Abandoned Codex

[Gareth]

This is in reference to the 'Future?' thread elsewhere on this forum. Read it before voting.
The question is, should expbases be cut down so that *average* players can av in 50 hours, with the 'av game' considered to be the 'true game'?

Pros: No clue, but some of you seem to like it
Cons: Is there really enough content to keep the increased number of avs happy? We'd basically be condemning half the areas on the mud to hardly ever getting played.
Also some of the avs that made av the 'hard way' might feel a bit cheated.

Anyhow, vote, and say why you voted the way you did. Also note that this only applies to levelling, not how easy the av game is.

[Nightblade]

I noticed no one posted as Gareth said, so I'll go first.

I voted no. I mean, leveling really isn't THAT hard to begin with. I see no reason for the difficulty to be lowered and I really don't think that has anything to do with our declining playerbase. I don't see any pro to making the leveling process easier beyond allowing people to have a shit ton of alt avatar chars which itself won't be a great thing because people will start using them as mules and "twinking" their avatars with eq gained via a stronger av. Making it so the av game is really the true game seems completely absurd. Take Guild Wars for example. 20 levels and it's damn easy to reach level 20. Fine. But they have ongoing guild battles and the like to keep people interested and a skill system which allows for a huge amount of variance in builds of the same class. Also, all the classes are perfectly balanced and the battles come down to working as a team and how your builds are setup to take down the enemy and how the enemy's builds are setup to take care of you.

In Abandoned Codex however, we have this absurd distribution of power. Hugely powerful avatars which continually grow in strength to points previously unheard of. Hell, I can remember playing when Alucard was around and was clearly the strongest player in the game. Now, a pretty high number of avatars could drop Alu with ease. This increasing power can be seen in how avatar areas are getting harder and harder to keep the stronger avs in check, thus leaving the weaker avs at a disadvantage. That problem is, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems and the catalyst for other problems. It's not going to be fixed by making avatar easier to reach.

I personally think one of the problems with not keeping people playing in the lower and midrange levels is that our quest content really isn't geared toward them often enough. Sure, leveling and pking and whatever is enjoyable at times, but what really keeps people here (in my opinion), is the ongoing RP and storylines. In order to really take part in these however, players need to be avatars. Yes, the easier to reach av would help fix this, but it's just going to introduce more problems.

If leveling is going to be made easier and the avgame turned into the 'real game' more needs to be done to support this. It's not going to get by on just questpoint accumulation. Also, since much more time would be spent on avatars, we'll have a much higher percentage of hugely powerful avs running around. Namely what I'm concerned about is 20 Amens or worse blasting thru the place and fouling up things. I know there are caps for some stats. What happens when those caps are broken?

Simply put, I'm not a fan of making leveling easier, but if it is to be done then something else has to be done too.
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[Vicks]

Rather than any sweeping overhauls, I'd suggest little things ... like taking out the kill buffer, taking parry off of certain mobs, etc. It'd be pretty hard to argue that EXP isn't *a lot* harder to come by than it was 5 years ago.

[Vicks]

[Nightblade]

[Gareth]

[Vicks]

[Gareth]

I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make there. I've still to see any sort of convincing argument against kill buffers.

And killing the same mob over and over _IS_ boring. It's something people do to get levels faster _in spite_ of it being repetitive and mindless, not _because_ of it.

[Vicks]

I'd rather have people logging to get levels faster than not logging at all.

[Gareth]

Vicks, that's the Godwin's Law of mud debating you've just tripped. Don't make me have to start yet another thread in order to get us back on track.

(oh, and I'm _still_ waiting on some nominations for overstatted mobs from you :p )

[Gareth]

(for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it runs something along the lines of, if anyone presents "You should do X because then there will be more players" as though it consisted a valid argument in favour of X, they're officially out of proper reasons and should abandon the thread.)

[Vicks]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I never found it more exciting to kill two different level 50 mobs than the same level 50 mob twice. How about instead of a buffer that penalizes people who kill the same mobs, a buffer that *rewards* people for killing different mobs?

As for the mob thing, to be honest I've given you mobs before and wasn't all that impressed with the "downgraded" versions of them ... most of them seem to kick about as much ass as they did before. I just didn't want to bitch about it.

[Gareth]

[Nightblade]

Although I don't entirely support Vicks' idea of making leveling easier, I feel the need to offer him support: (this is taken from the other 'Future?' thread)

[Gareth]

See, Vicks? That was a proper argument :p
Thank you, Nightblade. I'll take it under advisement.