Just curious, IMO one of the best things about EQ was that the majority of dungeon items were not bind on equip.
To be honest, everything that was worth anything was bind on equip. Everything from Vex Thal and PoP, even the flag mobs, was No Drop.
There were some interesting droppable items from Kael in the very beginning of EQ, that were worth a penny, but EQ quickly implemented No Drop for valuable items.
Powerlevel items like Earthshakers were nerved.
It stopped gold seller and ebay sales of weapons. It was a good change, and it happened very early on.
Just checked my older items I still have, all of them are No Drop.
If you look at original EQ, Kunark, and Velious. It was a much smaller disparity. Particularly in Kunark and in original EQ. You are correct that PoP did start that process. Many people felt Luclin was the start of the downfall for EQ because it made a lot of changes that were somewhat counter to the ideas the game was founded upon. That doesn't mean they were all bad, its just that they were a bit of a turn off the beaten path for the series.
Its also popular opinion that EQ prior to Luclin was when the game was the best. Its also debatable whether curbing RMT was worth the price of nerfing the player driven economy.
No trade items are bad in general. There is no reason to prevent players from trading items if you want an MMO to feel more like a virtual world than just a game. Other than the most extreme cases where certain quests and storyline must be personally completed by the player, I don't think anything should be no-drop/no-trade/bind-on-pickup.
Dullahan is correct. While i didn't think PoP was *as* bad as a good portion of the community did, Luclin was widely considered the start of the games downfall.
I agree with him though that the vast majority of items should not be no drop, no trade, etc.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I thought this thread was about virtual reality - on title alone.
In EQ1 after several months the twinks made new players feel useless
Level 1 with dual Yaks and FBSS etc... it was pretty ridiculous.
Those didn't even proc til 37 and were 8/22 ratio. FBSS is 21% haste. With all that you can't even solo even level mobs at level 10. Hardly the stuff of legend.
Twinking is perfectly fine as long as it's controlled. Ironically I would use your scenario as a balanced example. When it gets ridiculous is when they let items like Fungi through, which drastically changes the entire mid to early game for everyone lucky enough to group with you.
I thought this thread was about virtual reality - on title alone.
In EQ1 after several months the twinks made new players feel useless
Level 1 with dual Yaks and FBSS etc... it was pretty ridiculous.
Those didn't even proc til 37 and were 8/22 ratio. FBSS is 21% haste. With all that you can't even solo even level mobs at level 10. Hardly the stuff of legend.
Twinking is perfectly fine as long as it's controlled. Ironically I would use your scenario as a balanced example. When it gets ridiculous is when they let items like Fungi through, which drastically changes the entire mid to early game for everyone lucky enough to group with you.
Yep, the fungi tunic was a direct change to the player with no attribute/skill filtration.
Honestly, if they make gear progression dependent on skills and the like, twinking will never be an issue as no gear will allow a player to exceed what was reasonably designed to be at any given level of skill.
Twinking is fine, but does need some kind of restriction on it. A twink should be able to do limited soloing, but still be less effective than a 2-man non-twinked group. There are methods to limit the power of twinks without BoE or BoP. I think level scaling the equipment has generally worked out best (only getting a percent of the stats until you reach the recommended level), assuming a hard minimum level requirement is undesirable. The scaling just has to also consider stat inflation from raid-level gear (i.e., the dungeon-dropped hat and raid-dropped hat are both capped at +X strength at level 5 and +Y strength at level 10 and only diverge really close to recommended level of gear).
BoE is mainly to battle MUDflation, so you cannot just hand down gear to friends/alts when you get an upgrade. It helps lengthen the game as folks still need to "gear-up" once they hit max level. It doesn't prevent twinking, it doesn't prevent perma-farming, it doesn't prevent claiming Need on an item under NBG, then selling it to highest bidder.
BoP helps with MUDflation, just like BoE, but is mostly due to social factors. It helps decrease perma-farming or sale of items claimed under a NBG system. As it is due to anti-social behavior, I am not aware of any good alternatives except to avoid pick-up groups/raids and only go after this loot in-guild.
Lore is another system that has been attempted to reduce farming. Assuming a decent market for the item, it just requires folks to have multiple alts for holding and selling the items as more are being farmed.
Twinking is fine, but does need some kind of restriction on it. A twink
should be able to do limited soloing, but still be less effective than a
2-man non-twinked group. There are methods to limit the power of twinks
without BoE or BoP. ***Snip***
Scaling by skill caps and attribute/level limitations is the best way I have seen it done. It is behind the scenes so you don't have to do BoE and BoP, Level recommended/required gimmicks. You basically establish the boundaries to which a given player can excel based on their level, skill level, and attribute to level ratio. Then, adding any gear component can never completely overpower the class (beyond reasonable allowance) as you have a soft cap that has diminishing returns based on your current level, skills, etc.... That is, even a level 1 with level 50 gear will only reach the maximum ability within the range of a level 1.
They will certainly be more powerful than an ordinary level 1, maybe even slightly more powerful than the best possible geared level one in level appropriate gear, be able to do more damage or take more damage, but... there is a point where the gear will only do so much. This way, you get that "I feel powerful" twink feeling, but reality sets in and you realize you are still fodder for the orcs if you don't play with smarts.
I hated BoP and BoE in Vanguard with a passion. First instance when I almost quit ... (second one was the freemium concept). And with such a silly reason ! How about making sure you roll back whenever theres a dup bug instead ? That would have helped the economy more ... instead in the end they demanded 15 PLAT for a set of quested armor (Pantheon of the Ancients). How a normal, non-cheating, non-goldbuying player would ever afford that one was hopelessly beyond me. I mean I met players in VG that only had one low dps class like Cleric. Such a player would barely have a single plat ... they stood no chance to ever raise such a sum. Even I with a full set of level 50+ crafters and a Dread Knight main looked at months of dull farming for that one.
Obviously having your quest items bound to yourself is OK. BUT allow people to still drop them on the ground. I would like to have the option to put such items for example into my house, for decoration. Other people could still pick them up and wear them, but since they are soulbound to you, they would only work as a level 1 unenchanted item of the itemtype in question for them.
Still one could use them for example in the appearance slots, if there are any.
Its also OK if raid bosses items can only be picked up by (and then getting soulbound to) people present in the raid force that killed the boss. Again I would like to see that you can put such items into your house for decoration, or getting put in appearance slots.
One of the things I really loved in Lineage 2 was the
overenchanting. Basically when you had an item, you could keep
enchanting it, but every time you did, there was a chance of the item
breaking, which would leave you with dust (well actually with crystals,
which would be needed for something else, but thats not important here).
This removed superflous items from the game very efficiently. And it
allowed to work endlessly on gear. Some people managed +20 or higher
items. Pretty impressive, considering that above +3, there was a 1/3 or
so chance your item would break, and gettting the enchantment scrolls
wasnt easy either.
Thats an example for a mechanism that would archieve the same thing as BoE/BoP, but would be much more fun to have.
One of the things I really loved in Lineage 2 was the
overenchanting. Basically when you had an item, you could keep
enchanting it, but every time you did, there was a chance of the item
breaking, which would leave you with dust (well actually with crystals,
which would be needed for something else, but thats not important here).
This removed superflous items from the game very efficiently. And it
allowed to work endlessly on gear. Some people managed +20 or higher
items. Pretty impressive, considering that above +3, there was a 1/3 or
so chance your item would break, and gettting the enchantment scrolls
wasnt easy either.
One of the MUDs I played had a similar thing. People would farm for the best weapons in-game, which were actually fairly common drops. But due to this kind of mechanic, it took time to truly get the "best" weapon. First, each drop had a slightly different damage range, so only 1/10 were truly the "best" starting point for the weapon. Second, you had to sharpen the weapon multiple times, with a chance of destroying it each time it was sharpened. Third, you had to enchant the weapon multiple times, with a chance of destroying it each time it was enchanted.
High-level folks would farm the weapons, handing off the "sub-optimal" ones to groupies who were still gearing up. They could then sharpen and enchant them, trying to get a better result than their current one. So while you could get a basic version of the weapon in 30 minutes, by repeated farming, sharpening, and enchanting, you would continue to get a better weapon over time. I would think it best to include a "max" limit on improving the item, though.
In Lineage 2 you had to work a "little bit" more on getting the best items.
And besides a +30 item in L2 was maybe like twice as good as the original item (there was huge variance actually in how effective overenchanting was, though) ... and getting to +30 meant you would have to get the item like douzens or hundreds of times, plus getting all the enchantment scrolls was not easy either.
Comments
Dullahan is correct. While i didn't think PoP was *as* bad as a good portion of the community did, Luclin was widely considered the start of the games downfall.
I agree with him though that the vast majority of items should not be no drop, no trade, etc.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Twinking is perfectly fine as long as it's controlled. Ironically I would use your scenario as a balanced example. When it gets ridiculous is when they let items like Fungi through, which drastically changes the entire mid to early game for everyone lucky enough to group with you.
Honestly, if they make gear progression dependent on skills and the like, twinking will never be an issue as no gear will allow a player to exceed what was reasonably designed to be at any given level of skill.
Twinking is fine, but does need some kind of restriction on it. A twink should be able to do limited soloing, but still be less effective than a 2-man non-twinked group. There are methods to limit the power of twinks without BoE or BoP. I think level scaling the equipment has generally worked out best (only getting a percent of the stats until you reach the recommended level), assuming a hard minimum level requirement is undesirable. The scaling just has to also consider stat inflation from raid-level gear (i.e., the dungeon-dropped hat and raid-dropped hat are both capped at +X strength at level 5 and +Y strength at level 10 and only diverge really close to recommended level of gear).
BoE is mainly to battle MUDflation, so you cannot just hand down gear to friends/alts when you get an upgrade. It helps lengthen the game as folks still need to "gear-up" once they hit max level. It doesn't prevent twinking, it doesn't prevent perma-farming, it doesn't prevent claiming Need on an item under NBG, then selling it to highest bidder.
BoP helps with MUDflation, just like BoE, but is mostly due to social factors. It helps decrease perma-farming or sale of items claimed under a NBG system. As it is due to anti-social behavior, I am not aware of any good alternatives except to avoid pick-up groups/raids and only go after this loot in-guild.
Lore is another system that has been attempted to reduce farming. Assuming a decent market for the item, it just requires folks to have multiple alts for holding and selling the items as more are being farmed.
They will certainly be more powerful than an ordinary level 1, maybe even slightly more powerful than the best possible geared level one in level appropriate gear, be able to do more damage or take more damage, but... there is a point where the gear will only do so much. This way, you get that "I feel powerful" twink feeling, but reality sets in and you realize you are still fodder for the orcs if you don't play with smarts.
Obviously having your quest items bound to yourself is OK. BUT allow people to still drop them on the ground. I would like to have the option to put such items for example into my house, for decoration. Other people could still pick them up and wear them, but since they are soulbound to you, they would only work as a level 1 unenchanted item of the itemtype in question for them.
Still one could use them for example in the appearance slots, if there are any.
Its also OK if raid bosses items can only be picked up by (and then getting soulbound to) people present in the raid force that killed the boss. Again I would like to see that you can put such items into your house for decoration, or getting put in appearance slots.
One of the things I really loved in Lineage 2 was the overenchanting. Basically when you had an item, you could keep enchanting it, but every time you did, there was a chance of the item breaking, which would leave you with dust (well actually with crystals, which would be needed for something else, but thats not important here). This removed superflous items from the game very efficiently. And it allowed to work endlessly on gear. Some people managed +20 or higher items. Pretty impressive, considering that above +3, there was a 1/3 or so chance your item would break, and gettting the enchantment scrolls wasnt easy either.
Thats an example for a mechanism that would archieve the same thing as BoE/BoP, but would be much more fun to have.
One of the MUDs I played had a similar thing. People would farm for the best weapons in-game, which were actually fairly common drops. But due to this kind of mechanic, it took time to truly get the "best" weapon. First, each drop had a slightly different damage range, so only 1/10 were truly the "best" starting point for the weapon. Second, you had to sharpen the weapon multiple times, with a chance of destroying it each time it was sharpened. Third, you had to enchant the weapon multiple times, with a chance of destroying it each time it was enchanted.
High-level folks would farm the weapons, handing off the "sub-optimal" ones to groupies who were still gearing up. They could then sharpen and enchant them, trying to get a better result than their current one. So while you could get a basic version of the weapon in 30 minutes, by repeated farming, sharpening, and enchanting, you would continue to get a better weapon over time. I would think it best to include a "max" limit on improving the item, though.
In Lineage 2 you had to work a "little bit" more on getting the best items.
And besides a +30 item in L2 was maybe like twice as good as the original item (there was huge variance actually in how effective overenchanting was, though) ... and getting to +30 meant you would have to get the item like douzens or hundreds of times, plus getting all the enchantment scrolls was not easy either.