Here is yet another idea for getting some endgame gear....

You have a quest to create a vessel(armor, weapon, etc).  Then you transfer a portion of your life essence into the item and drop 3 levels and you get a (cap-3) level piece of raid gear(would be silly to have the item be unusable when you get it and this would maintain balance as it would be say 90% of a decent raid piece -- IE fabled/gold/whatever your raid pieces are level 67 as opposed to the same level 70).

These would be powerful enough so someone with decent solo gear and a couple of pieces of it could start casual raiding as if he had group gear.    Or could bypass about 33% of the progression if he had a full set(masochist) --ie one could join a raid guild at that point and not be fodder.

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Actually this mechanic could theoretically be used at any level -- so if you were outlevelling your friends or somesuch you could run the quest at level 27 and come out level 24 with a piece of gold level 24 gear (Might even be worth it if your weapon stank or something or you had tons of content you hadnt finished yet but had started to outlevel etc).

Originally posted by Nightbringe1

Originally posted by MimiEZ

 People say, having a harsh dp makes the game more challenging, not really, having a harsh dp makes you less willing to engage in challenges, 

If this were true, raiding would have never become popular in EQ.

Actually, dying in a raid typically put your corpse in a graveyard assuming a complete wipe -- even so usually someone would survive to be able to rez...  (IE feign death necro + res of cleric = res the raid).

The only time when raids were actually dangerous in EQ1 was back when people went to the plane of fear.

They re-opened the CBT for the next 6 days -- so you still have a chance to try it out.

For the most part, it is advancement -- you can gain a level, or get a new piece of equipment, or even finish a quest and watch your character evolve.  There is the wonder of new areas to explore.  But mainly it is the attachment and growth of the character you play.

In real life it is far more difficult to get a level up, and it is far less obvious you are doing so.  I mean when you put your paycheck in the bank it doesnt go ding. 

Originally posted by Loke666

Hmm, he do have a point.

Maybe it is time to make 2 different death penalties: 1 for solo players and anyone in the open world and another for people in dungeons, raids and similar places where the loot is better.

Or possibly having 2 kinds of servers, 1 without death penalty for the solo player.

Greater chances of getting great stuff should include greater risks and with no death penalty there is no risk whatsoever. That works fine for open world play but I remember a time were dungeons actually was dangerous and fun. I miss that.

Casual death penalty for casual players makes sense, but casual death penalty for raiders doesn't.

Vanguard backed off that in beta.

The idea in Vanguard was that death out in the outside world to * and ** mobs was negligable.

Death to a boss outside cost exp and etc.

Death in an easy dungeon lost exp and etc.

Death in a harder dungeon left your stuff on a corpse that you had to retrieve and had even more losses.

They even toyed with death in certain truly harsh dungeons being perma.

It was your choice whether or not to take the harder challenges with higher risks/rewards.

I think death should give a minor but permanent drop to stats.  One death shouldnt be noticable at all.   Ten deaths on the otherhand would be.  Thirty deaths and you would seriously want to look into reincarnation.

Reincarnation would be a process where you get to set up the character anew in the current class(lose 2 levels) or a one-off class(lose 4 levels).  You can re-choose your race, reset stats and skills etc.  One-off in this case means you could move from whatever the warrior class is to any hybrid warrior class...  Or say from a paladin(hybrid priest warrior) to a priest or a warrior.  In this way you could if you wanted to explore a different aspect of your character -- or progressively change your role -- do so.

Actually sony had "the right idea" but Vanguard failed to deliver.  The whole idea they had for vanguard was being their everquest 3 such that they would not have to make a new everquest in the near future. 

If sony pulls a windows 7 with their everquest next release then they have a chance to take a big chunk.  It took vista to get Win7.

As for WoW itself, they have taken a pretty unique stance.  Unlike say everquest where they kept coming out with new games and expanding the worlds of their old games, WoW has decided to fundimentally alter their world and their system to keep with the times graphically/gameplaywise and to bring it back to smaller trees instead of expanding out of all proportion.

If they continue with this route they could essentially have a seamless WoW 2 transition without actually calling anything WoW 2.  Isnt that really what cataclysm is the beginning of?  I mean the old world has been modified to the point of being a completely new game.  The tree simplifications bring everything back to vanilla wow as far as complexity goes enabling the next 2 expansions to add to the tree without it being unwieldy. 

Actually that the world is changing harkens back to one of the best features of asheron's call -- the world changed.  In WoWs case it is actually quite the risk as some people will be turned off by it -- miss areas that go away, long for the old system -- but if they transition it will ultimately allow WoW to continue collecting subscriber dollars  through the whole decade.

Actually in my eyes, one of the main failures of VG was the dumbing down of the diplomacy system.  I love that minigame but you eventually get so many "I win" cards that any non-cheese battle is a yawner.  The cheese battles make you fail just as fast until you figure them out -- which doesnt take long.  I liked when the card sets were far weaker and every area was a puzzle and you could do all of the towns. 

VG could have been so much more in so many ways (I played beta back a year before release).

I hope everquest next is closer to completion than they let on.

1) There arent enough total game players at 4/1 plus overhead to make FTP WoW even a thought.

2) Actual FTP games tend to be *HIGHER* in price than P2P games to play competatively. 

3) P2P is better in my mind than F2P in that everyone is "equal" -- Actually people who really want the tables tilted toward them and have tons of money gravitate to F2ps

4a) The main reason why the F2P movement is working is that they have NEW servers where everyone is starting at level 1 with a big enough playerbase to find groups.  As P2Ps mature the newbie areas become tumbleweed infested.  Then the chill wind starts to blow through the mid-level areas.  Eventually you have a grind to near cap experience just to find other people. 

4b) This would be even better in Aion where they really should open a F2P server in the west.  That is one game where you really want to get in on the ground floor or you are fodder.  Thing is a new F2P server works better than a new P2P server because you have extra "ghost players" who are playing the game as escorts for the players who are paying and count. 

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One major issue with F2P conversions/games is "Where do you draw the line on spending?"  If some people are paying $1000 per month to become a god, yes it is great that you are getting that $1k BUT everybody else gets turned off.  The most effective price - point from a players point of view is 2x that of a normal subscription gets you everything except cosmetic items.  The most effective price-point from a server point of view is unfortunately somewhat higher.

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At any rate where it gives the best second legs to a game is one with a PvP focus where lowbie areas are dead or you are dead -- your pick -- on a normal server.

First off, vanguard wasnt always the way it is for crafting or harvesting.

They actually had harvesting classes at one point and it was done FAR differently.

There were several viable builds for crafting before they made it so only one type worked.  In the beta I actually (before the changes) had NO problem solving at all -- it was a race to get the thing made before the complications got me.  Later I had enough points to keep the advantage and have a token amount in PS to handle only the most disastrous potential ones in like 3 tries.  At any rate it meant I was able to get more 100% and fails than a more standard build.

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For crafting I actually would handle it with minigames. 

With regard to tailoring, your pelts would have weak spots and better areas and you would place your pattern on the pelt in such a manner as to get the best components.  A pelt might be good for several subcomponents but not for others.

Then you would have to accurately trace the cutting of the pelt.

For making a hilt you might put the ingots on the table and hammer it in various places and various amounts of power before it cooled. 

Potions could be a color matching game...  You have a green red and purple vial -- make a potion as close to this brown as you can.  Of course simple ones would be getting a specific shade of say purple from red and blue using as much of the ingrediants as possible without running out in the shortest amount of time.

Maybe we arent thinking global enough in a way....

What could work is major events in the game that have raid sections, group sections, AND solo sections. 

Take your pick on what you do.

Everyone on the server can be one place in the scheme of it and either the server succeeds or fails depending upon what is done -- IE if nobody decides to do the solo sections, that spy who had to be stopped wasnt.  If nobody stops the dragon... well... 

What actually HARMS the endgame soloist crafter is No-Drop and bind on acquire.  You can amass enough coin to buy a kingdom with your wares but it will not buy you a dragon drop. 

As a primary crafter in old games, I was able to buy things like a cloak of flames.  In more recent games, an excess of money while nice doesnt allow you to deck yourself out.

Personally I think there should be ways for a soloist to get raid-level gear given enough time and effort and luck.

It is convenient.

Have you tried Warhammer? 

You are coming FROM vanguard and thinking WoW or EQ2 -- sorry...  EQ2 is vanguard lite.  Some extra content and the newish battlegrounds, but if you have done vanguard thoroughly, stepping back to EQ2 isnt going to be all that useful.  WoW isnt either, although it is more different than VG than EQ2 is. 

Where to go from vanguard....   Horizons as a dragon?  Really there isnt much I can think of for your situation but WoW and EQ2 both probably are not it.

You could always do Vanguard.  That is sort of Everquest 2.5 as it stands.

Note this assumes you have a good computer -- otherwise EQ2. 

I am downloading the closed beta of iris.  Nice that you had beta keys here to grab.

Kitsu might also work -- both are good in that case.

Kitsu saga is the new grand fantasia.

If you want an actual kiddy type game that has some fun elements to it, there is always "free realms"

Actually the way they handled cataclysm pretty much says they are not looking at a WOW 2 anytime soon.

I mean they are revamping the whole old world and have changed the talent trees to essentially make thru the new cap, like the game just released. 

It is essentially WoW 2 without releasing a new game.

While I have come back to other games before I have NOT come back to a PVP game without a new server being opened.