EZ Server

T11 - Round II
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Back three years ago we started gathering ideas and thoughts for tier 11.
Many players jumped on the wagon and came with their input. Now I believe it's time to re-visit this in a new thread. Some things have changed on EZ and some remain more or less the same. I've read through the threads from back then and I can see that many of the ideas and thoughts posted may still be viable and interesting for us players. However, I believe in starting fresh, because the game and the players have changed since we last talked about this. People have now farmed T10 and even HoS for many years, I can see new players that were not around back when I took my last break, and maybe most importantly we have a new GM, Draca.

Draca is obviously awesome. I've been on EZ every day since I got back from my break and so has he. By EZ standards he's the most active GM we've had as far as I am concerned. This is great news for EZ. I've been talking with Draca since I got back, sharing some thoughts, input and testing VP on the Test server. Veeshans Peak is his first project on EZ. It's nothing like a new tier and understandably so. He has to learn the ways of developing content through trial and error, before the focus can shift towards a bigger project like a completely new tier with new armor, Ultimate Weapons, augments and what ever else is following. As he said himself, there may just be some minor adjustments before VP can be released and that's the reason for me starting this thread. The time has come yet again to see what people would like to see in T11. Let's hope, and I'm really positive, that this round will be more fruitful in the end than the last. Draca has said himself that he is here for us and it's important for him to get a feel on what the players want in future content.

I'll start by giving some of my own input on T11 and I hope you all find the time to do so yourself.

Basics:
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- Shift focus away from mass pulls and fighting entire zones. Lean more towards what we did back when we played Everquest on Live all those years ago and even EZ back in the days. We've all had our share of zone pulling now. I talked about wanting more focus on single mobs or maybe 2-3 at most before I tried VP on test server. Now that I have been there, I can see it being about the same way I wanted to see with future content. Strong NPC's with high hit points that hit hard, and punish you for not paying attention and setting up your characters the right way. This kind of forces you to think and play in a different way than what we've been used to for a long time. It's quite refreshing that my druid, clerics and shamans finally feel really useful and necessary again.

NPC's and especially bosses should be far from tank and spank. I'd love to see mechanisms that punish you if you don't take the correct measures to counter. NPC's and Bosses should be tough for the right reasons. They should keep you on your toes, make you feel like there is always an inherent risk of dying if you don't focus. Away from the mindless farming that is "toot and drive".. not even sure that's a term in English haha.
Conquering hard NPC's should obviously also reward you properly.

Zone and Encounters
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- Draca has said that T11 will be in Dragonscale Hills. This seems like a really good choice for many reasons. It's quite a large zone, it's easy to move your toons around, even in the narrow areas and it's a zone that I am sure many of us haven't seen or been in yet. Old zones are nostalgic, but new is refreshing.

- When it comes to encounters personally I am up for a lot of different ideas. The chain spawning bosses are always a winner I think. Doing something other than killing random mobs to spawn bosses are also a good idea. It can be tied to certain items, quests or faction for sure.
I do like the world and zone action when doing the HW zone. Zone wide messages and shakes when important things happen is surely a winner in my book. Making T11 content so that you may have to visit other parts of Norrath could also be a good way to shake things up and getting some variety. A lot of things on EZ are very repetitive, it may be unavoidable. I do however believe in having fun on the ride. Variance and many elements, however time consuming to make, could be interesting.

- Denzig talked about a world boss and being on hate list earned you credits. I like this idea, even though it's not purely a T11 idea, it's something of a mechanism that can also be used here.



Items and quests
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- Obviously T11 should have a an upgrade to the Ultimate Weapon and new armor. Draca has already stated that this will render the Ultimate Armor obsolete. A new tier epic augment should also be available. This is what we are used to from previous tiers as well. It doesn't add anything new and exciting item wise though, so at some point it would be nice to have more additions item wise. I am sure Draca already have thoughts on this.

- What's the status with the EZ vendor. Is that something we are going to continue to have with regular rounds of donation, or could some of those rewards see their place in a new tier as a reward somewhere? I'm just throwing it out there as a thought. Some of those items are important for a boxing server. Group cure, Mass rez and CoH comes to mind.

- As mentioned earlier it would be fun for some of the quests in T11 to make you revisit other places of Norrath. Maybe you need to find quest items, maybe you need to farm up some faction and maybe there are old quests from classic that are already in the EQemu that you can use instead of just making brand new ones. All the while trying to have in mind that it should be fun to repeat for other toons. Not an easy task.

- I was also thinking of T11 quests that made you have to revisit and kill old bosses from the first say five expansions. To mix things up I was thinking the quest given was random per player or per class is even better. So you don't have to kill the same bosses 20 times, but rather spice things up a bit. Say your warriors should have a kill list off Kunark bosses, while another class received a completely different kill list. Variety takes time to implement though, and as much as we want to see a new tier asap, I'm sure we want a long lasting and not too tedious and repetitive tier. There are many ways to make a tier time consuming, yet rewarding and not too tedious at the same time. Integrating new quests with roots to excisting stuff can also be smart from a developers perspective I guess. It's about making new stuff efficiently and not making it too hard for yourself as a developer and too time consuming.
It wouldn't have to be pure kill quests either. Could be a mix of many things, like give them items, get side quests and so on. Maybe for variance you could have one quest for tanks, one for melee dps and one for casters, each of these quests put you in a different direction than the other, mostly so you don't have to do the exact same quest all over again for all your classes.



I feel like I am at a point now where I am almost rambling along and I will cut this post way too short and rather pop up with more ideas along the way. I really hope we can keep this thread clean and on point in regards to T11 only.

"....this will render the Ultimate Armor obsolete."

I would hope that it wouldn't be COMPLETELY useless...I don't care if it ius a few hundred hitpoints m,ore than standard fare T11 armor...I would hope the effort put in top get the UA would at least be paid forward on the next tier....that's just my opinion though.

nah I guess many of us feel the same way raygan. In fact I would say that you need full UA to enter T11. With GSS dropping more frequently in VP this should not be the problem as of many players have already some full UA toons.

But yeah in T11 there should be a replacement armor for UA so we get a) better gear for our toons and b) a new color armor that doesnt look like crap :D

In my opinion the most important topic when talking / discussing / planning T11 should be the balancing or fixing of some classes and items.
It is the old discussion about Guardian Charm, ID, UC when it comes to items and it is the same old discussion about almost all classes xcept warrior when it comes to classes.

It seems like VP will make healing classes more important again which is great and will be a new way of playing on EZ for me and many of us I believe.
But I did not read a word about those caster classes like mage, wizard, (necro), ench ... so this will be a challenge for draca to make them relevant I guess.
Someone (it was Roslo IIRC) told me that wizard nuke dmg is broken on high level because of EQ mechanics. I dont know if that is correct but this would lead into a problem of course if true.

While making more classes relevant again, one should not require many classes at the same time to survive or to play efficiently. It would suck if you would have to box with 6+ chars all the time and have them all do something in a fight in order to keep them alive. Yes fights should be challenging and not be on autopilot or tank and spank but for me it should not be like on Live servers or in old real EQ.

Which leads me to ZPs ... Yes ZPs should not be the standard but I think at a certain point you should always be able to use ZPs to fight and kill more efficiently and therefor farm better and faster. Of course it would need you to equip the best stuff and complete the relevant quests for your char, but once you're done you should really be able to use ZPs (and dont go LD).

Personally I still like T10 the most of all "standard" zones because of ZPs. But to use ZPs I had to farm groups of mobs, farm camps of mobs and get better and better gear first. If there would not be a ZP in T10 (or in HoS) I believe many of us would not play anymore.

Hard to disagree with that. I should think having a crew with full UA will reap benefits when breaking into T11 for sure. Draca said T11 will have no UA requirement. We all know how T10 is with Orc armor compared to UA. I imagine there will be a huge difference between people breaking into T11 with UA compared to those who don't.

It really does not make sense to me that UA should be better than any armor T11 can deliver eventually though. If T11 has more than one armor set, things could be done here to soften the blow of all that GSS farming.

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When it comes to items and fixing weak classes my 2 cp is that making wizards, mages and enchanters stronger is not a must before a T11 release. Those balance changes takes time and would be an addition to adding new content, a whole other project so to speak, however important to deal with.

Currently I am doing DPS parses for all classes to help give a better view on how each class does DPS wise. This will hopefully help devs when it's time to do changes to classes.

On the other hand, I agree totally that something needs to be done with a few items. Guardian charm for one. Back before I took my break over two years ago, Guardian charm wasn't even a thing and it was perfectly ok. There is no sense what so ever that a pre-UC piece should be a stronger tanking item than the Ultimate Charms. Right now my tank has UCv4, the top charm currently. It's still a better option for me to use Guardian Charm. I'm sure a lot of people have been depending on Guardian for a while now and don't like the idea of making changes. Personally I love to see Guardian nerfed, I find it just stupid how OP it is right now.

my idea for T11 ( Charm )
about the charm problem is that we use the Augmentslot for it ...right now UCv4 got HP slottype 24 that cant be used becouse of Leaf's and Citrine didnt fit into it ... why we didnt do then a Quest for that slot where u can Choose if u go for an Guardian Augment where u get the effect and a Brawler version on maybe on this problem can be easy fixed and make all happy

UW Augments ( Sleeper )
an other question i got is about Ultimate AUgments ( we getting now the option with weapons in Sleeper )  where we can put an Ultimate augment in but becouse of the Ultimate Weapon we already cant buy anymore Augments ... why we remove the Lore Group an make them Lore only ( on this way we can add 1 or 2 more of them!

Spell ( Sleeper )
dont know if anyone seen it but Enchanter Sleeper Spell Shylo's Bolt of Doom IV ( Fire Based ) is normaly an Mage spell ( rank 1-3 mage only ) and normally the Enc got only Magic based dmg spells ... i would like to change all the parts of the spell or make them useable for both classes

Tanks ( Helloween and Sleeper )  
Powersource ... we got "Time Rift Power Generator" with Slot 1 type 25 ( resistence ) but Resistence Augment didnt fit into Powersource and "Visage of the Powerslave" Slot 1 type 24 "HP augments" again Leafs and Citine didnt work for Powersource slot !!! maybe we can add this ( foxy augments didnt work also)

greetz

I do not know much about coding or the limitations of everquest code so I do not know the limitations of what is possible.
I enjoyed the faction gated armor setup of t10.
I like the idea of a dynamic zone which t9 touched on with occasional undead invasions of the NPC camp. I think it would be fun if there was a warmaster NPC in the friendly camp who gave quest for certain enemy leader's heads and once that quest was completed, the friendly NPC camp would take over the enemy camp lead by the former boss whose head was collected. I dont think an event needs to take place where friendly NPC's spawn and then walk to the enemy camp, this could take too much time and I think lead to annoying bugs, rather friendly NPCs could spontaneously spawn on top of the enemies to take over the camp. This approach could continue until the allied camp populates the entire zone which once acquired could lead to spawning of chests as well as a significant faction bonus. The zone could then reset on a timer or stronger enemy NPCs could invade who, without significant effort to intervene by us, would easily take over the camps again. These stronger enemy NPCs would have significant increased drop rate of rarer loot and provide larger faction bonuses than regular NPCs. This may lead to cooperation between players as they are incentivized by farming mobs with significantly higher drop rates.
Players would not have to engage in this dynamic event, but the rewards at the end and the opportunity to farm invading NPCs with significantly higher drop rates could make it worth while.
In regards to UA, one option would be to allow players to turn their UA into a NPC who would provide significant reputation bonuses. Another option is to allow UA to be turned in for t11 essences/UCV4 roses or the full set to be turned in for UCV4. Another option is to make t11 gear the same stats as UA armor so those who are currently in UA gear essentially already have full t11 gear and allowing players to obtain level 80 with full UA. Another option would be to create a quest attainable after t11 gear is readily available that rewards an ultimate weapon/charm augment completed by turning in the full UA set.

I think a pretty sweet idea to keep UA from being completely worthless (and perhaps even get new players to farm it, even after T11 is released) is to start including a new augment slot (if its even possible) on the corresponding gear for T11 and onward. This way you can hand in your UA piece and receive an augment that you could slot into the new gear. The augment would include an item effect/stat to increase the power of the T11 (or later) gear. This way players could choose to play without ever farming UA if they wanted but players who have or would end up farming it could do so in order to min/max their gear.

Effects for the new UA augs dont necessarily have to be particularly powerful but something worthwhile. Also, this type of solution can be something where you can deal with it once but the players who put the time in will get that sweet little benefit forever.

I agree with the discussion around having UA to break into T11 is going to be a nice benefit and I understand that armor generally becomes completely worthless with the next tiers gear, but UA was different and shouldn't be treated as typically in tier gear. Personally, I would prefer to forego the benefits of being able to break into T11 with UA gear in favor of getting a permanent boon in the form of these augs. Maybe have T11 boot you out if you equip a UA piece and you can have the UA NPC in T11 ready to accept UA pieces to convert into Augs.


As for all the talk around zone pulling, there are a lot of solid points being made. However, we should all remember that most (if not all) zones when rolled out weren't being Zone Pulled. in agreement with Wachna here, I would also point out that Zone pulling is important once you have progressed to a point that it makes sense that you can zone pull. Perhaps most importantly I agree 100% with the fact that without ZP there would be far fewer playing's sticking along as long as we do.

After mastering a zone, you should be able to zone pull it for back farming. This creates a bit of a conundrum in T11 because who knows if/when we will see a T12. Should we be able to Zone Pull T11 once we have completely beaten it? Maybe, maybe not. Should we be able to Zone Pull T11 if another time sink (equivalent to GSS) is introduced? Yes...Yes we Should.

That's not a bad idea, make it so that in T11 you can turn in UA to an NPC for a ultimate augment to go into your UW...UA to UW aug maybe include a slight side quest as well to tie it all together.... Great idea, Dok.

... or full UA will grant you access to HoS whenever you want  ;D

I like that idea

I actually like this idea A LOT too. I don't know if it was a joke but I think the Halloween zone was VERY well done and think its a shame that its only around for a few times a year. Its content that is already done and would give players something to do now. Sure as has been said previously the loot will become obsolete eventually, but its available now and all the accessories have genuine impact on characters output and performance. Consider adding a flag to the Halloween NPC in the nexus that grants access to the Halloween zone players zone into typically from the nexus during the event if the player has full UA. Alternatively I would say you could have players zone in directly to HOS but then allow them to make instances.
I think the Halloween event would not suffer because players with out full UA will get access to HOS during the even through the portal in the nexus.

I was not really joking. This is however not the first time myself and with others have suggested that the Halloween zone should at some point by available to players. I never got the feeling this idea was something the Developers wanted to contemplate or entertain.

Like you say, it's a really good zone with a lot of content and items to grind. Looking at the last 5-6 years of EZ history it's a shame that such a good zone is so seldom available on a server that has been screaming for content for a long time :) Hills of Shade would give a boxing army a lot to do.

Sure it gives us something awesome to look forward to a few times a year, but what about the day to day gaming, the really important gaming if you ask me.

There are considerations to be made if it's to be open though, mainly item wise the way I see it. The zone has mainly accessories and HP augments. How will these fit in when T11 is released. Should they become obsolete or would a T11 flagged character still want to go there to finish his characters HP augments and Accessories? Should part of T11 quests for accessories be some sort of flagging to Hos, which included handing in UA armor, or at least have the quest giver recognize if you have a full set? The way the zone is set up now, there is a limit to how many times you can spawn Magorian. This would not fit well if the zone were to be open, so some changes would have to be made. Obviously the ZP, doubles and Triple Loot Instances will be removed.

So basically in this round of discussion this idea springs out from the fact that people that has spend countless of hours farming GSS would not see it be a total waste, 100% understandable. I also like the idea that characters with UA should reap some benefits for it other than having an easier break in to T11 when that time comes. I do believe a new T11 armor set, at least the top armor set if there will be more than one, should be superior to UA.

im fine with Helloween zone available for UAed players but ZPs DLs and TLs need to remove from the loottable outside of the event time !

Personally, i say leave as is, but IF it was even considered, also remove the keystones outside event...
People will just horde them till event time (even with a UA requirment) if left on loot table

Not popular.. i know, but i think an event zone needs to stay as an event, and something to look forward to

why chief? If you would be able to do instances and if you still only can activate Magorian 1 time per char, why would you not let people do that quest and kill him?

HoS is good for:
- Magorian Loot
- TL / DL
- ZP
- AA Artifacts
- Neck Quest
- UW Quest
- Shoulder
- Earring
- Foxy Augments

If you remove TL, DL, ZP, AA from the loottable while not in event, this zone would bring not that much stuff for players that are in T11.
One could add GSOA and GSS to the loottable of course...

Simple, human nature/greed
as you say, you get one chance to kill boss, per char

If kill now (out of event time), could get x from him
If wait, and kill during event, still could still get x, and will get other loot (DL's/TL's/ZP's)

yes some may kill out of event time for mask/trg, but can guarantee, most wont
event time comes, and magorian is pera locked out as so many trying to spawn him

call me cynical, but it would happen

Agreed. Anyone who has the pieces they want on their Warrior would likely hold off until event time, I know I would.

My idea was nothing of this sort at all though. When I suggested opening HoS it would be a reward for those who had done everything else conceivable on the server, so full UA, T11 flag and so on. A way to pay forward the amount of work farming GSS's, which people seem to care about for obvious reasons.

I was thinking they would gain access to the zone as a whole, 24/7. That includes opening the Key stone quest to repeatable, so you could at some point work towards having that gear for all the characters you wanted. Obviously some script changes would need to be made, no world shakes everytime someone spawned Mags and so on.

Eventually we should get a new Halloween zone going I think. I've actually found a few zones that has the same eerie scenery and weird looking NPS's as the HoS zone. Anything is possible with time and dedicated people.

Anyways, I am sure there are lots of other ideas on how to reward people for their UA in the new tier. It's good we get a discussion going regardless of the outcome.

I think having UA armor for YEARS, was reward in of itself for grinding for UA armor. I'm not sure why anyone wants to keep it going in any way.

Definitely. People have been able to do things otherwise impossible.

Don't know you can point at UA for that....more like the broken Guardian's Charm. It has been brought up in the past that player HP and DPS is too high and causes issues.....you mix all that with Guardian's Charm and people exploiting the Ultimate Augment that let's non tanks tank....you have a recipe for disaster....

Had no problem zone pulling t10 or HoS without using guardian charm, it being broken was a problem, but it's not the end all.

When I got back from over 2 years break back in November, I didn't even own a Guardian's Charm, it wasn't a thing back in in 2018/19. I still ZP'ed T10 and HoS without it, which would be impossible without UA. It's super strong.

Guardian's Charm is 100% more ridiculous though. Hope it gets fixed ASAP, or else everything will always be trivial. Even new content is tough to tune when you have that broken Charm, I know because I've tested it in VP.

i think it would be fair to disable zone pull item drop, double loot instances & zone creation item, triple loot instances and zone creation item in halloween if it’s made accessible outside event. i think no double loot active would make the frequency of as crystal drop rate a little less insane. i would be for keeping magorian spawn and adding a quest to repeat the quest.

i think it’s worth thinking about because the zone is already done and i would anticipate the tweaking needed would not be overly time consuming but i don’t know anything about coding and if gms didn’t want to enable the zone outside halloween that’s fine too.

i think we’re going a little off topic though and should focus on t11 and ideas for potential quests/events in the zone we’d like to see.

The thing with the Guardians charm is, it was never changed, it was always the way it was (well not anymore as it got a ninja nerf a while back)the fact that we all just used to combine them into the ucv1 thinking that was the "ultimate" version of the charms is the reason people didn't just use a 50 guardian.

Rent knew about it and said that we take a trade off with losing the extra damage gained by using ucv2/3/4 whatever...

Tank

And I still dont get why UCs dont have the effects of the 4 single charms combined. They just should increase from UC level 1 to 4 and it would make sense.

Or just make 4 augments out of the base charms and 1 of them can be put into UC. So people can choose if their UC is for tank, dps, cast, heal

By the way I would like to get a better separation for T11… Tanks should make wayyyyy less dmg than dps classes for example… but on the other hand this would lead into a „must box“ situation which is not great either

Guardian charm is going to be a bit of a controversial topic for sure. Its pretty strong but perhaps can be mitigated if it is considered while developing T11. I wont repeat my idea from the other thread completely, but I was thinking that you could give certain mob types an aura. There would be a few different auras that on their own were manageable but if the same aura stacked they could compound or perhaps if two different auras were stacked on a player it would mean certain death. This would slow down the pulling in the zone and keep people from walking into T11 and instant zone pulling with a Guardian Charm. This would be a sure fire way to see all the players re-equip their Ultimate charm since they would be getting very little out of the guardian charm.

I see the issues with having to go back and tune the guardian charm. Far to much time/effort would need to be spent to make sure it was changed effectively when you can simply account for it in future content.

By the way with my Aura idea, if it were to be implemented, I would suggest as one of the final rewards for completing T11, you get an item that would nullify the effects of the auras (if not completely then significantly enough to allow for larger pulls for those who have completely T11 and may be farming essences/extra groups and what not. I dont even think it needs to be an item that is equipped. Instead, perhaps its a clicky with a self buff that would protect you from the auras.

It is a bit off topic, but I think it's an important discussion because it's very much related not only to T11, but also Veeshan's Peak and other future content. I can read through and do a list purely related to T11 content at some point in this thread. Collect and post all things relevant.

Here is my perspective on the Charm in terms of future content and what not. I've spend quite some time testing Veeshan's Peak with my characters. I had UCv4 equipped on my tank and went through the zone. It was challenging, I died, I had to utilize most of my arsenal to keep alive, it was FUN!

Then things changed. I equipped my Guardian's Charm and suddenly everything was trivial. I could basically attack the toughest mobs and go to the toilet without worrying about my characters. I could face tank everything without the slightest challenge, excluding bosses. I found it stupid. I think the Guardian Charms fate will have to be decided, because it's impossible to tune the difficulty of new tiers, VP included, until we have landed on what the going charm for tanks will be.

So there are some options, you all may have more.

1: Make Guardian's charm sub par to UCv4 and tune VP and future content for using UCv3/4.

2: Tune VP and future content to Guardian's charm and let tanks UC's rot in bank.

Option 1 seems most logical to me. It makes sense that UCv4 would be the strongest Charm, not just for DPS but also for tanking. It doesn't matter if the Charm has always been broken. People didn't use it before, it was fine, shouldn't be a problem to cope with it being adjusted. No one tell me that Guardian Charm was intended to be as powerful as it is.

Tuning new content on EZ is challenging enough as is with the ridiculous stats we've gotten with UW's, UA's and what not. Doing option 2 would probably make it even more so, because it's just so stupidly powerful.

My 2 cp on the matter.

Oh I totally agree, ucv4 should not be worse than a 50 guardian charm, but again a 50 brawler gives you more damage 275% to all skills than a ucv4 95% so by reckoning that is broken as well ...

Tank

Brawler's is also powerful in certain situations. For example it gives a Warrior with UW12 slightly better DPS, like 1 million extra.
DPS on the other hand will suffer with it, mainly due to their ability to equip Firestrike and Ninjastrike augments. My monk's DPS is 22 million with UCv4 and 2x NS12's. With Brawler's it dips down to 14.5 million DPS.

Just for some context on how ridiculous the Guardian Charm is, I had to increase min_dmg on NPC's by 3 million to accommodate for the Guardian Charm, which means that UC's won't be enough. Working on a different idea now though, which will make the Guardian Charm basically unusable.

Hopefully this doesn't form an even greater divide between the EZ old-heads and players trying to slog through T10 and sleepers.

Remember to clear the goops before pulling! Or team up during night time. I miss the group play with folks camping each faction in SR together in a raid.

Looking forward to a solid compromise!

Nothing will change in current zones. Future zones however, Guardian, Brawler, Oracle and Sorcerers Charm will not function, or will be heavily punished.

I also realize that people probably just think it's easy enough to match the effects of the lesser charms on the Ultimate Charms, but the UC's are not the problem, the lesser charms are obnoxiously overpowered. In lieu of stirring the pot making any changes to them, I will just say that going forward, don't expect to lean on those.

I mean, we used to run double pally back in the day (t2-t5), only difference is how slowwwwww we attack now

just remove all the skill modifiers on brawler and guardian if they’re making adjusting content that difficult. it’s not worth it to constantly have to think of them when tuning and would make the modifiers on UC more meaningful