Content Phase 1: Gathering our Thoughts

[Moldew]

Assuming combat will require significantly more brain power, might as well start on that early. We can always add quests over time. Would be nice to do both though, maybe add some easy quests early on - not all quests required killing things.

My top thoughts in no particular order:

1. NPC movement
2. Start on combat
3. Easy quests, probably ones that don't require kills
4. Bring back Mekalia
5. Fix tombstones
6. I'm in the tougher XP and mobs camp

[John Adams]

[quote="Kandra"]Some of the items on the first post are contradicting each other so if we choose one of them then we would indirectly say that we will not implement another feature.[/quote]
Yes, as I mentioned before, the opening post is definitely not a statement of work; it's a pool of ideas suggested (which i am very grateful that people took the time to talk about their game). I'd certainly concur that contradicting ideas will cancel each other out, in favor for what >this< team decides. If this team cannot decide, then the devs will break the ties, if any.

[quote="Kandra"]Many people seems to want a harder, slower version of the game back, but there's also wishes for class Foo to do more damage and better gear which would make leveling easier and faster instead.[/quote]
Not to sound dirty, but I always prefer hard and slow over fast and easy It's a no brainer for me to guide this project back to the original roots of Vanguard as defined during the euphoric "beta days" - by that, I do not mean turn the game into the Beta server. I just mean, implement content as it was originally meant to be - where dots mattered, where groups were required for some efforts, and where you don't pay me $5 to get a mount it took 3/4's of the population 6 mos to earn through grinding.

As for the Combat stuff, Kandra is right. We have no idea how the mobs hit, but this is another reason I am pushing to start Combat, because that system alone will take us a year, or years, to flesh out. It will be months upon months at least of players going into the game, hitting something, coming back to the forums and saying "too soft" and on and on. But, this will only happen if there are players willing to test. Without them, we devs will have no idea. Couple of us played the game, but 1 person is not an expert.

What I'm hopeful of (Kandra) is that we'll find a decent algorithm for mob toughness that will scale across levels, so we're not having to tweak every single NPC. We've been doing this in EQ2 for years, but it's really only taken years because there is 1 dev and zero players there. We have a better opportunity, hopefully. At least, I'm still feeling positive about our chances of finishing this.

[Moldew]

Odd - I swear I replied in THIS forum, and it ended up somewhere else.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1109&start=20#p12229

I suppose I could have had multiple windows open and replied on the wrong one.

[John Adams]

Moved it for you, Moldy

[Jakkal]

As far as combat goes, would raid logs help at all? I have a ton of them from our raiding days, that we used to parse our dps, our incoming hits, and everything that everyone was doing. (Including what the mobs were doing to us).

I know I have logs of nonraiding, it just might take me some time to find them.

[Xinux]

Yes any combat parsing will come in handy when it comes time to figure out damage scaling.

[John Adams]

Lots of the Collectors were submitting their logs as well, but you know, we can never have too much sample data. Feel free to send anything you like. The uploader should still be working.

[Jakkal]

Is there anything that we can start organizing or working on now? When the devs finally have everything in place for us to start working on the game, I'd really like to try to hit the ground running. Is there anything we can do as a team to start this process, like planning or trying to gather information on starter area quests/items/etc?

[Moldew]

Maybe crashing the servers once in a while?

[John Adams]

[quote="Moldew"]Maybe crashing the servers once in a while?[/quote]
You already do that just fine, Moldy. Keep up the good work.

[quote="Jakkal"]Is there anything that we can start organizing or working on now? When the devs finally have everything in place for us to start working on the game, I'd really like to try to hit the ground running. Is there anything we can do as a team to start this process, like planning or trying to gather information on starter area quests/items/etc?[/quote]
Since you (purples) are the subject matter experts, the only thing that might make sense is to visit starting areas and "plan your attack", like how you would want to do it, and discuss it together (or just own it).

I laid out a couple of the beginning phases - the first one being "what are we going to do?" and I'm not sure we came out of that discussion with anything but me saying, do it just like Live. I liked someone elses suggestion (Mayor Tibbles, I believe?) who said to make it hard; you can always back off from hard. But you cannot make things harder once it's easy. Think on that a bit.

I'd also suggest glancing over the EQ2 LUA Wiki compared to our own implementations. Some things will be slightly different for scripting, but basically the same -- if you have never done scripting before, seeing how EQ2 scripts are laid out is a great resource. It's not hard, just takes getting used to.


I'm trying to set aside this weekend to get the Migration tools ready in the revamped editor, but life keeps getting in the way. I feel bad leaving you guys (and gals) hanging, but there's nothing I can do but hope to find time here and there. And it's nothing anyone else can help me with, since it's still in my brain on how things will flow. I have no trouble coding, just making decisions