Upcoming Gameplay & Downtime Changes

EverQuest developer Rashere sheds some light on upcoming changes to gameplay and downtime, as seen on EQLive:



Regarding changes to gameplay:

AA System – With the increase to level 75, we’ve run into a problem with AAs.  AAs are built around a static amount of experience, roughly what is required to get level 51.  As levels have gone up, the amount of experience you get for killing a creature goes up too and we’re at the point now where a few kills at level 75 would be worth an AA point.  To avoid this problem and the problems associated with continually inflating AA costs to compensate, we’re moving the AA system to a more relative system so the amount of AA experience you gain will be based on the difficulty (con level) of the NPC you killed rather than its level (quest XP and other ways of getting AA are likewise converted over to the new system).  The amount of experience required to get an AA is based around what a level 70 player currently requires in the old system, so players at level 70 shouldn’t see much difference.  Players below level 70 will gain AA at a faster rate than before the change because they were previously gaining at a much slower rate than a level 70 can.

Spell Resists – We’ll be introducing a new spell resist formula that will make spell resists much more lenient than they have been in the past.  The old system was built for the original game when the levels were capped at 50 and the resists were under 300.  It wasn’t built to be very flexible and as the levels have gone up and the resists have gone up, it has maintained the same narrow range of values that meant a spell was unresisted as it had back then.  In a good system, appropriate level spells should land most of the time, but not all of the time, against appropriate level NPCs.  Because of the narrow range on the older system, that isn’t the case currently.  Most spells these days tend to be all-or-nother.  They either land or they don’t and you don’t see much deviation from that.  The new system introduces a formula that scales a lot better and will result in more spells falling into the right realm where spells can land, but don’t always land.

Death – We’ll be changing death so that when you die, you will be “hovering” over your body and can choose to stay that way while waiting for a resurrection instead of immediately zoning to your bind point.  This is being done to help players on slow connections who take a big hit from having to zone twice when they die.

Character Creation – We’ve changed character creation to make it more graphical, allow characters to be created from a single page, and update it to include features associated with the new Drakkin race.  As part of this, we’ve set up some character defaults so starting point allocation, starting city, and starting deity all have defaults now which can be changed if you wish.

Endless Quiver – A longstanding issue we’ve had with ranger itemization is the inability to create specialized arrows because they are never expended due to the Endless Quiver AA.  This has led to arrows become a bit stale over the years.  To resolve this issue, we’ve introduced the ability to create new arrows that are not affected by Endless Quiver.  These arrows will specifically be marked as “Expendable”.   It’s important to note that old arrows will not change and we will continue to create new arrows that work with Endless Quiver.  This just allows us the flexibility to create arrows that have a big effect without the balance issues associated with them sticking around forever.

Dark Blue Con – The concept of a dark blue con NPC has existed in EQ for a while now.  It represents a range of blue con NPCs that give a bonus to their experience due to being very close to your level, generally within 5 levels.  We’ve decided to change the con system to include this range as well so you can visually see when an NPC falls into this “sweet spot”.


Regarding changes to downtime:

Likely the biggest change we are making is one aimed at reducing the amount of downtime in EverQuest.  As EverQuest has grown over the years, the amount of downtime imposed upon players has grown as well and we’d rather players find challenge in the fights themselves than in the tedium between them.  Toward that end, we’ve created a new system that is simple to use, but powerful and flexible enough to control downtime as the game continues to grow.

The basics of the new system are relatively simple.  Once you have been out-of-combat for a sufficient amount of time, you can sit down (or be on a non-moving horse) and begin to rest.  While resting, you enter an accelerated regeneration state that will quickly recover your mana, health, and endurance.  For most single group content, once you are out of combat for 30 seconds you can rest.  While dealing with multi-group content, that time is 5 minutes.  The amount of time you have to be out-of-combat before you can rest varies for group content and raid content due to the different needs of the different encounter types. 

There are a series of icons that will display by your character’s name to let you know what your character’s current state is.

Crossed Swords – You are currently in-combat.

Hour Glass – You are out of combat, but not yet in a resting state.  In addition to the hourglass, there is a timer bar beneath the endurance bar that will count down as you get closer to being rested.

Poison Drop – You are no longer in combat, but cannot rest because of a debuff that is affecting you.  You must get rid of the debuff before you can rest.

Void – The void is the default icon and indicates that you are not in-combat and you can rest at any time.

Energy Swirl – The energy swirl indicates that you are currently resting.

That is pretty much all you need to know to make full use of the new system when it goes live, but for those of you interested in the behind-the-scenes details, here is how the system works.

The system is based around you being in one of two states at all times: in-combat or out-of-combat.  Being in-combat is defined by being on the hate list of any creature in the zone.  To prevent problems with being stuck in a combat state due to some creature on the other side of the zone hating you because you ran past it 15 minutes ago, creatures will remove you from their hate list if you get far enough away from them that they no longer care about you and remain that way for more than 30 seconds.

Every NPC in the game has a rest timer associated with it.  When you enter combat with a creature, you will gain their rest timer if it is greater than any rest timer you currently have on you.  Once you are no longer in a combat state, that timer will begin to count down.  The rest timer varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter you are fighting.  For most creatures, the rest timer is 30 seconds but for multi-group content (defined by the initial intention of the content) the rest timer is 5 minutes.  This difference is included to prevent potential exploits associated with classes that can drop hate at will (fading memories, evacs, etc.).  In a raid situation where fights can last for quite a while, this could easily be abused.  Rest timers are persistent through zoning and logging out, but are cleared upon death (the death debuff itself, though, keeps you from being able to rest until it is gone).  NPCs that give the extended rest timer will have extra text in their con message that denotes them as a multi-group encounter so you can know ahead of time that they will give you the longer rest timer.

There are a few special cases that we included to ensure we’re covering any potential loopholes.

  • If you buff, heal, or otherwise positively interact with a player who has an active rest timer, you will inherit their timer if it is greater than the one you currently have.
  • If you attack (or are attacked by) another player in a pvp setting, you will gain a 30 second rest timer.
  • If you have a debuff on yourself, you cannot rest even if you do not have a rest timer on yourself.  Certain debuffs can be flagged to not impact your ability to rest if needed.  Those debuffs will have a yellow border instead of a red one on their buff icon.
  • If you are attacked, you gain the rest timer of the creature attacking you.  The exception is if this is self-inflicted damage.  Self-inflicted damage does not incur a rest timer.

Resting regeneration is percentage-based regeneration for health, mana, and endurance and is currently set to take you from 0 to full in 3 minutes.  This allows it to scale with gear, so you aren’t penalized for getting better gear, and ensures that downtime never becomes a problem again as the game continues to grow.  This system replaces the older advanced regeneration that was introduced for health.

Rashere

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I like this one
# Sep 06 2006 at 1:05 AM Rating: Decent
It was written:

"Death – We’ll be changing death so that when you die, you will be “hovering” over your body and can choose to stay that way while waiting for a resurrection instead of immediately zoning to your bind point. This is being done to help players on slow connections who take a big hit from having to zone twice when they die."


So, I finally get to see where I died? no more guessing when I have to do a body run... cool.







EQ 1.5?
# Sep 05 2006 at 12:26 PM Rating: Decent
I want to fight the crazed half-dragon and his mighty armies.
http://www.gametab.com/news/666320/

At the higher levels there is a split between two totally disparate quest lines. You'll be able to follow clues to the home of the last intelligent giant race, or work against a crazed half-dragon and his mighty armies. Interesting stuff, in the grand tradition of EQ.

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# Sep 05 2006 at 1:09 AM Rating: Decent
I'm excited and happy and looking forward to TSS as I have been with every expansion since Kunark.
And as in each case since Kunark there have been post's of trepidation and nay saying and general boo hooing. Now I am not saying that peeps who post in that vein are full of sour milk and rotten eggs, all I am saying is that since watching the loading screen of Beta evolve nearly each time I logged on that I have been nothing but impressed by what EQ offers me in entertainment.
I'm excited, much to the angst of my missus, that my favorite past time next to playing Uno with my 7yr old and just making my kids laugh in general, continues to offer me something to look forward and to anticipate.
I have watched as each expansion offered something very much appreciated by myself in content and givin me something more to attempt to achieve, if it werent for that dangling carrot I would have moved my Everquest desktop icon to the unused Icon folder long ago.
Now to those who appreciate what SoE is attempting to offer here I say, I wish friend that you were in my group because its peeps with your kind of attitude that make participating in this virtual world fun and entertaining.
I've posted before that nothing in life is perfect, just ask my missus.
She will verbalize for a week about my imperfections and yet when asked why she doesnt do the smart thing and dump me she will always reply with a smile and a twinkle in her eye simply, because she loves me and I make her laugh.
I love this game and, it doesnt always make me laugh but, it always impresses me.
The only request I could / would make of SoE is, please provide me another character slot. Just one so I could try the new race. I've been playing since Beta all my slots are filled with developed toons I've put far to many hours/days/weeks/months into to click off on one and I enjoy each of them to much to delete for a new race I might not enjoy.
Just one more slot, would it really cut to deep into the bottom line ?

Good Hunting and if you catch up with me on the Rathe you will always get a Greetings and how's your day treating ya.

Gbye Steve, you left your impression on my kids and they will never forget ya m8, nor will me and the missus. Blessings to your missus and kids.
/prayer

Muuadib Spicelord
Though,
# Sep 04 2006 at 9:02 PM Rating: Decent
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It will make items like the Dark Phylactery quest pointless. (Clicky +5 to regen) but the quest itself takes ages to max tradeskills etc.
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RE: New rest vs. troll and iksar
# Sep 03 2006 at 2:37 PM Rating: Decent
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110 posts
Sorry to make it a new post, when i clicked reply to this post it sent me to a page that said 404 file not found, hehe. Anyhow, regarding the hp regen for troll and Iksar, I think you guys will still have quite a good advantage as far as hp regen.
Quote:
Resting regeneration is percentage-based regeneration for health, mana, and endurance and is currently set to take you from 0 to full in 3 minutes. This allows it to scale with gear, so you aren’t penalized for getting better gear, and ensures that downtime never becomes a problem again as the game continues to grow. This system replaces the older advanced regeneration that was introduced for health.


Talks about hp/mana regen being scaled to work with this so you won't be penalized for better gear, so I'm guessing that Trolls and Iksar innate regen will be scaled in there somewhere too. I hope so for you guys as well as my lil' Iksar.
new rest vs trolls and iksar
# Sep 03 2006 at 11:21 AM Rating: Default
so what your saying is that my troll SK will now regen hps at the same rate as an ogre sk? sounds a little wrong to me. part of the reason i picked a troll was the hp regen, thus less down time. If you compare ogre's and troll's they are very similar in stats, the realy big difference comes in ogres being bash resistant and trolls regenerating. now that ogres can regen hps at same rate when resting, i feal as though my troll should get bash resistance. i can already sit down with my troll and regen 90% of my 5k hps in about 5 mins so the only thing this change does for me is make everyone whos not takeing the faction hits for being a troll have the same regen as me. and SOE thinks im not going to have a problem with this? it sounds to me like they trying to start a starwars gallaxie NGE messup again. oh and for those of you who dont know the N.G.E. ruined galaxies they half less then 1/3 the people playing now.
new rest vs trolls and iksar
# Sep 03 2006 at 1:39 PM Rating: Decent
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130 posts
That is a good point...a fair portion of the troll (and iksar) regen advantage will be taken away. But as was stated above, the new regen won't take affect until timers have expired. So if you are in a grp where there's frequent fighting going on that is preventing timer expirations (like a Dreadlands xp grind as stated in a post below), then your troll regen advantage will still help. But still, the lessened advantage might have been enough to make you choose ogre.

I kinda feel sorry for the designers. EQ is a very complex game with alot of facets to it. There is no way to balance anything anymore without encountering a negative factor somewhere else. Anything that they give one class will automatically generate complaints from the other classes. So the answer is to not change anything anymore? Even THAT would cause complaints. Its rather interesting to read old posts and see that there is not a single class that did not complain of "getting the shaft" at one time or another.

Lets imagine that Sony suddenly threw in a patch that gave everyone an extra 100HP to their base stats. You might think at first that everyone would be happy about it right? Wrong. Here's the complaints:

1) High lvl players would complain that 100HP about doubles the HP of a lowbie, yet barely affects a high leveler at all.

2) Warriors would complain that 100HP is a much lower percentage of their base than of casters and so they should get more.

3) Old skool players would complain that this is yet again another step towards Sony ruining EQ cause they remember when an extra 100HP was hard to get and they remember back-in-the-day...(blah blah blah).

Poor Sony. 8-)
so
# Sep 03 2006 at 2:33 AM Rating: Default
So is this set to go live with serpents spine or what?
changes
# Sep 02 2006 at 10:24 PM Rating: Decent
one of these days SOE will make some changes that won't totally complicate the hell out of everything. YOU CAN DO IT SOE WE KNOW YOU CAN!
R & R
# Sep 02 2006 at 8:53 PM Rating: Decent
40 posts
Am I the only one that seems to think that this new Rest & Regeneration scheme that Sony has come up with isn't going to work quite as well as they would like us to believe it will? Perhaps giving us a little more detail on how much the regen is when still in "combat mode" would help.

Let me give you an example of what I mean ---

Let's say that it's the current system, you're a Wizard and you're part of a grinding xp group in the Dreadlands. Your puller is bringing in a fresh mob every 60 to 90 seconds. As a "nuker" you spend most of your time sitting (i.e., regenerating mana). Occasionally, you will stand up, throw a nuke and sit right back down to med. This system allows you to regain anywhere from 200 to 250 mana or more every minute, depending upon your Med skill, any FT items you might have and any mind buffs on you. You might be able to go as much as 10 minutes before you need to take a Med break.

Now consider this new system. As soon as you throw that first nuke (or perhaps as soon as a member of your group enters into conflict with a mob. I'm not sure about that and it isn't really clear) you are considered to be "in-combat" and will remain so until after the mob has been killed AND the additional time of the mob's timer has expired. Only then would you go into the accelerated regeneration mode. That applies EVEN IF YOU SIT DOWN AND DO NOTHING for the rest of the encounter. Now unless "in-combat" regen in this new system is equal to the "resting" regen under the current system I don't see how this is going to be an improvement. In fact the way I read it you, Mr. Wizard, are going to be running out of mana a whole lot sooner and you're gonna need that Med Break much more quickly.

'Course maybe I'm wrong. I guess we'll find out when it goes live. But it's something to think about.

EQ1 or EQ 2
# Sep 02 2006 at 3:29 PM Rating: Decent
It seems a lot like Everquest 2, wondering if they are playing to make eq 1 into eq 2. Joining both together in the future. (Just a thought.)
Dark Blue Con
# Sep 02 2006 at 3:28 PM Rating: Decent
34 posts
Quote:
Dark Blue Con – The concept of a dark blue con NPC has existed in EQ for a while now. It represents a range of blue con NPCs that give a bonus to their experience due to being very close to your level, generally within 5 levels. We’ve decided to change the con system to include this range as well so you can visually see when an NPC falls into this “sweet spot”.


So there is now 3 blue cons? or is that a darker than dark blue con? Currently I recall green, light blue, "dark" blue, white, yellow and red... if they are adding a new shade... maybe move colors a bit... change green to light green, light blue to dark green, etc... then the current dark blue can serve as that sweet XP... like in Hot zones...
very cool
# Sep 02 2006 at 11:48 AM Rating: Default
i think thease changes will be good. my only question is that the rest time. is normally 30 seconds for groups. what if your soloing? is it 30 seconds? or longer? or shorter?
Good or bad, someone at sony is finally thinking?
# Sep 02 2006 at 6:51 AM Rating: Decent
I've seen tons of posts in the past about Sony catering to the uber guilds and to protecting thier all-mighty-monthly-dollar. In other words, part after path and expnasion after expansion was about keeping the status quo.

This upgrade is actually a good attempt at a happy medium. Even if you don't like the specifics about what was done in this upgrade, you absolutley must love the fact that someone at Sony is finally generating creative ideas (I'm pretty sure they must have hired someone new).

That, was far, is the most important part about this major enhancement, and make no mistake about it, this is a big one.

On a personal note, it is good to see us Rangers finally getting some consideration in an upgrade, instead of the usual expected 'shaft'. Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that these 1-time-use arrows could be construed as getting screwed, but part of me invisions a 20000HP arrow (full AAs, disc etc etc) crashing into an unsuspecting mob. I sure hope those arrows are clearly marked.

Just my opinion, if you don't like feel free to take your lvl 70 toon with 1600AAs back into some end zone against a lvl 80 mob with 40 of your only friends. Just remember that bright shiny thing in the sky is called the Sun; it is good idea to go outside once a month and actually enjoy it.
huh ?
# Sep 02 2006 at 4:36 AM Rating: Decent
Quote:
We’ve decided to change the con system to include this range as well so you can visually see when an NPC falls into this “sweet spot”.


visually see ?? will mob wear a sign now saying "im sweet xp" ? or a DB glorie that glows so sstrong you can see it from a far ? sounds a bit weird to me..(a bit?!?)
huh ?
# Sep 08 2006 at 5:29 PM Rating: Default
I'm guessing that the new DB con system might be like the cons in EQ2, they might have a specific label in your target window, or around their name when you have them targetted. Who knows... they may just introduce a new con colour... maybe aqua con... or Darkish lightblue with a tint of cyan...

Whatever they use to show the difference I know it will be good, no more killing a Darkblue to find out it was on the verge of being light blue and giving crap for exp.
Nice changes
# Sep 02 2006 at 12:54 AM Rating: Default
Really nice to see changes like these come into being after so long. Some creative thought, as well as good borrowed ideas, went into this allowing the game to remain at the top of its class!
Nice changes
# Sep 09 2006 at 3:43 AM Rating: Default
I think these changes will be good for the most part. The peeps who have a prob w/ the at rest thing are mostly just not understanding it. The "in combat" state will just like is now, the "at rest state" will be now plus more... its not a this or that state. Its a this(by this i mean the current state) or a this and that state. As far as I understand, Trolls and Ikkys will still regen more in the rest state than others. I'm sure there will be bugs to work out(when isn't there)'but alll in all, but I think these are positive changes.
On the flip side, I really would like to see a "retail box" for this and any future expansions. Thats just the way I prefer to buy dames.
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