LDoN...yet another SOE baked potato?

Skogen · Post by **Skogen** » July 29, 2003, 3:56 pm

So, what about LDoN?

Taly · Post by **Taly** » July 29, 2003, 4:18 pm

I personally think this will be a great expansion for those who are the casual gamers and those who just want something fun to do when no raids are going.

It nice to finally see an expansion for those who just play for fun and not competition. No worries bout camp stealing or KS'd mobs, no steamrolling. I think it will be great!

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 29, 2003, 4:21 pm

if they deliver on what they are advertising (i know i know) it will kick ass..

LoY was actually a very well done "extension" to the game. even though all the charms sucked.

I know a lot of people are against the "instanced spaces" saying it makes things too easy for people.. and that may be true. but its nice to have a place all to yourself to practice your skills and your tactics without worry about some moron running his train on top of your head.

The 5-6 person group aspect was nice.. now they are including 6 group raid instances. I'm really looking forward to it..

Topper · Post by **Topper** » July 29, 2003, 4:22 pm

i agree.

It looks like its going to be really good. I could only say that about velious, but upon reading the information on LDoN i have concluded its going to be quite fun. Yet, i think it will be pretty buggy at first, like all expansions, and with the zone instancing and shit, im sure there will be a few emergancy patches on release.

Oh shit! and EQ thread!

Moongrinn · Post by **Moongrinn** » July 29, 2003, 4:24 pm

I have mixed feelings about SoE, everyone seems to think that theyre doing a piss poor job with eq, but i kind of like it. Who has really lost site of the game? Whens the last time it didnt matter what mobs were up or how much you could farm, you just wanted to hang out and chill in a dungeon with some buds? Talking about unimplemented content and all that, just sit back and enjoy the game, its not a race. So I'm in favor of LDoN, brings back the good ole hang out with your buds.

Rikk Wolvenkin · Post by **Rikk Wolvenkin** » July 29, 2003, 4:46 pm

It sucks that they've forced guilds into bloating and then the next expansion they're limiting raid encounters to six groups or less. BS.

Drasta · Post by **Drasta** » July 29, 2003, 4:52 pm

keep the uber uber and the shitty shitty

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » July 29, 2003, 4:55 pm

Rikk Wolvenkin wrote:It sucks that they've forced guilds into bloating and then the next expansion they're limiting raid encounters to six groups or less. BS.

No it doesn't.

The concept is great, let's hope it turns out as expected

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 29, 2003, 4:57 pm

True Rikk.. but IMHO there is a HUGE difference between a guild FORCING 72 members to do something because they have no choice if they want to succeed, and a guild being able to say come if you want. I'm sure SOME of those forced 72 wouldn't mind doing something else sometime. besides my understanding is that half these 72 man raids are 2-boxed anyways.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » July 29, 2003, 6:03 pm

actually Ajran, people who have developed their characters enough to be competitive applicants/members for top quality actually WANT to raid.

not only do they want to participate, they are conditioned to know that routine raiding is what is required to enjoy the game at that level. if you have to equip a raiding force of 75 (hoping 40+ will be on when you need them), you have to raid all the time just to equip them.

as for the 2 boxing...our guild has a lot of 2 boxing going on, but hardly half of it. We have had raids with about 20 actual players with tons of 2 boxing going on, but those were super late night occurances, hardly the rule.

i havent read anything about LDoN, nor do i care to speculate on it. It will be what it will be. as long as i'm having fun playing EQ i'll buy it. i may never zone into it (like LoY), but who knows.

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 29, 2003, 6:22 pm

/shrug

then i guess those people won't buy it and all 72 of em can do nothing when no mobs are up. I'll have fun wether they do or not.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » July 29, 2003, 6:22 pm

SOE spent the last three expansions making these encounters that required these ever more zergish forces to overcome. In Velious and Luclin, the subsequent expansions made doing these expansions for mid gamers a possibility, as the introduction of new spells/levels/gear made the older encounters doable by a smaller crew and with less dependancy on the holy trinity. Thats never going to happen with POP, mainly because every encounter past a certain point is AOW mele mob with assrape AE and a billion adds. The POP encounters are always going to require a base line of zerg no matter how powerful the PCs get.

LDON is going to dismantle all of these mega zerg guilds that have arrisen to conquer POP. The main reason is they will have nothing to kill once they get sick of farming (not to mention once all the guilds get to the point of time farming, the one end game zone is going to be a massive cockfencing fest) and also guilds as they are now will not be nessecary to plow LDON zones. After all most guilds have a good chunk of people who are purely mercenary, and if the loot is even remotely descent in LDON, why would they sit through a 8 hour zerg fest to be two of 72 people to get a piece of loot from a POP mob, when they can bypass Merrit/DKP and grab 5 people and go with the 1 in 6 RNG chance? I have a feeling it is going to be a lot like EQ was just before Kunark, with the main loot zones having long lists and raiding for gear being the exception rather than the rule.

Another major problem with LDON is that you are going to see people returning to these optimally tuned groups with solo classes getting the shaft. Unless they make low end hate proc weapons more widely available or make every single end boss require defensive, Warriors are going to have a hard time getting group slots. Necromancers (along with other traditional loners) are probably going to have a rough time of it as well. I think you are going to see a lot of groups built around Pal/SK, Cleric, Ench/Bard, Druid/Shaman/Bst, Rogue/Wiz, Rogue/Wiz framework leaving certain classes begging for groups.

Finally, I don't know how they can possibly balance this expansion taking into account the vast disparity between Elemental Gear/AA and casual gear AA, especially within the same party. When Dread Lord Bob, fully decked out in elemental gear and 500AA brings his pals Casual Druid Stonerboy and the still epic swinging Mistress Cyberforlewtz Claritybot along to a LDON zone, what happens? Are the mobs tuned for Bob and therefor rape city for his poor pals? Or are all mobs spawned keyed to the level of the player? If level is the sole determining factor, then either all these zones are going to be build around elemental people (and therefor be insanely tough for most people) or they will be tuned to the Ornate wearing pre elemental crowd (and therefor will be bottomfeeding, AA per 30 minute paradise for the elemental guys), and if they use number of AA as a basis for tuning, what happens to people who spend AA on convenience abilities (New Tanaan Mastery, AA horse, Metabolism, ect) instead of beelining for the uberest of AA? To a certain extent these problems exist now, but when the mobs are hand picked by the RNG they are going to be glaringly more obvious.

In short, unless SOE displays a level of insight and planning directly opposite of their rescent track record, this expansion is going to cause a lot of player angst.

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 29, 2003, 6:28 pm

But, Dread Lord Bob won't have time to hang out with his less uber buddies in the first place because once you have all elemental gear and 500 aa's you've developed your character to the point where all you do is raid.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » July 29, 2003, 6:50 pm

I see some excessive panty bunching here.

The expansion will be fun. The uber guilds for the most part won't be done with PoP for 6 months or more or may never finish it.

Guilds like The Corps should be jumping for joy as they will have 40 more dungeons to explore. The rest of us should be happy as our XP groups will be much more interesting with 40 more dungeons to go have fun in. With CoD cyber recruiting getting old, there will be more options to impress people with your skills in new places.

I'm curious how they'll handle res's and CRs with only 6 being allowed in at a time...no cleric/pally = no res?

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » July 29, 2003, 6:51 pm

Doesn't matter how much gear you have, you will always be dependent on others.

Akaran_D · Post by **Akaran_D** » July 29, 2003, 6:55 pm

I see a good thing comming from this..

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 29, 2003, 7:03 pm

Winnow wrote:I'm curious how they'll handle res's and CRs with only 6 being allowed in at a time...no cleric/pally = no res?

I'm thinking along the lines of a hedge maze. you'll zone in to a graveyard area where you will hand an NPC a token or something or say a key phrase and he will port you to your instance (no Loading Please Wait) all instances happen in the same physical zone like how you can have three hedge raids going at the same time.. you die/wipe you pop back at the GY.

They've simply taken the hedge maze concept and made it so you can have a huge amount of them in one physical zone.

Of course i could just be smoking crack and they are doing something completely different.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » July 29, 2003, 9:57 pm

Personally, I think it would have been a great idea before Kunark...add in the other expansions and it just sounds like another thing that they "couldn't program" before and just figured out. Basically something that should have been done much sooner.

Proctus · Post by **Proctus** » July 30, 2003, 2:15 am

Winnow,

All your avatar needs is a good "Boing" noise whenever he jumps! lol

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » July 30, 2003, 2:49 am

Winnow wrote:Guilds like The Corps should be jumping for joy as they will have 40 more dungeons to explore.

Yes and no.

On the one hand, having XP zones where there is zero chance of being griefed will be nice. On the other hand, even thoug we and about 30 or so guilds like us are still finnishing out Velious, we are still a raiding guild, we just do it on a smaller scale. Right now, there are plenty of places to go to get descent XP and not even see other people, so LDON isn't exactly providing anything most people do not already have in terms of XPing. I can't see them making these zones any better XP wise than POP zones, either or its early POP POJ lines all over again.

Everything is limited to a single group, which means it isn't raid content, so like the ubers the small guilds are not going to see any expansion in their raiding options. Normally when a new expansion comes out there is a period of gold rush glory where the ubers chew through the new content as fast as they can and everyone else moves up a peg to fill the vacuum. With LDON, there is no new raid content for the top guilds to move on to. All of the other guilds are still going to be moving upwards through the old content, at whatever pace they are going at. If it takes the current batch of elementals 6 months or more to chew through time, it will have more to do with the sheer number of them that are bottlenecked there than actually zerging up enough to beat the mobs. The guilds that manage to grit it out waiting on their shot will spend their spare time fooling around on alts and/or bottom feeding lower calibre raid mobs, per norm. LDON will be the first expansion in history that will make the raiding game more congested, instead of less congested.

Finally, I cannot see LDON being a source of descent loot for anyone. Given how ridicoulsly overpowered for the loot the elemental minis are, there is simply no way anything dropping in LDON will even approach elemental quality loot, nor should it. On the other hand, the loot would have to be at least on the level of BOT loot to persuade anyone to leave POP zones to set up a group and tackle a LDON mini dungeon. We all know that with the exception of 2-3 totally out of whack items (which SOE will then kneejerk nerf or buff the bosses to ridiculous levels) the loot will most likely be early POP level. That is to say, either non existant, or shitty stats and a recomended level so overblown that not even a twink will ever equip such an item. It would be nice if the loot fell inbetween the realm of BOT drops and SolRo trash drops at the top end, but this is completely unlikely. Also, unless they use Furors loot candy machine token idea, people could be fucked on drops if a class specific no drop item drops from a boss, and in LDON you wont even be able to bring in a twink or guildie to scoop it up. Loot is what makes or breaks XP zones, hence Sol Ro and BOT being packed post drop buff when there are higher XP alternatives. And if by some miracle the loot actually does end up being desirable over raid level encounters, good luck getting the more mercenary members who fill out your ranks to show up for those mandatory 72 man time raids when they know they can score better XP and better chances at a drop trucking off to LDON.

On the one hand, as someone who loves the old fashioned one team dungeon crawl, I am looking forward to LDON as an XP alternative. From a guild perspective though, I don't see it benefitting anyone. An expansion full of instanced zones with hard numerical limits on raid size would have been vastly preferable to what their FAQ suggests, for us at least. Instead we are looking at absolutely no pressure release from above. That can destroy smaller guilds just as readily as the lack of new raid content can bust up the ubers.

Chidoro · Post by **Chidoro** » July 30, 2003, 9:39 am

If you keep thinking that SOE has to make each and every expansion for each and every player type, everyone is going to be disappointed.

This expansion aims to provide a different way to play the game from raiding day in and day out. People will either play it or ignore it but in either case, it certainly won't break the game as a whole.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » July 30, 2003, 10:00 am

So far, it sounds excellent to me. However, I cannot help but think that SoE is not telling us something. Such as, key quests or innane flagging requirements for specific dungeons. I also see certian dungeons designed like the PoJ trials, ie: specific/perferred groups. Oh yeah, the recent spells on Lucy, as far as druids are concerned, were pretty shitty. I know there are more coming, but what they have revield so far are less than decent.

We'll just have to wait and see. However, I am still definately looking forward to LDoN. I'm a single grouping player at heart, so this expansion should be very fun.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » July 30, 2003, 10:34 am

i think its a good idea, i just am not sure if i 'll ever zone into any of them

i hope to, i loved Kunark

Truant · Post by **Truant** » July 30, 2003, 1:02 pm

Ajran wrote:But, Dread Lord Bob won't have time to hang out with his less uber buddies in the first place because once you have all elemental gear and 500 aa's you've developed your character to the point where all you do is raid.

Why don't you fucking cry some more...

In all honesty...I have no interest to ever xp again in this game. If I'm logged in, i'm raiding, if there are no raids...I log and go do something else.

vn_Tanc · Post by **vn_Tanc** » July 30, 2003, 1:09 pm

I have no interest to ever xp again in this game

Neither do a lot of people who are looking to LDoN. A fun crawl is it's own reward

I've been on a couple of times in the last few weeks and even took in a raid. . .and it beggars my belief that I ever found such activity "fun".

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » July 30, 2003, 1:09 pm

Truant wrote:
Ajran wrote:But, Dread Lord Bob won't have time to hang out with his less uber buddies in the first place because once you have all elemental gear and 500 aa's you've developed your character to the point where all you do is raid.
Why don't you fucking cry some more...

In all honesty...I have no interest to ever xp again in this game. If I'm logged in, i'm raiding, if there are no raids...I log and go do something else.

It was a sarcastic remark to Jice based on Voro's post.. if you can't follow along you fucking moron.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » July 30, 2003, 4:52 pm

I am not slamming the expansion before it is out the door, just raising concerns. As for who an expansion should target, at this stage in the games aging, all content should be aimed at two target audiences. First, there needs to be more XP zones targetted to the 55-65 crowd with reasonable loot to spread people out more and congest the existing zones less. Second, there needs to be more raid content, including at least one zone exclusively for the top guild(s), as this indirectly creates more content for everyone as guilds move up to spawns vacated by the guilds above them. Cover those two bases, and you have an expansion that will please the largest segment of the player base.

As for people who do not XP anymore on their mains, they usually end up either XP alts in their off time, helping friends get XP, or playing something other than EQ. The bulk of the playerbase still XP their mains, however, and the more options there are to XP in the more placated they are.

I was glad to see that there is raid content going in, and as much as it would benifit my guild personally to have it be all mid range content, there really needs to be one or two top end zones. Those zones should require flags from all the other dungeon minis and 200AA minimum to enter and produce loot similar to elemental with encounters balanced on this basis. This would keep the ubers turbo digesting the content and lower the degree of contention over prior content giving everyone something new to do.

Anyhow, I don't have anything more to say on this subject. Now we just have to wait and see if SOE delivers what they have promoted.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » July 30, 2003, 8:16 pm

They should institute a Perm Death from certain mobs. Won't that make people freak out. The majority of the population of Veeshan when I left was over level 50. Kill some of these bastards off already.

Yeah yeah, I am cheer leader for the bad guys cause I don't play anymore.

Personally I agree with Fairweather's thought on the single group kind of thing. I was wrong when I assumed that most of the players of EQ had some kind of Pencil & Paper background (ie, AD&D, Warhammer, Fantasy Hero...) but most grew up with nintendo instead. Oh well.

Please don't take this as knocking your fun of the game. I loved this game when I played and the addiction is strong. If you are still having fun with the game then that is awesome. Game on.

Truant · Post by **Truant** » July 31, 2003, 1:39 am

Bubba Grizz wrote:I was wrong when I assumed that most of the players of EQ had some kind of Pencil & Paper background

I actually did, but eq doesn't relate to that experience at all.

VeeshanVault

LDoN...yet another SOE baked potato?

Will LDoN Suck? Rock? Ho Hum who cares, EQ is O-V-E-R?

LDoN...yet another SOE baked potato?