Ideas for Everquest NextFollow

I may even be confusing the use of the words game mechanics, honestly.

Please keep Ogres and trolls like they are in EQ...they looked so bad in EQ2...one of the reasons I left that game...and no other game has done em right...


Other than that, bring it on!!!

I wont lie, I am not looking forward to EQNext. Soe is one of the oldest companies still in MMO gaming and they still manage to screw everything up so horribly and so often. I have no faith left in them to get EQNext right. The other big issue i have is the rampant greed and shortsighted thinking that runs that company. Now that they see how well F2P works and how they can just milk certain things i have a feeling the game mechanics themselves will be built around milking the cash shop.

Ok i just thought of a couple things i have always wanted to see in an MMO.

1. Housing that interacts with the world. How this could be pulled off i dont know but i really like the idea of housing in the open world not in an instance BUT what i hate about all games housing is the fact that in the end its bland and becomes a giant storage unit. I want to be able to look out the windows and see the world!! Not just a generic rendering of the world i want to see people walking by my house. But like i said how to make this possible is a huge question. Vanguard came the closest as far as i can tell but the housing areas where remote. Think how awesome it would have been to have a house in qeynos in the earlier days when people went there.

2. Real dynamic weather. Not OMG its raining!! I want for snow to accumulate, i want for heavy rains to cause flooding in parts of the zone etc. Tie this in with 1 and think how nice it would be to hang out in your guild hall and look outside and see snow.

Not likely to happen. They're done chasing WoW and trying to clone that game (thank goodness). The game they're emulating for EQNext is EVE Online. Google Smedley and 'emergent gameplay' and see how many different hits you get. He's been beating that drum for over a year now. They're looking to create a fantasy based sandbox game where other players are (or can be) the content. Easier and cheaper to develop a game that doesn't need 250 new quests every six months.



For #4, everyone is getting the opportunity to see the pitfalls of user generated content. Remember when Mission Architect came out (and the first full year of its existence)? Words like 'meow' and 'bubble' and 'comm' came to mean new things, didn't they? Look at Star Trek Online, which is Cryptic taking their tool into their new games. There are hundreds of missions whose sole purpose is circumventing game mechanics for rewards. The ship explosion missions where the goal is to FAIL (be destroyed so the explosion of your ship causes the explosion of an enemy ship that can spark a chain reaction destroying 20 ships at once) is just one example. Moral of the story is, with user generated content, it is always proven that the players know the game better than the people developing it.

For #5, that's how it works now, isn't it? It was like that in VOA with raid currencies (Diamond Coins, Rebellion Chits, etc). I agree that that's probably the best way to go about rewarding people for raiding. Skip the drama about people going for "unusual" things and let 'em get what they want.



I have similar hopes but I'm not too optimistic about that. EQNext will have to either expand the pool of people playing MMOs or it'll have to cannibalize other games (including its two predecessors). Otherwise, it'll fail hard. Yes, free to play allows them to mask a lot of things but a new MMO requires ridiculous amounts of resources in its first year (until it hits its stride or finds its niche) so those first month numbers are going to be vital. Look at what the first few months did for SWTOR.



Yeah, this would be nice. The problem is, from all the conversations I've had with system designers, computer specs. There's a lot of stuff they can do with weather, for example, but it would jack up the minimum/required specs. So the people running computers from the Windows ME era wouldn't be able to play the game. That's narrowing your audience and WoW taught them that to be successful, you have to cast the widest net possible. I've read a couple of game developers say they think SOE is going to build a 'sandpark' (basically a sandbox with themepark elements, like say quest based progression and quest hubs and such). Wouldn't surprise me.

But as for the graphics and tech side, don't hold your breath. I think the game is going to have a very simple look graphically, so they can continue to support people using operating systems no longer supported by its creator! Or folks playing on glorified netbooks (and I don't get the "I can't afford a new computer" line with rigs like this one available for $400 when on sale) expecting to get all the pretty features. That's what is holding back the advancement of things like graphics and technical mechanics. None of the big publishers are going to put a 'you must be this tall to ride this ride' type of sign on their games, for fear of reducing the size of the pool they can draw from.



Um, no it wasn't. Vanguard was supposed to be EQ with a much bigger budget. There were many things Brad, Jeff, etc wanted to do with EQ but couldn't because the risk was so high and their budget so low (relatively speaking). Vanguard was supposed to be what EQ would've been with deeper pockets and a longer leash. That's why the zones were all handmade, the diplomacy system was created and developed, and so on. In fact, SOE didn't have anything to do with Vanguard until Microsoft dumped Sigil. No, in more ways than one, Vanguard was a symbol of Brad's vanity (which is why you had so little content complete - handcrafting every single zone element takes time). It was "supposed to be" better than the previous game he produced.

Those are some great ideas right there...

I liked the idea about dynamic weather affecting gameplay and I noted the response that varied weather effects can of course cause lag or otherwise require the computer's minimum specs to be increased.

A similar thought occurred to me way back when I started playing - let barbarians have a racial combat advantage when fighting in cold regions, let wood elves have a bonus in forested zones, dwarves if underground, etc. Let characters suffer from heat not just when they are in lava (which makes me laugh, I can swim in molten lava!), but simply fighting in a hot desert. Perhaps iksar would get a bonus from being in a hotter clime.

I know it's just 'flavour' and not a serious mechanic which would make or break a game, but the more background clever little details going on, making the world "real", the greater the mystique and enjoyment of the game.

But on the subject of environmental effects which would cause min specs to increase, I would love to see waves implemented on the sea or large lakes.