The EQ2 community has been talking about Velious a lot lately. We are all but certain that it is our next expansion. Thanks to E3 we’ve also learned that the next expansion is due out by Christmas this year. The combination of those two things has me quite scared. Velious is not something you do lightly. It was the defining expansion of EverQuest and to put it on such a short product cycle is dangerous. EverQuest 2 needs another Kunark, not another Desert of Flames. Everyone has different expectations of what an expansion should include in general but when it comes to re-imagining a classic the stakes go up. I’ve put together a list of what I think needs to happen to revitalize the community the same way Kunark did.
Levels that matter – The rumor is that Velious will only add five levels. This is probably because it will be split over two expansions. To that I need to make the point again that new levels should be added to benefit players in some way. In Sentinel’s Fate we were given ten new levels for no reason. These levels could be completed by hardcore players in less than 12 hours. Casual players might need a week. No new spells or abilities were introduced. Someone literally copied the 71 to 80 spell list and pasted it onto the 81 to 90 list. If no new features can be added to a class it doesn’t need more levels.
I see a lot of posts about how you “HAVE” to add levels to an expansion so people can progress. Progression for the sake of progression is ridiculous. Progress in other ways like gear, zone flags, alternate advancement or something else. EverQuest didn’t raise the cap every expansion and the world did not come to an end. EQ2 should learn that lesson. Make the levels matter or don’t include them, period.
It can’t be small – Velious was one of the largest content additions ever to hit EverQuest. The whole expansion was simply massive in scale. Three major cities were added, several open world zones, shared access dungeons and a raid zone that could support more than a single guild at a time. The EQ2 trend of “two over world zones” and some instances will not work here. I have to harp on this and say we need a Kunark. We need four major zones with several open dungeons. If SOE just magics away the three major factions and their cities that will be disheartening. I also don’t want to see Velious split in two so that it can end up “the appropriate size.” That is my expectation though.
Forget the low end – I realize that the focus of EverQuest II right now is to make the game more approachable for new players. I am all for that but they have a lot of content to do right now. Velious needs to start around level 65 at the absolute lowest and only go up from there. I would set it even higher than that myself and create enough content to keep players busy long enough to do a full cycle expansion.
Time for a new AA Tab – Adding on a few extra alternate advancement abilities that generally just enhance ones that already exist would be fine if developers gave players meaningful progression. In an expansion where players are given ten levels that add nothing to their character this felt pretty rough. Velious needs to include a forth AA tab with actual new abilities on it. Certainly enhance some of the basics again but it is time to start letting players try different things. Consider actually having separate paths that force a player to choose. Do you want to be a survivable healer or do more damage? Do you want to focus on AoEs or single target? We don’t always have to have the “get everything” menu.
Real, open dungeons – Open dungeons are not a negative thing. I know a lot of players want to jump into their own instance and do whatever they please but EQ2 already allows that and does it quite well. Augment those excellent instance dungeons with equally excellent open world dungeons. Kunark has several! Sentinel’s Fate has one and it wasn’t well thought out. Velketor’s lab was an iconic experience dungeon that EQ players spent a lot of time in. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Figure out why it was great and re-imagine it. That is a single example but my point is simple. There should be places outside of instances where players can group up, grind for experience and get items that actually improve their power.
Factions can’t be bland – Sentinel’s Fate introduces a lot of factions for no reason. You can work them all to max without hurting any of the other ones (other than in the Hole). None of the factions reward you in any hard, tangible way for being maxed. There is no danger for not being maxed. They feel bland and soulless. I don’t care whether the Panda’s hate me or not. It just doesn’t matter. Velious, on the other hand, was all about faction. You had three races vying for power in the world and your choices mattered. Three cities turned into one city and two additional dungeons to explore and raid. EQ2 needs more of that.
Itemization corrections – Itemization was redone for Sentinel’s Fate and it is now officially out of hand. 100% critical hit and double attack chance removes the “special” nature of those abilities. If every hit is a critical hit then it is now a normal hit. The only place to go in Velious would be triple attack and double ability attack. Bring itemization back under control. It will be better in the long term and, for everyone’s sake, look at what classes go onto an item. Why do shamans and bards show up on the same items?
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Few things about your post, I agree with almost all of it.
Real, open dungeons: IMO the thing they are missing out of their current open dungeons is a “camp area”. or separate areas that different groups can go to to kill stuff without having to wait for stuff to respawn. Example: Seblis you had many different areas, upper or lower, left wing/right wing. Chardok you had the areas between gates easier up top, the harder palace down at the bottom. SoS had the earlier easier mobs with names, you could run around the top circle while someone else did the bottom or the gorg pit area. The hole, while it “tries” to do this, just is not big enough to cater to more than one group per area. The respawn is 45 mins on the named and the mobs are on a pretty long respawn as well. In an open dungeon you have to have things respawning a little faster, seblis/chardok was good, if you had a slow group then the mobs would catch up to you. Castle Mistmoore was a bit too fast imo.
Factions: Totally agree, i am disgusted with the “go do x amount of quests and get 50k ok on to the next one” type faction. I think that is probably the only thing that Desert of Flames actually did ok, was the court/truth/blades faction. When you got 50k with one you got access to their hall where you could buy special furniture, recipes and use a bank in maj’dul. AND you were kos to the other two factions.
Itemization: Being a troubador, I DO NOT KNOW WHY I AM ON SHAMAN CHAIN. I have actually asked SOE and they couldn’t give me an answer. It is a mystery to me. I do not cast healing spells. The only problem I see with nerfing the itemization, or even bringing in item decay, is that the raid content that is out now is tuned to the crazy over powered items. They would need to go through and tune the old content for the now not so uber gear, and honestly I don’t see them doing that.
It is fairly obvious that whoever did the itemization in most of the new SF zones was either new or clueless. There are something like fourteen classes on the scout armor (plate+chain) and only 6 of them would actually use it. This means that, for example, the boots drop way more than leather boots in Labs. Whoever did the Class attributes on all of the armors did a horrible job. Bards on shaman chain is a prime example.
Much as I’d like to see new content in the 60-68 range, a two zone expansion that raises the level cap doesn’t have any content to spare. In fact, I’d go a step further and say that I really hope they don’t waste 20+% of the limited leveling content in the next expansion on levels 88-90 the way they did with Sundered Frontier. Looking back, it’s hard to overstate how much better TSF might have been if they had designed the same two zones for levels 80-85 instead of 78-90.
That aside, AA’s may be my biggest disappointment with EQ2 right now. I don’t even know what I’ve got stored in my AA mirror, because there literally isn’t a second AA spec worth taking. (Well, some people on Flames are advocating speccing out of part of the signature Dirge double attack buff because everyone is already DA capped, so I guess that would be different, but not in a good way.)
A third of the AA’s are useless, and you get enough points to buy everything else, so it’s just a question of what order you’re going to get stuff in. I’m actually really jealous of the raid-only red adorn slots because there are more interesting choices in those half a dozen options than in the 250 AA points. If anything, I think they should add more options to the existing trees WITHOUT increasing the AA cap so that different specs actually play differently.
Much as I’d like to see new content in the 60-68 range, a two zone expansion that raises the level cap doesn’t have any content to spare. In fact, I’d go a step further and say that I really hope they don’t waste 20+% of the limited leveling content in the next expansion on levels 88-90 the way they did with Sundered Frontier. Looking back, it’s hard to overstate how much better TSF might have been if they had designed the same two zones for levels 80-85 instead of 78-90.
I completely agree with you there. If this ends up being another mini-expansion then there is no room for lower content at all. That is why the two points are so close together!
Nice ideas. I totally agree with the leveling thing. Adding 10 new levels just for the sake of it is a bit silly. I’d actually rather SOE just added 5 new levels with every expansion rather than 10 every-other-one. Seems to me that a lot more people are interesting in sideways progression now (AAs/itemisation) than directly leveling up too.
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Levels that matter – adding levels is important even if you don’t see new spells. In order for you to progress, they need to add gear that is worth spending the time to get. Adding gear without new levels means itemization gets out of hand real fast. Itemization is already out of hand but it would be even worse if they didn’t add levels as often. Starting a new tier is an important part of controlling itemization.
It can’t be small – I think you need to be very careful when you decide what makes a ‘big’ expansion. Simple measure of landmass does not mean it is a big expansion. Look at Kunark. Huge overland zones that were nothing but a boring solofest does not mean it is a good expansion. TSO was the exact opposite, but SF was a perfect balance of solo and group content. If you want to scale that to be a ‘big’ expansion, those two things need scaled proportionately. Quality vs quantity.
Forget the low end – I completely agree. My alts hit a brick wall at 70 because I can’t stand soloing to level and Kunark forces you to. I would love it if that level range got some love.
Time for a new AA Tab – I agree that we should get a new AA tab, but I disagree that they should be new abilities. Our screens are overloaded with hotbars and we are mashing buttons as fast as possible to be as effective as possible. If we got new abilities, I would like them to replace current ones. IE: maybe an AA that changes a spell line from AOE damage to single target. I also like passive abilities. Maybe if you cast spell x directly after spell y, you get effect z for 10 seconds.
Real, open dungeons – I agree. The hole was awesome when SF first came out. . . too awesome, hence the nerf. The nerf for the hole was an overreaction and could have been salvaged to still be an effective way of leveling. I would really like to see City of Mist type areas, but done better to encourage repeat use, like repeatable missions.
Factions can’t be bland – I couldn’t agree more. I am tired of not having to make choices. I hated in Kunark when you could be friends with everyone even if they were at war with each other. I really like the idea of choosing a side like in DoF. It felt that the factions were more relevant to you when you had to pick one of the others.
Itemization corrections – Itemization has been out of hand for a while. It has gotten worse with SF, but started on that horrible trend with KoS (maybe even EoF). This isn’t going to happen because it would mean a massive nerf (either directly or indirectly) to everyone. If you didn’t go back and retro old (current) gear, then you would have to force stats to go down to bring itemization under control. There would be an outcry of emo people everywhere because the majority of players don’t understand itemization, progression, or balance.
Adding gear without new levels means itemization gets out of hand real fast. Itemization is already out of hand but it would be even worse if they didn’t add levels as often. Starting a new tier is an important part of controlling itemization.
Levels are completely unnecessary for itemization. WoW changes gear multiple times an expansion. EQ did it as well. I don’t see how just being able to add level 100 to an item vs level 90 would be any different. If the item progresses in power that is good enough.
I have to say… non-instanced dungeons do just have a little, extra something that, to me, makes it more exciting — be it the increasingly scary pulls your group has to pull to keep up with the camp or expand the camp as other groups leave, the rush to find and get to the bosses, the depth and character you can bring to the zone when it’s one real dungeon, and not an instance that changes every time and feels empty, aside from you and your team.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for both, but you’re absolutely right — don’t make Velious and not include some real, bona-fide dungeons. The Tower of Frozen Shadows was always my favorite, if only because man was that a terrifying presence as pretty much one of the first two or three things you saw coming into Velious, along with some towering giants, wolves bigger than I was and the freaking dragon bridge that made me want to run in the other direction. LOL.
Velious was a mood-setting expansion. Like some of the real, good Kunark zones, there were parts of it that just terrified me, or fascinated me, or even just gave me a good chuckle (the Othmirs camp… and their awesome music). You’re right, Velious truly was a defining expansion for the game. I’m not sure if it’s my favorite (Kunark and PoP would give it a run for its money), but it was truly a part of the golden age of EQ — and set the stage for what raiding would be like (DKP came from Velious!), and in some cases even exceeded what we have today (I’ve yet to see a raid that’s quite as epic as the 10th Coldain Ring… where the entirety of a utterly vast zone became a major raid ground, with waves of giant armies attacking your Dwarven allies). The game’s faction system, and what you can do with it, has also been a model… and a few games could stand to relearn from it today.
I hope, for the sake of the players, they can do Velious justice. I have lots and lots of great memories there to this day.
Time for a new AA Tab – I agree that we should get a new AA tab, but I disagree that they should be new abilities. Our screens are overloaded with hotbars and we are mashing buttons as fast as possible to be as effective as possible. If we got new abilities, I would like them to replace current ones. IE: maybe an AA that changes a spell line from AOE damage to single target. I also like passive abilities. Maybe if you cast spell x directly after spell y, you get effect z for 10 seconds.
Similar to your comment above, I’d like to see this enhanced which would benefit a raid and classes two-fold. Firstly, a new AA line could bring in choices that, combined with certain classes, would create an extra ability. i.e. an extra debuff on the mob or an enhance all spell dmg for the next 10sec, etc. This would add importance to all classes and make all classes needed in some way in raids, groups, etc. and would encourage people to work together in the raid, group, etc. instead of certain people slacking off or ninja-AFKing.
My wife and I have had so much fun duo’ing certain of the lower dungeons together. It would be great to see certain dungeons set for smaller groups as well that may have different tasks to perform in the dungeon, etc. This just adds a new dynamic to the game and for families and couples.
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