun and how do they scale?

I always preferred the kill-these-mobs-and-get-a-key method (like Valor A to Valor B). Just an opinion/an option. Or, if you're picky on bringing a lower toon to a higher fight, have individual flags for people (inner prison to outer sanctum)

- Substories. There is one major overarching theme to the game (like Kaezul was in SoD), but other things will be long gone or forgotten. Vah quest won't be a thing anymore. Silver Crown and the like have long disbanded. Relationships built around the Kaezul struggle are largely a thing of the past. With all this - what else makes the world go round? What makes it interesting? One concept being floated at present is that it is the good guys who are the outcasts - various forms of evil-aligned groups run most things, and there's a lot of blending-in that needs to happen to get anything done if you are good-aligned. A significant thought in the game is allowing good to begin to retake some ground, through one-time quests, GM events, etc., but what else can we do here?

When you say 'good-aligned' and 'evil-aligned', how does that correspond to the two working together? Or do they at all?

- Races and classes. IMO, one of the more uninteresting parts of SoD right now. I'm looking at a complete revamp

Make races equal. And by this I mean make it so Ogre isn't the ideal class for shaman because they take less damage from Canni, just as an example. Not nerf it the way it is in SoD, but make it so you don't feel like one race is superior for a specific class. How exactly, I don't know, its late and numbers would take forever, especially when put in a new concept of a "SoD".

Everything about this sounds really awesome, and I hope it comes to fruition! Missed you, old man. Meg came out with some sick new songs....
 
I'd be delighted to see race/class combinations widened greatly or even removed altogether.

Oh man, have a race go extinct! Maybe not have a Vah Quest-esque of a mission to bring them back though if that were a plan, helping get people 5 day spawn timer mobs sucks. Doing it alone sucked. Gave me some ideas of strategy at the game.... but it sucked.
 
Doing this would no doubt mean the end of the current SoD, whether by direct deletion or by the fact that it would split an already small population. I honestly don't even want to think about starting over after playing SoD for 10 plus years. My wife and I don't have the play time we once did when we started so it would likely take longer than that now to get to the point we are now in the game and I am not prepared to do that. If this happens, I would have to say, "it's been fun, good luck with your endeavor" and then bid everyone adieu. Please do not take this as a negative nancy, rain on your parade kind of post. I'm not saying this to $h!+ on the thread or the idea. I understand that there are many challenges of running an old game that has been tweaked over and over on a more modern platform - it's rough. If that's the decision that is made, then I truly wish you all luck. It's a mere matter of time commitment for me - I'm simply not prepared to put into ANY other game what I have currently invested into SoD to this point ... ever.
 
Another long time player giving his thoughts:

- What level limit? - I feel like 70 would do fine as long as the experience gain rate is close to SoD's (maybe a small bit faster at mid/higher lvls). going up to 70 could also help with spreading out AA's and their potential ranks throughout certain level ranges.

- How can we make the game more fun for non-raiders? - Like others have mentioned, things like treasure maps, adepts, items that you can level up and bounties would be good to keep in mind as well as quests that encourage exploration of nearby zones with rewards that can be used by many. An example would be the quest in lower faydark where you gather shadow dust or w/e from shadows and give it to someone and you get a 5 or 10 charge items with clicky invis.

How do we accommodate different play styles better? - i kinda like the idea of specialized forms of different classes (with bonuses to certain aspects of game play that wouldnt imbalance the classes) but cant think of a way to really put it to paper.

- Progression - most the ideas i had for this have been said already.

- Substories. I most definitely want to see more of the Deity shenanigans in play as well as some more story based around the different towns (how did they survive? what happened to the old leadership? How did corrupt jerk wad become the leader? How has said corrupt leadership effected neighboring settlements and alliances? How have the different Deity aligned class guilds done in their battles with their rivals like Paladin guilds vs. Necromancers?)
There are many little battles that could have well written stories and quests ties to them if those with the mind to make them come forth.

all that being said...should this ever become a thing and it gets made ill likely give it a go. But until then throw us a bone if you are up to it and make Sod slightly more playable. Im sure the playerbase will enjoy a game with a few minor annoyances out of the way =p.
 
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I have played two main characters, a Cleric and a Mage. It took me a long long time to level my Cleric to 30ish, but almost no time to level my Mage. I would say add solo exp bonuses to balance things out based on class. Example: If you are soloing, and are a Warrior, you would get more exp per kill than a Mage or Druid to make up for the down time and time it takes to kill stuff. If you are in a group, it goes back to normal. As for paying off the exp debt, I would rather go to the middle of that portal temple (forgot the name) and get it paid off for free than do it like it currently is.
 
Greetings Programs, it has been awhile.

- Substories. There is one major overarching theme to the game (like Kaezul was in SoD), but other things will be long gone or forgotten. Vah quest won't be a thing anymore. Silver Crown and the like have long disbanded. Relationships built around the Kaezul struggle are largely a thing of the past. With all this - what else makes the world go round? What makes it interesting? One concept being floated at present is that it is the good guys who are the outcasts - various forms of evil-aligned groups run most things, and there's a lot of blending-in that needs to happen to get anything done if you are good-aligned. A significant thought in the game is allowing good to begin to retake some ground, through one-time quests, GM events, etc., but what else can we do here?

--t
That said, there are some people who know the lroe subtleties way better than me (like Nwaij) that I would like to bring in as the story gets fleshed out. Even with access to literally everything, I still lack some of the historical context, since I started in like 2012 or something.
Here goes, ideas that crossed my mind:

Oh but the Silver Crown hasn't disbanded! As an organisation driven by greed profit, they would never disband s long as there is profit to be had. In fact, about a century and a half after the end of the war against Kaezul they merged with another trading organization that arouse during that time (more about them below), and the resulting Reformed Silver Crown Trading Company expanded their business to new branches (Slaves and drugs have high profit margains!). They also managed to take over Newport as a whole, abandoning the idea of a free city for everyone, and renamed it to "Crownport".

Where to begin with the Blackscale Alliance...
The Blackscale Alliance didn't disband either. With the one overarching thread of Kaezul gone, it was only a matter of years before the Blackscale Alliance splintered. Many factions under many warlords rose. Noone remembers wich warlord started it, or over what reason, but the infighting was quite bloody, and lasted for decades. In the end, only few major factions survived:
  • The Bigfolk Supremacists, who managed to defend their ancient home towns of Oggok and Grobb.
  • The Slavers Union, consisting of members of all races. Eventually they merged with the Silver Crown (whos methods got more and more ruthless over time) into the Reformed Silver Crown Trading Company and rebased to Crownport.
  • The Darkelf Union staied out of the conflict for the most, since they were busy rebuilding their ancestral home of Nagthilian. Xenophobic as they are, only citizens are permitted to enter the inner parts of the city, at the threat of death. Naturally, one would have to be a dark elf to qualify for citizenship.
  • The Bearers of the Flame (nicknamed "The Scorchers"), fanatical worshippers of Tarhyl, all but lost this civil war, and fled to the Red Sun Peaks. Here, where the influence of their deity is the strongest, they found new allies in the Cult of the Eternal Flame. Together they wiped out the goblins of the red sun and established an underground base somewhere in the Peaks.

The Council of Innovation effectively ceased to exist on the day when Underhill blew up in a spectacular way and more then 90% of their members died. It is unknown to this day what caused this explosion, with theorys ranging from experiment gone wrong to all out terrorist attack. The few surviving gnomes migrated to a rebuilt Freeport since moving to Crownport didn't sound like a good idea back then. The remaints of Underhill are now inhabitated by the deads and, as rumors go, worse.

With Tarhyl busy elsewhere, Shojar saw an opportunity to strike. Though his plan to cover the world in ice wasn't entirely successfull, he undoubtedly did make some progress. As a result, the centaur hills are now covered in a permanent layer of snow, with Surefall Glade only surviving through direct intervention from Sihala.
 
MORE SPEEEEELLLLSS: and fully flesh out the spell lines. You want options for characters, and options that are interesting. Don't have a spell line like scars of sigil that appears once, and never again.
This is my favorite idea of yours. I once drafted an 11-page document that I called Operation: No Spell Left Behind aimed at taking inventory of spell quirks like these:
I'd love to see a reworking of spells from the ground up so that each class has a smoother progression into its end-game role. A combination of new spells, reworked spells, and reduction of unnecessary spells could do much to differentiate the classes and breathe fresh life into a game that might otherwise feel like more of the same.
 
I have extremely mixed feelings about this proposition. I'll start with the elephant in the room.

There's no way around it, this project will kill SoD. I have a problem with that. I hated quitting Live but did so because they made it so horrible that it outweighed the unpleasantness of leaving behind all I'd built, from Grandmastering smithing, to a pretty sizable stack of items and plat. Anyone who knows me in SoD knows I rarely get to do a lot of xping or raiding. So I worked pretty damn hard to master all of the tradeskills (some on multiple characters) and accumulate the plat to buy charms and the like. It's just pixels you say? Quite correct. But to truly enjoy a game you have to be invested in what you achieve, whether it's skills, quests, xp, items, or being "the first" at a thing.

I feel like if I say "Oh yeah, go for it!" then I'm helping to stick a fork in SoD. I've never been one to just hop from game to game, so I would really hate starting over from ground zero. However, I have to ask, at this point, would it be a mercy killing? I truly don't know. 2.5 was supposed to "save" the game, but it was implemented at a time when it seems a lot of staff got busy. So not only did it fail to up the players, it helped knock another nail in the coffin. Could this time be better spent fixing what many of us have busted our asses on? Maybe. It's like that old pair of pants you love. Can one more patch make it worth saving, or are we down to cloth held together by too many patches?

On the one side there's the fact that what community is left, I really enjoy. I love getting on and joking around with my internet friends, I love being "harassed" for tradeskill info. When I come home from working all day with people I want to slap at least 3 times an hour, it's relaxing to hop online, ask if anybody needs potions or whatever, and knock out a few things. I'm not sure if a Sequel would offer that to me, and I'm hard pressed to decide if I'd want to start over. Half of me is really exited at the proposition of SoD the way it should be, half of me is like "Fuck it, I'll spend more time painting."

On to "what if" I did go to a new game, what would I like? Obviously viable tradeskills are going to be my number one. A reasonable economy is right behind that, as it's one of the things I love about this type of game. NGL, I abhor the idea of xp as currency because I can't think of a single way to balance them, and to me it looks a nightmare for keeping the economy reasonable. I liked the idea from Vistachiri a great deal about small cut plat sinks. 50p (each piece I'd say) to dye armor. Not like mis-matched armor will hurt you, so it's a good option. Pay for one click travel....brilliant. The problem with later Live was it made port classes nigh useless. I remember being a noob that a good way to make starter plat was sell ports. I miss that.

As to the level cap, I'm in agreement with those that say the number matters a lot less than the balancing of it so that xp is never useless, and you don't feel like you have to be "max level" to begin gaming. I so hate to see it in ooc when someone announces "ding 65" and some wit comes back with "welcome to the game." WTF? I did plenty pre-65 I was proud of. For continuing to value xp beyond leveling, I've always loved the idea of expendable AAs. That is a super flexible option.

Race/class combos are tricky. I like the idea you can choose any, but I also like racial bonuses, so how to solve the "everyone will play this combo because it's best" problem? Race bonuses could all be something that doesn't affect base stats. Like dwarves start at 50 mining. In Live I think halflings started with baking. It doesn't have to all be TS related, that's just my area of knowledge. You could give out all sorts of racial "flavor." Gnomes get an inherent ability to shrink people, you could modify regen as a racial for Iksar so that it only works when you are sitting and completely out of combat. You could also make it inactive for X time after canni. That won't help you in a battle, it only reduces down time so now it’s flavor, not a deciding factor. This could go on and on, but the point is there are cool things that wouldn't bend into the boredom of 100 ogre shammies.

More fun for non-raiders to me is quite simply continuing content that has value for 6 and 12 person groups as well as 18. Quests are good, instanced zones are good. I REALLY liked your idea of somehow limiting repeated usage. I would have sold my leg at least up to the knee if that mechanic had been employed in OG. It gets hard with a game that’s been around as long as SoD to balance level dependent content because the people who have “won” the game are always looking for something new, and there’s always attention to attracting new players, but the people in the middle get bored. Low tier 65 is worse than being 2 days into the game.


Substories are probably last on my list of concerns. I love a good story, but that is one of the easier things to implement. It doesn’t involve coding or balancing, just writing up something fun. Alignment should have meaning, whether you start with evil in control and goodies are on the downturn, or the other way around. I miss the days of knowing when we grouped with our Iksar friend, we’d have to invis him through if we wanted to port to Surefall. Quests I think should start totally over, and even the lengthy and difficult ones should not require you to fuck up over 75% of your bank slots all at once like the Vah does. Murk is difficult, but there are “stages” to the collection parts.


"New game would not be a democracy. " I normally flinch at that sort of statement, but in this case I agree. It would be your baby, and at some point allowing player and other staff input becomes an endless cycle of arguing with nothing ever being decided. I've known you long enough to believe you will take reasonable advice to heart. If you had 6 staff members and all disagreed with you, I feel you would listen. Likewise I've seen the majority of the population factor into things you have done for the server, so I've got no hesitation on that front.

Edited cuz even with all that blah blah I forgot something.

I'd also want to say more staff run events, and I'd like to have the fame thing actually achievable. It should never be common, but it shouldn't be so impossible that in 8 years of steady play I can't even buy a title. That doesn't even affect the game, so yeesh..... Also regular (but not super frequent) lotteries. People like them, they're fun, they're a good plat sink. We have one less than once a year in SoD. Quarterly or bi-annually I think would be nice, maybe even with options. Like you can buy in for a plat only pool vs. one with random things like fame, box of interesting somethings, or other funny things to win. You don't want to subdivide it too much, but it allows for a balance between people who already have more plat than they need and would rather have something else, and people who might like to chuck in just for a chance to up the old bank account.
 
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As a causal player who hasn't played SoD in a very long time, all I have to say is that I would give it a go.
 
Saw the FB post and had to come back and give some thoughts, in no random order:

Character migration would have to be done. I have years invested in my toons. Now, for sanities sake, I have no idea how to do it and do it well, other than limiting to 1 toon per account maybe? And make it a long ass quest in SoD 2.5 (Think Fry from futurama being frozen for 300 years. Some quest in SoD that would freeze your toon, they get thawed later). As for gear, I think you could get a pass by pointing out that rust, moths, and decay have rendered most gear to say 25% effectiveness? (Not worthless by any means, better than starting naked, but not something you are going to keep for long).

Lore? Easy, just imaging what 300 years of the plague might have wrought upon the land?

Bounties must be expanded. Currently they are the only thing a casual player can log in, box, and keep moving forward gear wise when you only have an hour or so to play.

The new paradigm has to be the causual player with 2 hours of time a night. What can be accomplished in that time with a 12 man raid? If people have longer, then they can do 2 raids.

Characters: Much more overlap. Giver Bsts FD. Give shamans hots and double attack. Druids are pretty good. Enchanters need a self proc mana tap. Etc etc.

Just my 2 bits, I am sure I can come up with more if asked.
 
Take all of this with a grain of salt! As a non- SoD player, but always interested in games, instancing makes me leery. I've lurked these boards for going on 10 years. I always liked the social aspect of early EQ (and SoD!) and I feel instances interferes with that. I also concur with being aggressive (within lore reasons) with differentiating the zones/npc's textures/appearances, as well.

I also find an alternative to levels intriguing, but cannot support it with concrete suggestions. Maybe having spells being available/castable with 225 evocation versus at level 50, for example? Special spells available with 5% evocation gear due to a new skill level of evocation? Is there a way to "skill down" players? I remember there being a raid boss that could increase fizzle rate in EQ. Was there one in SoD? Similarly dovetailing with someone's earlier suggestion of having xp going to points in XYZ versus raw levels, perhaps this spell requirement would give more variety to "specs".

Races being uninteresting- For all the WoW disdain, they did figure out how to make each race relevant to each class for certain reasons due to racial traits. Will of the Forsaken for rogues, etc etc. Food for thought?
 
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