EQ Crawling (was: [MUD-Dev] Permadeath or Not?)

[Mike Warning]

>(skeptack at antisocial.com) wrote:
>><madronatree at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> The idea I got from Brad's statement wasn't that they wanted to do
>> old-style dungeons, but rather that the designers expected that the
>> players would go looking for things to fight, rather than camping
>> out waiting for things to fight.
>
>The way the dungeons are designed in EQ, you either camp, or you die.
>It's not the players' fault.  It's Verant's fault for designing their
>zones (and it isn't just the dungeons) to punish people for NOT
>camping.
>
>Players do not camp in EQ because they are cowardly and stupid.  They
>camp in EQ because that is the way the game is designed.  Camp or die.

It's not quite as black and white as you portray it.  It is possible
to "crawl" some dungeons - both Upper and Lower Guk (live side
especially) and SolA can be crawled.  Kunark is much better in this
regard.

In my experience people camp for a number of reasons:

It's easier.  The casters have more time to med, everybody has more
time to socialize because they don't have to navigate also, etc.

It's safer.  Crawling is more exciting but there's less room for
error.  If you end up dieing you lose all the experience you got that
evening and then some.  Your typical pickup group consisting of a
druid that doesn't snare, a wizard that overburns, and a warrior that
doesn't taunt will have a hard time.  An experienced group where
everybody knows everybodies roles and limitations can be very
sucessful.

There is little incentive to crawl.  As others have pointed out, one
of the main ways of "keeping score" in EQ is by how much loot you
have.  Since the best loot is always on static spawns you can get it
faster camping then by crawling.

Other people get in the way.  There's no point in crawling if all the
rooms around you are camped or being farmed.  Or if the room that
you're leaving will be camped the moment you're out of sight.

I'll grant that there are a lot of dumb things - I've been
insta-killed by griffons and giants in newbie areas also - but it is
possible to crawl if that's truely what you want to do.

-Mike

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev