[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[msew]

At 09:50 02/20/2001 +0100, Vincent Archer wrote:

> Basically, one of the design rules on all equipment in EQ's world is
> its "rarity". That is, the rate at which that equipment enters the
> world. It ranges from fairly common (several drops on lots of mobs,
> like bronze armor) to fairly rare. Venril Sathir, for example, is
> the only owner of greaves (for all classes), and spawns only once a
> week, so you have a guarantee that at most one of these greaves
> enter the world per week (well, he might drop two for two different
> classes).

he can drop 2 legs for the same class :-) been there a number of times
when that has occurred :-)

<SNIP>

> Another poster commented on why a camp/quest should take 12h, and
> could be broken in twelve 1h steps to make it reachable by the
> casual gamer. If you follow that design goal, you can't. 12 separate
> 1h steps means that the rate at which the quest can be done is 1 per
> hour, not two per day.

difference there.  If you look at it from the point of view of:

  we want the rate of items to enter the world ever H hours so that at
  the end of the year we have around (365*24) / H items in the world
  (ie zone crashes, boots, etc etc can change the number of spawns)

OR

  we want this item to take 12 hours worth of work to get.  At the end
  of the year there will be around N*12 hours worth of work done.  (N
  being the number of items in the world)

the first we care about the total number of items.  the second we only
care that each item took so many hours to do.

To get the casual gamer to have the ability to EVER have the VS
leggings need to have some sort of mechanism such that they can break
it down.  And maybe the quest leggings are not the same power level or
what not.  And maybe it takes 10* longer to do.  Issue is that needs
to be broken into smaller portions for them.  (certainly need to make
getting the item via the mobs also interesting otherwise the min
maxers will just rock the quests :-) )

> EQ's quest engine is not very complicated. But it can be used
> creatively and make some quests very entertaining and challenging.
> The best example of it is the Coldain Ring quest. It is a 8-step
> quest (with progressive rewards), and involves triggered battles and
> all that, and is probably one of the most fun quests I've ever seen.

totally agree!!!!  Be forewarned: don't be a gnome necromancer
thinking the "good" team will like you because you are a gnome.  It
was really really really annoying that the npcs I was helping all
attack me.

msew

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