So, Sony has the teaser information out for the next EQ expansion. Apparently, they’ve run out of ways to make bigger and nastier monsters and the same loot but with +50 HP attractive. This may actually be a good thing:
EverQuest: Depths of Darkhollow will have you adventuring in raw, bleak caverns and facing the most formidable monsters yet! Featuring 5 new feral predators, spectacular new underground environments and countless new missions, raids and events!
Monster Missions: Play EverQuest as you never have before and see Norrath through the eyes of some of its fearsome and powerful creatures as you step into their form to do battle against their ancient foes! Change into a creature with different abilities from your own to experience. Experience EverQuest lore first hand through the eyes of another character in Monster Missions and unlock the ability to use more powerful monsters!
Spirit Shrouds: Adventure with your friends of any levels. Spirit Shrouds will allow you to play as a creature at any level below your own. So don the form of a lower level creature and join your friends in battle while earning experience for your normal character!
So, by my count, that’s 5 new “classes” that might actually just possibly provide really different play experiences. And reverse sidekicking (definitely needed in every game released; although forward sidekicking is nice too). There’s also something about evolving items, but frankly I suspect these will be like the artifacts in DAoC:ToA.
I doubt it’ll radically transform the game, but given they just went through pains to make SWG more like EQ and gutted the game to do so, I’m a bit nonplussed that they’re now making EQ go off in different directions. Who knows, in another 10 years maybe they’ll have at least one full-featured game. I like the possibility of them at least growing the game in some new directions, because god knows, someone needs to with one of these games.
Spirit Shrouds: Adventure with your friends of any levels. Spirit Shrouds will allow you to play as a creature at any level below your own. So don the form of a lower level creature and join your friends in battle while earning experience for your normal character!
Why can’t this go the other way… Most of my friends are higher level than I am…
I wonder how the reverse-sidekicking experience will work. It would be really great if the experience you earned while sidekicked down scaled to your actual level. In City of Heroes, if you sidekicked up, your experience gained scaled down to your actual level, but if you exemplared down (reverse sidekicking) you gained ZERO xp… not exactly an enticing option.
If you can “sk-down” and retain whatever average xp/hour you would have been earning at your actual level, this will be a great boon for people wanting to team with friends of different levels.
I believe it works similar to what you’ve proposed (albeit with some type of “penalty” to the higher level character) in EQII, so I would expect EQ is implementing the same type of system.
The problem with earning the same experience is that, presumably, if you’re playing with lower level friends, you would like to eventually play with them without needing to sidekick down to them. So if you and they earn exp at the same rate, they’ll never catch up.
Ha! I just realized this was about the original EQ, rather than EQ2 – as you can see, I haven’t paid much attention to any of the SoE offerings of the past 8 years or so. :wink:
I sure hope this idea takes off. I really have been wanting something like this for a long, long time. The synergy between possesing monsters and sidekicking is a great one, possibly “the answer” for most MMOGs.
In addition being able to group with lower level friends, you can refresh your game experience by playing something new, like an NPC mage, NPC Warrior, or some weird monster.
The possibility to impersonate a monster and play along a low level player is a “vertical” type of development that is positive for a game that has always kept expanding “horizontally” like a stain. Adding mudflated content over and over and over.
That idea adds a potential of new interactions and mechanics that could break a boring habit.
But for the rest it seems to me that they are actually running OUT of ideas, so they are now taking into consideration the most insane ideas just in the hope to diversify the offer from EQ2.
It looks like a “patchwork” instead of a coherent development with a precise aim.
Any movement in a new direction in the genre is good.
Any movement in a new direction in the genre is good.
Any movement in a n… aww, fuck it, you won’t get it anyway.
Well, sometimes you gain zero XP. Exemplaring after you got clobbered five times in that TF still allows you to make progress in that you’re working off the penalty twice as efficiently. Then there’s the influence gain, but yeah, influence is pretty worthless after a certain point.
Personally, I think every MMORPG should have this option in some form or other. I’m sick of having to worry about keeping my level alongside a friend’s, and it’s frankly baffling that devs seem so reluctant to stea^H^H^H^H adopt this solution.
In EQ2 the “mentoring” has been around for a few months now, this is the reverse-sidekick system you mention. You target a person in your group, and use the mentor command to bring your level down to match theirs. Your armour scales down automatically (in theory - with some exceptions) and you can only use the combat abilities or spells that you would normally have had at that level.
The person being mentored gets a bit of bonus XP in addition to the normal XP he would get. The person mentoring does gain XP also. Afraid I don’t know the actual numbers, but while it’s not 100% of what he would get in a group of his own level, it’s certainly enough that you see it moving at an acceptable rate. The exception is if you’re mentoring somebody REALLY low level (like under 10), I believe you get nothing at that point.
Not only does this mentoring system let anybody keep anybody company at any rank, but it also means that you can go back and experience content that you might have missed the first time around.
IMO it’s a wonderful system. It lets whole guilds arrange for hunting nights no matter how mixed their levels, it lets anybody play with anybody, and it allows anybody to go back and enjoy lower level content they didn’t get to the first time around.
I assume it’s the same system they’re implementing in EQ1 and if it works the same way as in EQ2 then it’s going to be a big success.
