Today, I was able to catch the latest episode of Equal Perspectives. Troy and Karen were talking about epics and mentioned some ideas that Mighty Dar had about grouping. This got me to thinking about what I would like to see in Vanguard or even another not too distant MMO. I have fond memories from Everquest of Epic questing as well as some great reward based quests, such as DON. I would really like to see the developers find a creative way to bring players back together and give them more reasons to group together. I think the biggest problem, I have had with Vanguard is the fact that there is so much content and so many different things to work on in Vanguard, that the population is fractured, even among guild mates. My idea is to offer a centralized reward system to players based upon quests they complete similar to the one used in the Dragons or Norrath expansion, but on a much grander scale. The way the DoN system worked was that players banded together and would accept an instanced quest. Upon completion of these quests, they were rewarded with either ebons or radiant crystals. Once you have enough crystals, you could purchase equipment from vendors. While these items weren’t top notch, they were good. It was a great way to gear up my characters and I don’t recall ever having a problem finding a DoN group.
What I would like to see in Vanguard would be the same type of system, but not limited to just one expansion. Where they went wrong with DoN was that you could only get ebons and radiant crystals from DoN instances. I would hope that Vanguard would not make that same mistake. Instead of limiting the reward system to just one expansion, carry the concept throughout the game. Instead of making a brand new system with every expansion, simply add more rewards available at a higher cost and offer new quests and instances. This is one of the primary reasons that I ended up leaving Everquest. Every time a new expansion came out, there was brand new system in place, that made any earlier expansions irrelevant. By offering a universal system, players would be bettering themselves no matter which quest line they were working on.
Speaking of epics, I could see how this concept could be integrated into the same system. Each class could have its own series of tasks and storylines that would need to be completed. If they were incorporated into this system, there would be plenty of incentive for other players to come along, as they would be receiving credit towards their rewards. Perhaps you would even offer a bonus to players assisting in the quest by offering them with a higher reward rate. Also, to avoid exploitation, these quests would only be available as a quest line series and not repeatable once completed. Access quests to raid zones could be handled similarly.
And what about raid gear? I firmly believe that raid gear should be noticeably better than quested and crafted gear, but not ridiculously so. The way I would put it, is that better quested gear should be attainable by the average person and would be necessary to be able to visit the current raid zones. Crafted gear and quested gear should be of similar value. Raid gear should be much more difficult to get and require defeating much more challenging encounters.
Another idea that I really liked was evolving items from Everquest, I’m assuming Everquest II has something similar. These items were always a lot of fun and give you more feeling of accomplishment. I think that evolving items could even be used as epic type items, similar to what Karen and Troy were talking about. The item could received fairly easily to begin with, but to reach full effectiveness, a line of quests would need to be completed. I thought that was a most excellent idea. Hopefully, game developers will take notice.
All of these ideas require the use of instancing. I know that that a lot of people strongly oppose instancing. That is something that I never did understand. The benefits to instancing is an environment that will be free of lag, no contested content and allow the group to progress at a reasonable rate. The only reasons that I can think of that you wouldn’t like instancing would be poorly designed zones and lack of contested content. Honestly, I don’t understand the desire for strongly contested content. I prefer to have fun playing my games, not fighting with rude or greedy players that do not share or have respect for others.
Anyway, I had to get that off my mind and perhaps someday we will see something like this in Vanguard or some other MMO game sometime soon.
