EQ, Endgame, Guild-Gear

In my constant busy-body-ness and studying of game-design stuff, I’ve stumbled across a ridiculous and somewhat attractive idea that, like my many others, I have minimal attachment to. I am sharing it with you not because I think it should be implemented point by point, but to inspire smaller, less ambitious changes that might tackle problems or change the game for the better in the same ways.

In summary, this change upgrades the way the EQ system in FL works and tackles the end-game content problem.

The Idea

I will present the idea in an ‘in-character’, illustrative framework, which should make it more fun to figure out.

Guilds provide an outfit to those heroes that work for them. This outfit is acquired and upgraded over a very long career, and no character will likely ever fully upgrade their Guild Outfit. Guilds offer two new point-currency types which are Outfit Talents and Upgrade Talents which are gotten in a multitude of ways.

Say hello to Bob, who is a Warrior. Bob will not earn Upgrade Talents (UT) from his guild until after he hits level 50. He will, however, earn a small amount of Outfit Talents (OT) until he is level 50, when he will earn more, and he can earn them as he levels up. OT, as he knows, can be used at any time to buy the standardized guild-gear from his Guildmasters.

Bob hits level 40. He’s been ranking for a while, and has 10 OT sitting in his wallet. This is enough to buy the item provided by the Warrior Guild, which is the Brass Lantern with a Spiked Casing. It will appear in his EQ list as a darker gray color when he’s looked at.

Bob reaches level 50. Now he can begin to earn UT, which upgrade those things which guilds provide forever, without increasing their OT costs. Since Bob thinks very linearly, he decides to upgrade his guild item first. It makes the Brass Lantern with a Spiked Casing give him 10 HP. His item is now Level 2. If he drops it and sacrifices it, and buys a new one, it will still be that Level 2 that he upgraded it to. Let us pretend that every item has 15 levels.

Much later down the road, Bob RPs well and is rewarded an amount of UT which lets him level his to level 3, which makes it give him 20 Movement as well as 10 HP. These buffs stack up over many days and weeks of play, if he decides to invest in that lantern, until the Lantern is giving him 3 Hitroll, 4 Damroll, and other obscenely good buffs. Bob notices that each level costs an exponentially larger amount of UT to gain, however. If Bob saves and invests all his UT into that , he will never have enough UT to sample the benefits of a high level chest piece, or maybe that cool crossbow Warriors get. He must either play his character for months or years to see it all, play multiple characters and try something different with each (which is essentially the same thing), or focus all his UT into one item to get it to 15 to see just how amazingly good that final level is.

Bob notices that as his character gets older, he is earning small amounts of UT passively, even when he’s not online.

Bob begins to PK, and proves to be quite good at it. He now wishes he’d upgraded the Warrior Guild Sword or Whip or something to see what those did. When he kills other players, he gets a UT reward. When Bob dies and his gear is destroyed by his enemy, all he has to do is spend OT to get back gear, and he doesn’t lose OT when he dies. But wait! He’s only allowed to hold a certain amount of OT! By killing mobs and ‘smelting’ items that are worn (yielding a certain amount of OT based on their item levels perhaps), he can earn OT rather quickly. If he fills his OT wallet to full, he can get one weapon and all the rest of his guild gear. Maybe he’ll do better this time in PK, but if he doesn’t, he can’t keep coming back quickly without restocking OT.

Bob tries to smelt a Rare one day only to discover that it isn’t 20 hours old yet (since the time he received it), and nothing happens. He waits 20 hours, smelts the Rare, and gets a nice chunk of UT along with the OT. Bob realizes that this is probably the best way to upgrade guild gear. But wait! That Rare he tried to smelt was a Ring of Accuracy! A pretty decent item, difficult to get as well, and alone, doesn’t offer enough UT to compensate in the form of an upgrade to his Warrior guild ring. He’ll have to work on this gradually, it seems.

How it Changes the Game

1. Removes life-insurance.

2. Players are always ‘leveling something up’.

3. The older characters are, the scarier they are in character and out.

4. Gives imms another conduit in which to reward players.

5. Changes the context in which worn Rares are valued.

6. Makes it easy for newbies to contribute even if they don’t know how to gear up.

7. Adds more customization to character building (could be bad).

Gives veteran players something new to explore.

In the system where Rares are smelted for UT, their ‘mature timer’ starts when the player first gets them in their inventory. That timer resets if they drop the item on the ground and pick it back up. A player must wear or hold on to a rare for 20 hours before he can smelt it, which prevents him from piling rares up in Gaulorium, dropping them before every worldshift/logout, and UT-ing them all at once. It prevents players from smelting Rares that are freshly looted off of a corpse, and slightly reduces full-sacs. Essentially, the timer is a ‘faucet control’, preventing massive power-gaming and keeps gain at a consistent growth-rate for every character. Rare repopulation timers that are already in the game would create a UT flow cap as well.

Consumables would never be guild-provided. No guild ammo, no guild shrouds, no guild pills. Players could smelt requested items too, since the cap isn’t on the method of acquiring the item, but on how many you can hold on to at once and how well you protect them.

That's about all I'd need to say. Please add, subtract, discuss, mock, or what-have-you.

Looks great! Implement immediately

Nice idea.

It reminds of an old idea, but can't find the post. Anyway, a system needs to be implemented where good RP is promoted heavily, I think this is a good start.

We do need a crafting type concept I think for end game play. Even if we branched upon this idea into a couple different types of crafts. I like it.

The issues we've found with crafting items and the like is that it tends to reward people who have an excess of time to spend on the game. In order to allow competitive gameplay for all players, we wanted to find a way to do something like this without giving them an 'unfair' advantage.

For instance, one of the ways we've thought about showing this in the past is through creation of renamed and/or colored items. This was eventually nixed because it would detract from the Merchant ability, while also reducing the special feel of these items due to their prevalence.

For instance' date=' one of the ways we've thought about showing this in the past is through creation of renamed and/or colored items. This was eventually nixed because it would detract from the Merchant ability[/quote']

That's new for me... merchant can rename and color items?

I like this idea quite a lot, as it gives people something to do and takes away even more from the fear of fulloots problem.

However, we do not wish to make merchant and cabal outfits redundant. This, I see as the biggest problem. If we make the "basic" suit worse than those outfits, people will probably not use them much as they'd get a better set by using merchant / cabal outfit or investing half an hour to gather basics.

If someone sees a way out of this problem, please do post.

I still like the idea (mainly the rp reward part, I'd not be for rewarding pk here) and will give it some more thought.

Edit: re F0xx yes, if they are high ranked enough

The issues we've found with crafting items and the like is that it tends to reward people who have an excess of time to spend on the game. In order to allow competitive gameplay for all players, we wanted to find a way to do something like this without giving them an 'unfair' advantage.

For instance, one of the ways we've thought about showing this in the past is through creation of renamed and/or colored items. This was eventually nixed because it would detract from the Merchant ability, while also reducing the special feel of these items due to their prevalence.

How have you found that? Have you tried it?

It rewards players with a lot of time to spend, but it also encourages players to spend time to get those rewards.

You have to have incentive to play after you reach 50 besides just pking whoever is in the opposing cabal. The game itself needs to be more entertaining and not just reliant on other people being logged on.

Just to toss out some ideas here, first the concept that we don't want to reward players with more play time I would argue that is already currently going on. I very much doubt I will get a qrace/class very easily with limited play time/interaction time. I can still play other classes however and perhaps not set myself up for disappointment. Adding a craft does not mean it has to give a significant advantage over other gear, I'd make the comparison to CONSUMABLES. If I have more game time I will have a HUGE advantage over the competition if I grind myself curables on a class that doesn't naturally have it. There are currently herbs, pills, and potions that require no in game skill to even utilize, all of which reward the player who grinds the most.

I don't buy the 'play time' issue for a minute. Almost every aspect of this game is built upon rewarding those who can play more. It takes X amount of hours to rank to 50, X amount of hours for cabal promo, X amount of hours for qclass/race applications, etc etc etc.

Actually, no matter how one tries to twist things, games always reward those who play more, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we want people to play, don't we? If we put the guy that plays 6 hours/day and the guy that plays 1 hour/day on the same field, then how fair is that?

Everyone speaks about how we don't want to give edge to those who spend more time ingame, but if we don't, then what is the incentive to spend more time ingame?

The cabal gear issue is a good point. Two solutions would be,

1. Make guild gear only cover a few EQ slots. Warriors say, get a , , weapons, and . Invokers might get , , and . You upgrade those slowly as you go.

2. Have a full set for each class (this would be pretty difficult taking into consideration race combos), and then change the role of cabal gear to be more curious and bizarre, with perhaps armors that have giant ‘bash’ AC modifiers with zero or plus everywhere else, or weapons that do a tiny amount of swing damage but have a small chance to cause plague or force the enemy to recall or something.

To address the issue of rewarding players who put more time in, you could limit Upgrade Talents to two income methods. One, they come in passively for each character even if they are offline (This is essentially how Eve Online works -- the older your characters get, the more they can do). Two, they are given by imms as rewards for stuff.

Curious, this kind of thing sorta already exists in the form of custom items being made and bonded to characters with the little signature by imms already. The Spear of Courage and little dragons are perfect examples. The only difference here is that you tack points on to the game which are remarkably similar to “RP Points” or “Brownie Points” in other MUDs. Since they can’t be grinded with those solutions above, customization and upgrading is possible as long as there are imms around.

The passive leveling system works surprisingly well. Extrapolating from Eve Online's 9-year-experiment...

Jim finds that his character is not deleted and comes back to FL after an eight month vacation. He discovers a pile of UT in his wallet and it draws him back in instantly as he begins upgrading stuff. But wait: Jim is out of the loop, so any upgrades he gets are counter-balanced by a period where he's learning who the opposition is and shaking off rust. Once Jim's back into the swing of things, the upgrading aspect might be addictive again, and he's actively contributing substantial RP to the game, so him being around is only a good thing.

Newbies hit 50 and instantly see that the game is somehow not over, that something is growing; often, Cabal life can seem esoteric to newbies and they don't understand what the flags mean in the who list. It isn't a complex thing though, these numbers, and they are subtle. The newbies probably wonder why their UT wallet is fuller Saturday night than it was on Friday night, since they didn't log in. Now they've associated growth in FL to commitment to FL, but not in the context of time. I'd say "Wait Icor, Cabal Points already do this"; in a way, sadly, they do not, since they don't necessarily represent character growth, but provide utility, which is also very important. If they are ever rewarded UT for Roleplaying, two things will probably happen: one, they will revere older characters for their dedication rather than be upset by them, and two, RP more.

I favor randomization of item drops over the slow building of items. With randomization, you have incentive to play and 'gamble', hoping for a good piece, but with the time-investment style, you know exactly how much time it will take or how much time you have 'wasted' in a poor/lost choice. This can be a game-breaking demotivator. Sidetrack: In that line of thought, we should grade malform souls just like we do on bounty prices--the better the killed player's record, the more bonus to the malform. That way you can gain several levels if you can break the streak of a good record through timing/tactics/backstabbing.

The statistical advantage of item drops still goes to the player who plays the most, but people who play only a bit still have a chance to get some good stuff. It is kind of the gambling mentality mixed with farming addiction. It gives players some incentive to try 'just once more' in order to hope for a good EQ drop.

I'd also question as to who this change helps the most. It looks to be very geared towards those who are already at top--the people who rarely die will get the best benefits from this change. If you thought Anamus was bad before, imagine if his hours transferred into even more strength. And if it doesn't transfer into more strength (weaker than a good set of EQ), it will be unused (too much time, too little benefit compared to just gearing up, especially considering the EQ options available now).

I think there are better ways to encourage less turnover of characters but at the same time not giving large advantages to aged characters.

The above is most easily done with adding things to do that don't involve gear. I know I'm sick of that aspect of the game myself, and I think it is abundantly clear that we should be trying to lessen the importance of gear, not emphasize it.

I love this idea.

As to weakening or making cabal/merchant gear obsolete couldn't it be made to say at level 4 or 5 your class gear is now better than your cabal outfit, at level 7 or 8 your class gear is better than merchant stuff.

From the way I understood the idea, when you die, the class stuff goes bye bye, but you can rebuy it.

If you are limited on the number of outfit talents you can have at one point at time and suppose that you can't ever carry enough outfit talents to re-equip yourself in one go, if you get full looted, it would still be prudent to cabal/merchant equip yourself until you earned the points to get your class gear back. And you still gain a long term incentive while relying on outfits to help you along.

This would in effect make cabal/merchant gear a placeholder as it is now. But also with the guarantee that you get YOUR gear back.

That to me just spells a numbers game as far as what levels you want it to exceed. The carrying capacity of OT/UT points. And the yield on 'smelting' items. As well as the benefits those items eventually gain.

Jonathan Blow, the man who created Braid, once said in an interview when asked about WoW is that it “is a game that rewards players for suffering”. For those that can tolerate constant repetition and merciless grinding to get that specific item they want, I understand. I’ve been there, the rush of getting it after working hard for it is great.

For others, there needs to be an alternative, and I seriously doubt that the former would be opposed to a system which they have control over. Celerity’s Class Paths idea is exactly that kind of control, which is why I love it so much.

Here then is another solution: take the speed at which UT is gained out of the character’s hands. Limit UT to imm rewards and passive gain [and by passive gain, I mean the same speed for every character, online or off]. A result would be that very old characters would be harder for newer characters to beat. Except not really, since skill trumps decked-ness all the time, and vets know this.

The ‘too much time, too little benefit’ argument makes sense, but only in the context of one play style. You have to assume that there will be players that never use their UT at all, and that should be a viable option for them.

Of course, some arguments might say that EQ should be removed completely. I would be curious to see a battle royale where no one can wear anything, classes fighting at their rawest level. Then, however, you have to decide where the dumbing-down process stops, which there is no right or wrong answer for. It’s a matter of what the game designers want. In the case of FL, I admire that it is a thinking-man/woman’s game where the complexity allows for imbalances to happen. Since RP is enforced, I see the combat system as an objective method of approving whether or not one person is capable of killing another.

In a number-free RP world, my character’s death would be reliant on my consent. [smote As the axe comes down, Quoap is cut in half down the middle, killing him.]

That being said, perhaps aged characters should have large advantages, and their RP will hone them properly in the right direction to use those advantages. We’re talking about end game content here. Without pushing the roof higher or widening the living room for lots of customization, you end up with decked level 50s leading a Cabal who get so bored that they can’t stand logging in anymore. This problem cannot be solved, it can only be shunted away for periods of time. WoW will soon have a level 100 cap, and then level 200 cap, so on, so forth. This ‘number inflation’ issue happens in every MMO I can think of, and though I am aware FL is not an “MMO”, it relies on similar game design principles as an MMO.

The reasons I thought this idea was nifty are that it both raises the roof and widens the living room; for implementation, it requires that there be more variables in character files to indicate what level their guild gear pieces are, basic OLC item plug-ins, and two new point counters. Yes, I know, deemphasize EQ... but you can’t without ignoring powerful creative tools already in the game. Making EQ is remarkably easy and fun; those creative tools should be put to work more and more, not less and less.

Bob notices that as his character gets older, he is earning small amounts of UT passively, even when he’s not online.

He makes this point. Which I think a few people missed.

So its not like people with smaller play times are not benefiting at all.. They still get some benefit despite not being able to dedicate as much time to the game.

As Foxx said, people who play games more benefit more. In fact it has always been that way with FL. Trying to get vamp and spending 10 hours a week on? You can guarentee its going to take a 100 times long then someone spending 50 hours a week online.

Its just the way things work.

This and Celerity's idea for customisation of classes are the two most brilliant proposed additions to this game I've seen in 13+ years of playing here/being part of this community.

I will cut in before this becomes a triple post, Aulian

I wish they would both be implemented.

He makes this point. Which I think a few people missed.

So its not like people with smaller play times are not benefiting at all.. They still get some benefit despite not being able to dedicate as much time to the game.

Passive, offline gains, that could be used to upgrade equipment like Icor suggested would be awesome. I've been on hiatus a while now because I just don't have time to play. When I do come back, I'll likely just start a new character. My old chars have cabal left or been booted out, and there isn't much incentive to continue on. The difference between them and just starting a new character is minimal. I can rank up a new character fast enough, no big deal.

However, if I knew that my old character had been acquiring points I could spend, now that is different. A new character wouldn't have them and would be 'behind'. I'd log on my old char and continue on.

It creates a situation where you actually end up behind starting over all the time. That is a good thing in my opinion.

I played Aardwolf several years, and only ever had one character. Same situation with Eve Online, I've only ever had one. It was pretty clear how counter-productive it was to start over all the time.

In those games I felt more and more a part of the game as time went on.

With FL, I've never really felt like a part of the game. This is a bad thing.

Passive, offline gains, that could be used to upgrade equipment like Icor suggested would be awesome. I've been on hiatus a while now because I just don't have time to play. When I do come back, I'll likely just start a new character. My old chars have cabal left or been booted out, and there isn't much incentive to continue on. The difference between them and just starting a new character is minimal. I can rank up a new character fast enough, no big deal.

However, if I knew that my old character had been acquiring points I could spend, now that is different. A new character wouldn't have them and would be 'behind'. I'd log on my old char and continue on.

It creates a situation where you actually end up behind starting over all the time. That is a good thing in my opinion.

I played Aardwolf several years, and only ever had one character. Same situation with Eve Online, I've only ever had one. It was pretty clear how counter-productive it was to start over all the time.

In those games I felt more and more a part of the game as time went on.

With FL, I've never really felt like a part of the game. This is a bad thing.

because you really aren't people peak in power then disappear forever.