Changes & Tweaks

[Cyrcle]

I'd like them to be completely removed, but as Kilsin said, it is unrealistic for this project. The population will likely be too low to do this. I do, however, have a few ideas on how we can either lower the amount currently in-game or keep/slightly change current rifts to make travel a bit more meaningful. Of course, you would have to discover each rift first (with the exception of hubs).

Keep rifts exactly as they are (keep travel meaningful)
Hub (City) rifts can teleport to any rift.
Green (10+) rifts can teleport to green and hub rifts.
Blue (20+) rifts can teleport to blue, green, and hub rifts.
Yellow (30+) rifts can teleport to yellow, blue, green, hub rifts.
Red (40+) rifts can teleport to any rift.

Move/add and remove rifts (keep travel meaningful)
Some rifts are literally one chunk over and in my opinion, unnecessary. This is a rough idea, but a possible solution:

Thestra (starting from left to right, top to bottom)
Plains of Anguish rift (keep)
Trengal Keep rift (keep)
Silverlake rift (remove)
Misthaven Crossing rift (keep)
Northern Highlands rift (keep)
Three Rivers rift (keep)
Renton Keep rift (remove)
Veskal's Exchange (new Hub)
Veskals Exchange (remove)
Beranid Hills (keep)
New Targonor (keep)
Shrine of the Flame (remove)
Kaon's Rush (remove)
Wardship of the Sleeping Moon (keep)
Lost Canyon (keep)
Deadbog (keep)
Innovus (new 50+ rift)
Kamelott Landing (changes to 50+ rift)

Qalia (starting left to right, top to bottom)
Ksarvi Gulch (remove)
Tauthien Delta (keep)
Skrillen Point (remove)
Lomshir (keep)
Khal (keep)
Qa Riverbank (remove)
Hathor Zhi (keep)
Temple of Dailuk (remove)
Zossr Hakrel (keep)
Seawatch Coast (keep)
Coterie Infineum Sanctum (remove)
Agrham (keep)
Tar Janishar (keep)
Cragwind Ridge (keep)
Wormwing Slopes (new 50+ rift)
Razad (keep)
Tehatamani (keep)
Afrit (keep)


Kojan (starting left to right, top to bottom)
Martok (new Hub)
Wildgrowth Forest (remove)
Sundering Wastelands (remove)
Tanvu (keep)
Tomb of Lord Tsang (remove)
Blighted Lands (remove)
Jalens Crossing (keep)
Tawar Galan (new Hub)

We could also possibly modify the dungeon summon ability so it works if you are on the same continent or just any where in the world.
Also, possibly add a housing rift system. These are a few ideas off the top of my head.

[Jakkal]

If you're going to add in new rift stones, one really needs to be added to eastern thestra. There were a lot of crafting quests in that little outpost on the ocean just NE of Dahknarg (The name escapes me) and the closest rift to it was Wardship (Two and a half chunks away). There's also a ton of housing areas around there that never got used because it was so far away from other rifts. It would be ideal if that town got a rift.

It always bothered me that mid/west Thestra had rift stones that were in chunks next to each other, but Halgarad/Dahknarg got completely shafted.

[Moldew]

Remember that KDQ used to be rift only - you couldn't fly or swim in. I like the idea of limiting it to the 50+ crowd. Kind of brings back the feeling of the early planes in EQ1. (Fear, Hate, etc)

I had a lvl 30 toon that lived there in the hills just for harvesting. He died all the time from low level agro...he didn't belong there.

[Zewtastic]

I'm on the fence on this stuff. As much as it was fun running around a ton, I just do not want to spend my rare time doing it anymore.

[ArtofWar]

again, I think a lot of this becomes population dependant. You guys im sure are starting to get the picture that I would love an almost full revert, but that's not possible on the Public server or for the time being regardless. A healthy population lets us tweak travel to become more inline with original layouts. I do like what cyrcle said regarding removing some of the more redundant rifts. Im still not sure how I'd feel about adding in rifts, but I would like possibly going back to the only being able to use a rift system within its continent, having to unlock and pay for travel shards. Hubs can travel between continents, but all other rifts should be limited. that way you get the convenience factor, while still not streamlining it over much. For me this would be a good compromise, we still have risk and reward for rift unlocks, meaningful travel, but not so easy as to become an afterthought. Someone mentioned earlier about not liking unlocking as some of the rifts were in dangerous higher level zones, but I sorta see that as the point, It adds the accomplishment factor for having survived the journey to an area you most likely should not have been in yet, prompts caravan use with people or groups that may be heading in that direction and possibly fosters community by having to ask for a hand. There were so many alternative travel methods in this game, that its a shame to spend all this time recreating them, just to once again make them meaningless and redundant (courier horses!, Barding etc)

[Cyrcle]

[quote="Zewtastic"]I'm on the fence on this stuff. As much as it was fun running around a ton, I just do not want to spend my rare time doing it anymore.[/quote]
If you're going to have rifts in chunks next to each other you might as well add one to each chunk. I feel like having rifts spread one chunk apart isn't too bad of a compromise.

[quote="ArtofWar"]again, I think a lot of this becomes population dependant. You guys im sure are starting to get the picture that I would love an almost full revert, but that's not possible on the Public server or for the time being regardless. A healthy population lets us tweak travel to become more inline with original layouts. I do like what cyrcle said regarding removing some of the more redundant rifts. Im still not sure how I'd feel about adding in rifts, but I would like possibly going back to the only being able to use a rift system within its continent, having to unlock and pay for travel shards. Hubs can travel between continents, but all other rifts should be limited. that way you get the convenience factor, while still not streamlining it over much. For me this would be a good compromise, we still have risk and reward for rift unlocks, meaningful travel, but not so easy as to become an afterthought. Someone mentioned earlier about not liking unlocking as some of the rifts were in dangerous higher level zones, but I sorta see that as the point, It adds the accomplishment factor for having survived the journey to an area you most likely should not have been in yet, prompts caravan use with people or groups that may be heading in that direction and possibly fosters community by having to ask for a hand. There were so many alternative travel methods in this game, that its a shame to spend all this time recreating them, just to once again make them meaningless and redundant (courier horses!, Barding etc)[/quote]
I simply added a rift to Innovus (so you don't have to do the annoying flight to APW every time), one to Wormwing Slopes for Stiirhad and got added to some cities as meeting areas/crafting hubs/etc. I'm bored today so I may do a map up of a rift re-do.

[Kilsin]

[quote="Cyrcle"][quote="Zewtastic"]I'm on the fence on this stuff. As much as it was fun running around a ton, I just do not want to spend my rare time doing it anymore.[/quote]
If you're going to have rifts in chunks next to each other you might as well add one to each chunk. I feel like having rifts spread one chunk apart isn't too bad of a compromise.

[quote="ArtofWar"]again, I think a lot of this becomes population dependant. You guys im sure are starting to get the picture that I would love an almost full revert, but that's not possible on the Public server or for the time being regardless. A healthy population lets us tweak travel to become more inline with original layouts. I do like what cyrcle said regarding removing some of the more redundant rifts. Im still not sure how I'd feel about adding in rifts, but I would like possibly going back to the only being able to use a rift system within its continent, having to unlock and pay for travel shards. Hubs can travel between continents, but all other rifts should be limited. that way you get the convenience factor, while still not streamlining it over much. For me this would be a good compromise, we still have risk and reward for rift unlocks, meaningful travel, but not so easy as to become an afterthought. Someone mentioned earlier about not liking unlocking as some of the rifts were in dangerous higher level zones, but I sorta see that as the point, It adds the accomplishment factor for having survived the journey to an area you most likely should not have been in yet, prompts caravan use with people or groups that may be heading in that direction and possibly fosters community by having to ask for a hand. There were so many alternative travel methods in this game, that its a shame to spend all this time recreating them, just to once again make them meaningless and redundant (courier horses!, Barding etc)[/quote]
I simply added a rift to Innovus (so you don't have to do the annoying flight to APW every time), one to Wormwing Slopes for Stiirhad and got added to some cities as meeting areas/crafting hubs/etc. I'm bored today so I may do a map up of a rift re-do. [/quote]

This would've been a great idea for the game while it was still alive and funded by SOE, when we had a playerbase but for the Emulator, I think adding a few rifts (if possible) to cover some far off area's, like Halgarad, Wormwing Slopes etc. is not a bad idea but removing well known riftways with such a low population is just going to annoy people, even if they are a chunk away from each other in some instances.

As you know, I would love to remove them all but it isn't realistic with the low population, which is even lower than the official games numbers and we have no way of knowing how many we will be able to get back when we have a playable game, so turning a few chunks that players used to be able to rift to, into a running simulator most likely won't serve any purpose.

I get where you're coming from and I agree with you but I just don't think it will benefit the game to change with the rifts now that the game has been sunsetted and is being rebuilt by a handful of passionate players.

I personally hope a hardcore original beta/release type server pops up, I will definitely have a character on it without question!

[Cyrcle]

Working on a rift map editor everyone can play with.

Edit: Done.

[Makar40]

Yea even tho the rifts DID make the world seem smaller, lets face it. The EMU will most likely have a small playerbase. That playerbase will also, most likely due to the nature of the emu project, be composed of people that already have played VG. So removing rifts would only force people to ride through a country-side that they have already ridden around a million times.

I know when I was playing I only used to rifts for certain things. I found VG to be BEAUTIFUL and would usually walk/ride to where ever I had to go so I could see the sights. But if people were waiting for me, like to do a dungeon, I would use the rift to not make them wait.

[Cyrcle]

Was bored all day so I took the maps for Kojan, Qalia, Thestra and added rifts to each chunk. Rift locations are guess-timate of where they could be.

Instructions:
Go to: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9I9Qjj ... xsYlQxSlk/
Download the zip file by clicking the download button at top-center.
Extract the three .pxd files
Head over to https://pixlr.com/editor/
Open any of the .pxd files that you extracted.
On the right hand side, look for Layers.
Uncheck/check any of the text/icons you want.
They are sorted from left to right, top to bottom. Normal zones, then housing zones.
File > Save as to save your own rift map.