Initial Implementation of PK-specific dungeon scheduled for February

[Ibn]

This will also be in the January LttP, but as we're getting ready to start spec'ing these out, I wanted to let you know what the status on this content is.

Currently we plan to implement the first few iterations of these dungeons for February. The first few iterations will be for lower-levels. Those of you who are 80+ are unfortunately going to have to wait... and yes, I know that I'm talking about the vast majority of you.

Why do it this way? Well, if we screw up really really badly, the worst we've done is hose balance and gameplay on DT from 1-80. From what I know of DT, quickly leveling to 80 is not terribly difficult now, so we won't do too much damage. The goal is to make sure we have a basic mechanic that works and is fun before we start implementing it at the higher levels.

We can't move forward with this at the levels where it really counts -- 126+ -- until after the expansion pack at any rate.

I've been doing my best to keep up with the original thread and it's FIVE HUNDRED RESPONSES (wow). For right now, here's what I could really use:

How quickly should you be able to advance in the 1-80 dungeons to make them more valuable than macroing? To make it so you'd rather fight your way into the dungeon and hold it than turn on a macro and walk away?

[Blazin Mage]

eh 1-80 really isnt a big deal i agree, Sucks us "bigger levels have to wait but i see where your comming from, SO how fast to get to level 1-80 make it at least a few days worth or the NPC..... Getting to level 80 in 1 day isnt really possible by hunting but in a few days it is so id say a few days to a week of the NPC, so id judge ur XP per click on that.... Glad that this is going in though..... great Job IBN and team!!!! :)

[Eggburt]

People that worked hard to get to 150+ will now be fighting carebears that just recently moved that are already 100+. This is the worst idea ever..

(feedback is good. personal attacks are bad.)

[Samuel__]

Very nice ibn :)

Hopefully this will bring back many of my retired clan members to ac!

[Ftuoil_Xelrash]

Yeah go ahead and dig the final few feet of the dt server's grave. You effin carebear's finaly put a the last nail in the coffin.

IBN, Way to shrug off all the great suggestions the REAL players of the server had and fry any chance the server had to be a competitve battle ground.

IBN, go ahead and change the message on the launch page to something along the lines of:

Welcome to Quaketide, Where and level 1 can login for the first time and complete with people who have played the server hardcore since its birth. There is no compition on this server and everyone is the same. Don't try to be harsh or a carebear, who started on this server last week, will report you and get you banned.

Current population : 4356 Level 275 characters

[Sprawl]

Goodbye Egg

[Feeble]

I think its a good idea to test it out first! I dont mind waiting.

[frogman]

i cant believe someone would be that (incorrect), you DONT WANT NEW PEOPLE TO FIGHT? you want to keep the populations at FIVE HUNDRED AT MAX? you dont want something to FIGHT OVER?

[Shon_Tsu]

Right now I can team a reroll with a mage and macro to 50 in a day or two. From 50 solo I could macro to 80 in about a week. Obviously if someone is starting from scratch on their own both stages would take longer.

Something to bare in mind when evaluating the success is that likely the high level dungeons will have much more competition than the lower ones. To replace macroing they have to be viable xp replacements taking into account the time/effort fighting for the dungeon. Put another way if I fight for 2 hours over a dungeon and only make 10 mill xp in that time because of all the fighting, then I'm better off macroing still. XP considerations cant be based on using it continuously, it has to be based on an average number of uses while fighting for control.

[Cosmo Memory]

My last reroll I was level 1-60 in one day and 60-75 the next, I hit 80 on the third day so it really is exceptionally easy to hit level 80.

[Happyb1]

This is going to kill any rp aspect of the game on DT. And this won't affect macros one bit. So instead of UCM while they sleep and pk while they are playing, they are now going to UCM while they sleep and pk/xp while they are playing.

And if everyone is at this xp dungeon, then people that actually want to play the game the way it was designed are screwed both xp wise, and by the fact that there will be noone to fight anywhere else.

Why not just play Quake?

[HartRend]

Ok all of you morons whining about keeping DT clean from carebears, well news flash but i don't know if you've looked at the server population lately but its getting pretty G O D D A M N dull, yes, it sux, we'll have a bunch of carebears coming over, but if you are as "uber" as you talk smack about, you'll have no prob killing them anway... THUMBS UP IBN, and way to take it slow, no need to nerf stuff later, we'll just be happy when you make it better, as far as the lever and time to lvl, well if its worth fighting for i'd like to see 80 hit in like 3 days, IE 3 days of 6 hours playing. so a character thats about 20 hours old should be around 80... IBN U R A PIOMP!

[frogman]

"So instead of UCM while they sleep and pk while they are playing, they are now going to UCM while they sleep and pk/xp while they are playing"

clearly an intelligent statement.

and you dont see anyone when you're macroing anyways. havent you noticed that no ones in dungeons anymore? this will give us something to fight over.

if you dont like this idea you're a freaking carebear and there's no two ways about it.

[Zuz]

maybe if you make this place into an area where people spawns randomly so people dont camp portal drops and is something like marketplace would be sweet.

then whoever is in the main part of the dungeon where will be a really big place will get xp, weather fighting or not. If you are the you should get the XP, the people who survives the longest will get the most xp.


im picturing a place like marketplace, people will spawn randomly in the side rooms and the main room being maybe 10x the size of that main room with some obstacles but make sure there is no way people can get trapped in any place.

a place where melees can hide from mages in extreme cases AND where mages can jump spin/break away from melees at some cases.

also put in a timer like if fellow get to stay for 1 buff cycle they can get X amount of bonus xp. This way you will make sure that other guilds will try to take over.

[Ibn]

Right now I can team a reroll with a mage and macro to 50 in a day or two. From 50 solo I could macro to 80 in about a week. Obviously if someone is starting from scratch on their own both stages would take longer.

Something to bare in mind when evaluating the success is that likely the high level dungeons will have much more competition than the lower ones. To replace macroing they have to be viable xp replacements taking into account the time/effort fighting for the dungeon. Put another way if I fight for 2 hours over a dungeon and only make 10 mill xp in that time because of all the fighting, then I'm better off macroing still. XP considerations cant be based on using it continuously, it has to be based on an average number of uses while fighting for control.

Excellent point.

Regarding the competition, I am hoping that members of the DT community will considering using a slot to reroll and try these out, so that I get some valuable feedback on this.

From what I'm hearing so far, it doesn't sound like there's much point in bothering with a dungeon like this for the lowest levels. Maybe drop the 1-20 and 20-40? Would anyone really use them?

[kioskies]

For a focused gamer with decent armor, maybe even buffs and a rend, level 50 can be easily achieved within 15-25 hours (solo) nowadays. I don't know the exact numbers (total xp / time spent), but you can calculate average xp/hour with those figures.

Past 50 is where it begins to become tricky. You begin to see the dungeons you hunt in have more people (or more significantly, have other people at all). This is because the time spent hunting per level begins to increase in due course (people are staying in these dungeons longer), and also because 'higher-level-than-possibly-intended' characters will be hunting these dungeons for whatever reason, whether it be to burn vitae, easy macroing, salvage, etc.

I am willing to guess that the change from 50-80 would take AT LEAST 30 more hours of hunting (solo). I say hunting specifically for a reason, this is the level range where the the character begins to do his 'necessary' quests (knorr helm, maybe pick up a weeping, essence glutton, etc) that can't just be given to him by his other characters (let's face it, less than 1 in 200 serious new characters on Darktide don't have a 'main' by now). This generally will take 2-5 hours depending on how long this player needs to search for a party, but is irrelevant in this case as the main focus appears to be direct xp gain.

Let me remind you that there are several directions in which this xp dungeon can take.

Primarily:
- Purely xp
- Xp/items

A new account on Darktide would be hard-pressed to have any advantage just leveling on their own (with no item 'drops' from the NPCs, only xp) with this new dungeon. There is a controversy now as to whether such disadvantages to newcomers are good (as has been traditional of darktide since day 1) or bad (some say darktide needs new blood). I certainly do not have the answer to this predicament nor do I have a strong-felt opinion either way.

Good luck making the right decisions.

kioskies

[Zuz]

From what I'm hearing so far, it doesn't sound like there's much point in bothering with a dungeon like this for the lowest levels. Maybe drop the 1-20 and 20-40? Would anyone really use them?

I think this will bring fun to the people who enjoy noob wars, im not sure about the 20-40 but the level 1-20 or even 10-20 would be fun to some people... not sure tho

[kioskies]

"From what I'm hearing so far, it doesn't sound like there's much point in bothering with a dungeon like this for the lowest levels. Maybe drop the 1-20 and 20-40? Would anyone really use them?"

Oh god yes. Low level pking is great (I'm not being sarcastic). The lower level dungeons would put a oldschool spin on modern fighting.

Plus it would be a great way to kick up the rerolls.

Don't throw out the 1-20 21-40 dungeons. If you come to the point where you can't design a new dungeon layout because of lack of time, just make them a copy of another one of the dungeons. I for one wont complain.

[Delupin]

Ibn,

Is it still planned to implement multiple instances of the xp dungeon?

If so, roughly 20 million xp every hour would seem a fair rate -- that way, those who played for a whole day could, theoretically, hit level 80 within 24 hours. Play 8 hours per day and you'd reach level 80 in 3 days; 4 hours per day and it's 6 days, etc, etc. This would ensure the first few days would see a tremendous amount of round-the-clock traffic within the dungeon and the ensuing action would be quite the event to witness.

If there's only to be a single dungeon and a single lever, the quantity of xp per use would probably have to be raised considerably.

[indignity]

yeah, the lvl 1-40 would be used... definately... by every person w/o a character on DT that wants to hit 40


also... what about making PK's give experience while inside of these dungeons? give people a reason to battle, rather than stand around being nice to each other...

[Shepard's Wolf]

great idea for a NEW server.
it seems all the white dot server people love it... and we hate it... mmm wonder why?

[kinslayer]

i think this is dumb free lvs? u might has well make UCming legal again it would take longer to lv and everyone could do it...why create the possably of messing up when all u needed do is say ok DT u can all UCM and police urselfs

[Sick nick]

I being someone that doesnt play DT, would use lower lvl dungeon to level up. Isn't the point of the xp lever to get more people play DT? If just give it for higher level doesnt that defeat what trying to do?

It's not like someone who plays DT ragular can't get into some of that action with a reroll? Populations being what they are and where they going.... any help to get someone to play, from the lowest level to the highest, helps? :confused:

As I read before. DT isnt about doing the white world fluff. It's about players' vs players' battles

[Roland Deschain]

A week to get to 80 does sound about reasonable for what a good powerleveller can do. I don't go nearly that fast (level 32 after 16 hours in-game on my newest archer) but most people probably do.

I would *definitely* reroll a trade mule or two to participate in these new dungeons. I don't even care about the XP that much.. just would love to have people my level to PvP against.

And hiya Happy.. Hate to say it, but I disagree with you on this one. Don't know how much action you've seen with your new character, but in those 16 hours on my new character, I've been killed 8 times, and have been involved in ZERO real fights. Every death was "so-and-so the lvl 140 one-shotted you" Noobs just plain aren't coming to DT any more, so the lack of PvP action for us "real" players that you fear is already there. At least now we'll know where to go to have at least a chance of finding a somewhat even fight.

BTW, I don't like the idea of the dungeon handing out items. There should be at least SOME things that a player still has to work for, IMO.

Oh, and one more thing! Can't remember who made the comment about keeping in mind the time lost gaining XP due to fighting.... I think I kind of disagree there. The whole reason the majority of the server is so attached to macro's is so they can be competitive in PvP. Well, with these dungeons, if there's anybody there, you're competing on even footing with other players. If there's noone there, you're levelling up quickly to a level where there ARE more players to PvP against. Either way, you get what all of Darktide is claiming to want. Competitive characters.

[Shon_Tsu]

I'll definately be making a reroll for this, perhaps a few. I'm looking foward to the change of pace of fighting in these dungeons, I probably wont even level beyond the dungeon restricts on some of the noob ones just to have somewhere to go for a change. I dont know if enough other people will have the same idea though. Hopefully they will, I'm looking foward to some fun.

Interesting how many of the people against this have either bought chars or macroed to high levels (some while reporting other macroers). This is a great idea Ibn, and the sooner we get more people on DT and to a fighting level the better :D.

Oh, and yeah dont drop items, just make it a fighting spot. People will still need to hunt shards for gsa and go get their weeping, and so on.

[Drainer_of_DT]

the lower level dungeons would be useful for leveling up harder pvp templates...

I say leave them in.


Also, please make these dungeons a LOT more efficient than macroing.

Keep in mind that people can pull 60-80 mil an hour through macroing certain areas.

The level 100+ dungeons will have to be much better than even THAT- around 150-300 mil an hour would be neccessary.

Otherwise, the implementation of these dungeons will be pointless.

Also, please try to get out more than 1 of these dungeons per level range come february. Otherwise, the dungeons will be completely dominated by the 2 largest monarchies on the server. Other monarchies will have no chance to take advantage of this.

[Verio]

Id say start lower on the XP lever for 1-20, dont make it 20 mill an hr or somethin stupid like that... honestly, I think it should take a week of hard gaming to make it to 80. I dont know anyone who comes over to DT not knowing anyone or having anything that can make it to 80 in one week without being Powerleveled, and then UCMing in a hive or some crap. 1 week of solid gaming to make 80 sounds fair to me. I for one look forward to extra people to fight with, I may not be able to go in the dungeon, but you better believe Im gunna have some fun when they exit at level 80 :) Ibn, props on this, DarkTide definately needed a boost in population, and I for one have told at least 5 friends who quit and plan to come back just for some action on here. Its pretty sad when you login and see 352 players, on a server designed for 10x that. Anyways, thanks again :)
~Verio/Panic Attack'

[Roland Deschain]

The level 100+ dungeons will have to be much better than even THAT- around 150-300 mil an hour would be neccessary.

Otherwise, the implementation of these dungeons will be pointless.



I disagree. These do not need to be more efficient than macroing. Everyone's excuse for macroing is that they can't compete... This system ensures that either...

A) You ARE competing with others near your level,

or..

B) You're levelling very quickly.

There's no need to make everybody an insta-80. If there are others in their level range, they'll have action.. if not, they'll be higher level in a reasonable amount of time. If people are STILL not happy, then their reason for wanting to macro was not really about PvPing, but about wanting to be able to brag about being super-uber. Those people don't deserve anything handed to them anyway. Bragging rights should be the property of those who've put in their time already.

[Caffeine]

Turbine has done nothing but dumb this game down since the original dev team left for other projects. That is the reason for the low population. Noone wants to play a game catered to the slow and weak. This is just another step in the wrong direction.

Maybe next time you will stop listening to people and their dumb ideas to dumb things down.

[burzum]

if macros and 3rd party cheats were against the CoC, this might be a good alternative. since you won't do that, it won't work. people will take the easy road to a high level so having to actually lift a finger (other than to hit start) is pointless.

[Feeble]

Aye, do not make the dugeons give you items, that way u still have to hunt for armor and such.

[HolloTip]

Sounds like fun. No matter what the exp rate in this one all we have to worry about is people getting to lev 80 quickly, and thats still a very very long way from 200, which is what the majority of the server seems to be these days.

I'm sure it will breathe some new life into this server.

[Drainer_of_DT]

If you only implement dungeons for levels 1-80, you will not adequately test the effects of adding the dungeons on DT.

Fighting will greatly reduce the amount of XP individual players receive. There is going to be relatively little fighting in the 1-80 level dungeons.

For Feb, please at least implement duneons for levels 1-120. It would be consistant with the 20 level range. You could then stay with that pattern when the expansion raises the level cap.

[Alissa]

First off I really had to stop laughing and shaking my head over this thread.
Turbine is finally doing something for Darktide ONLY, and you whine over it.

You worry that you will have an influx of carebears to your server that will run willy nilly to use the levers to be able to run amok on "YOUR" server.

Newsflash, many of use carebears DO NOT, want to come visit Darktide. You have ensured yourselves by words and deeds to keep your server population low. To fight the same people over and over again endlessly.

Someone on the FF boards said don't the PK allegiances work together to level or is it too much hard work?

Getting levelling levers makes one wonder does it not?

Anyway, get over yourselves, embrace what Turbine is finally doing for you. Let them do it carefully or you will once again be whining the FUBARed Darktide.

Do not worry, us little ol carebears will sit back and watch how it all plays out over there, not coming to visit.

[Rebel Yell]

Us carebears who aren't willing to macro would like the 1-20 and 20-40 ones. Or or you only catering to the already macroed crowd with this initiative.

I would think that you would want to encourage some new players also. Even if you don't care about the existing carebear server populations what about the new expansion people who might not want to macro first to become eligible for the UCM lever.

[Lutieus]

XP dungeons would not cause a newbie problem.

a) If someone would quit DT because they can't handle dying, easier xp wouldn't make any difference. They'd still quit, just at a higher level.

b) People will still have to acquire equipment. There's only so much prepatch armor out there, and it's getting fairly expensive now. If newbies can put in enough time to afford tinkered armor, whether they tinker it or buy it that way, odds are they deserve it. Even if someone opted instead for sharded GSX, they'd still have to get it somehow.

c) We need more players. Simple as that. Right now there aren't a lot of people, so some who do play get bored and leave, and the cycle feeds itself. Other people quit for RL reasons or because they want to try another game. Without a fresh source of new players, DT's just going to wither away.

Us carebears who aren't willing to macro would like the 1-20 and 20-40 ones. Or or you only catering to the already macroed crowd with this initiative.
How would low-level dungeons cater to people who have already macroed?

[chakaal]

Well I don't know- I think there are a group of established people who can level quickly... but that's not everyone. You are dealing with a very diverse group- the levers will certainly not help everyone.

I'm faily well established and after creating a new sword char it took me weeks of part time play to get him up to 80. Most of this was at ~7 mil/hour using my mage to powerlevel.

I agree that we need to raise the population of the server, and this is the way to do it. These sub 126 dungeons will certainly appeal more to newcomers than established players- for a newcomer they will be TONS better than hunting and mixing with the 126+ crowd, for people with established hunting spots they will probably not be as good.

I guess in the end I would say make these dungeons with newcomers in mind, rather than rerolls.

I would like to see something more interesting than "clicking on an NPC" for getting the xp though.. not sure what, I'll have to think about it. Maybe for the 20-40 dungeon you get one level for handing in a C note or something (3 levels for a D note?). for 40-60 an M note per level, etc.. I haven't read all 5000 responses, but perhaps you could start a thread for suggestions in this area..

[Verio]

I see a lot of people referring to Quake and blah blah... but isnt that the whole point of DT? Hell, I only logon for 2 reasons... one, to level, which is usually a secondary goal for me, and 2, frag people. I spend countless hours ingame, just looking for some helpless soul to murder. So, call it Quaktide.. thats what its all about.

Anyway, back to the whole point of the thread, I suggest making 2 copies of each dungeon, respectively one north and one south on the map, or east/west, however you wanna do it, just make them non-recallable, and somewhat of a run to get to. It would be stupid to stick them next to a housing portal so a constant influx of people are always rushing in, instead you would have a party of 5 people runnin outside of a dungeon. This would stop people from dieing and just running back every 3 minutes like a trade bot, instead it would hafta portal hop and finally reach the area after a long run. I think the dungeon should portal you outside or to your lifestone once you reach the maximum level for that dungeon if possible? Dungeons should be a maze of somesort, or some kind of battlefield middle, where people can hide behind things, not just some open area. Dont stick creatures or useless crap in the dungeon, no one wants it nor likes it, plus you'll just cause more lag in a (hopefully) laggy dungeon due to lots of players in it. Make it easy for level 1's who login to find out where the dungeon is without having to look it up on Maggies webpage. This should be something easy for them to find, thats the whole point, right? Maybe in their welcome letter or something, or a town crier message giving a good hint? XP shouldnt be shared by fellowship, should only be for the person using the lever. Hmm, thats about it for now.
~Verio/PanicAttack'

"What we do in life, echo's in eternity"

[Virindi Clown]

Hahahahahaha why do you people not get this, no matter how many times it is said?

How in the world will this xp lever dungeon idea even begin to stop macroing?

And yeah, you may as well keep the lower level dungeons. They'll help people out who want to make new chars and new people who come to DT.

[Grey-smoke]

IBN,

My two cents...I've played DT since Aug 99, never macrod or joined a chain till I was lvl 100+.

1st Yes I think there should be xp dungeons for 1-20. Recommend Approx 5hr in-game time to achieve lvl 20 by soloing this dungeon, because DT has the extreme-of-the extreme starting templates.

2nd levels 20-40 double the time at least, or make it around 12hr in-game time.

3rd levels 40-60 at least 48hrs or upto 3 days.

4th levels 60-80 approx 4 days recommended.

Note: These times are under IDEAL circumstances i.e. with very few pvp deaths. Newbs will quickly join an allegiance to help them level in safety, but I'd still add a week or even two to the above estimated completion time due to pvp deaths in/around the dungeons.

P.S. I think it is important to have the NPC spawn randomly throughout the dungeon, making macroing it harder. I like the suggestion of being able to turn in notes for xp too, this is a good alternative to just the xp dungeon and promotes solo hunting, you'd just have to carefully figure in the math but it is a good suggestion to low level leveling too.

P.S.S. Please carefully design the dungeons for PvP fights. First priority needs to be to have as little LAG Graphics in there as possible. Quality over quantity. Just look at our dress styles on DT and you can tell we arent to concerned over apperances, its all about quality. Also you may want to consider allowing a PK to enter the xp dungeon portal even if he has been recently attacked by another PK, this may help to keep some high levels from camping the dungeon portals, unless the said pk went on the offensive then he should have restricted access, is this something your capable of coding in?

[Definition]

I'd rather have 500 more o.0 playing every night than fighting the same 4 people and 2 gank squads every night. This will increase the amount of people playing and lure atleast some people out from macroing.. (and back into feeding atleast some of us with di's :o)

[Roland Deschain]

How in the world will this xp lever dungeon idea even begin to stop macroing?



Well, I can tell you one way it'd help put a dent in macroing... more reporting.

I don't report now, and the reason is simple. I understand the argument that it isn't fair that everybody got to macro their characters for 3 years, then the gates were locked on everybody else. I don't agree with that argument, but I understand where people are coming from. Therefore, I don't report.

Give people another option, and all of a sudden that excuse is completely invalid. I will report macros after these dungeons are in place, and I'm sure there are many more like me who will see that there's no reason any more to excuse those who still continue to break the game rules.

[Jida]

There will be a whole army of Eggberts running around at level 80 at least.

The inronic thing will be that there will be PKs trying to nuke the cattle while the Antis protect them and the the cattle could care less as long as they align with the strongest side (i.e. AB all over again).

[Roland Deschain]

Sorry for two posts in a matter of just a few minutes, but I just remembered one other suggestion I wanted to make before I go log in.....

Ibn, it's rumored that a new red server may be coming some day. I don't know how realistic that rumor is, but anyway.... If that day comes, please *don't* implement these dungeons on that server. IMO, the only reason they're a good idea for Darktide, is because the situation there is already so screwed up from UCMs being allowed for 4 years.

[Shepard's Wolf]

heres a fun idea... lets leave dt alone and put this on A NEW PVP SERVER

[Cezium]

:O
This will be very enjoyable.

[indignity]

yeah, seriously, if I had worked as hard as Ftuoil and his clan had worked to get what I had, I'd be pissed if suddenly people were given the same thing for free... that's like... unnecessary effort on your part... it means that all of your effort is now worthless...

I mean, I see that you're trying to keep this server alive... but at least give the oldschool guys something extra for their effort...

[TheFetus]

Id say, make the dungeons, with decent (not great, but decent) xp monsters in there... not only would you have to contend with other pks but the critters too

Or, as someone suggested, make pk xp boosted in this dungeon...

but guys, dont say "Im quitting ac, theyre ruining dt with this idea..." without trying it out... for once, they may pull something off. this idea has promise, so Id say try it out before going and deleting your subscriptions.

i dont know how this should go, but i definitely like the n00b pk wars... would be cool... like the old days... i plan on clearing a mule for a free space

[Caffeine]

They are only creating more safe zones by adding xp dungeons with level restrictions on them.

Further dumbing the game down and making it even more impossible to find people to fight.

Once again, mark my words! Small guilds will not stand a chance and will be forced to macro instead.

[Silifi Of Death]

They are only creating more safe zones by adding xp dungeons with level restrictions on them.

Further dumbing the game down and making it even more impossible to find people to fight.

I'd agree, to an extent. But, if they do it right, that won't be true.

For one thing, weren't you saying that if they implemented this there would be a ton of carebears coming to DT? If there are, they will fight eachother. They'll get caught up in the DT atmosphere and they'll start fighting eachother at least a little. In the meantime, you can make a reroll and kill them. If you can't, that obviously means you're not such a great PKer to begin with.

Ibn, I have one thing to suggest to you. Make sure that the restrictions are overlapping. Don't make is 1-20, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79. Make it more like 1-39, 20-59, 40-79, and 60-99. If you don't, that'll just screw it up. You have to make sure that these don't become safezones like Caffeine said, especially when it gets to the 70-80 range. At that point there are enough real DTers that can actually make sure they don't get too far without having to actually experience DT. No one should get a free ride even at low levels.

[Thanatos_DT]

Yeah go ahead and dig the final few feet of the dt server's grave. You effin carebear's finaly put a the last nail in the coffin.

IBN, Way to shrug off all the great suggestions the REAL players of the server had and fry any chance the server had to be a competitve battle ground.

IBN, go ahead and change the message on the launch page to something along the lines of:

Welcome to Quaketide, Where and level 1 can login for the first time and complete with people who have played the server hardcore since its birth. There is no compition on this server and everyone is the same. Don't try to be harsh or a carebear, who started on this server last week, will report you and get you banned.

Current population : 4356 Level 275 characters

That was put beautifuly. I completely agree with you, it's TERRIBLE to see the game go this way.

I am not yet level 150 and I hardly mind the leveling system. I would have liked to see monsters that yield more XP, but this idea is just rediculous. After thinking hard about this idea, it is most certainly the end for AC: DT as I and everyone else knew and loved it.

This will be a whole new game, and it will in no way be a better one.


Goodbye DT.

[Caffeine]

The problem is that they are not looking at the whole picture. Ibn is throwing out a half-ass solution to please people. Think about it, what is gonna stop large xp whored/UCM'd guilds from camping the entrance to these places 24/7 and completely controling the dungeon? Oh that's right...Nothing! So yea it will be fun and rewarding if you are in a large guild, but if not, you better be prepared to be disappointed and crawl back to your UCM hole.

Get rid of the level restrictions and let us all fight it out like men. Bring back the meaning of Free-For-All.

Oh and btw..there is noway any carebears are gonna be attracted to this idea once it's put in place. They will get sick of being griefed just like they always have and go crying back to their safe world.

[Thanatos_DT]

Just reading through this thread is making me really depressed.

I read *one* pro xp-lever post that made sense/didn't make me want to unsub AC tonight:


Implement the xp-lever on a new pk server.

Don't utterly destroy Darktide.

Please!!!


[edit]
I would rather play my old character on darktide with a low server population of REAL pkers and DTers who know about REAL MMORPG gameplay, WHILE ALSO playing a new character on a new pk server which will clearly immitate a whole new game.

Being forced to accept this xp-lever idea is being forced to unsub-because I won't accept it.

[Virindi Clown]

First of all, this isn't "free levels" for everyone. It hasn't even really been suggested how much xp you will be able to make for this, yet people are still going off on a tangent about how it makes everyone's effort worthless, yadda, yadda, yadda. Do you really think they're just going to basically hand over a hundred billion xp to everyone?

Wow, that sure is logical!

Now, I don't agree with this 100%, but DT needs some SERIOUS help, and this is a good temporary solution. It will get people onto DT and it will get them fighting. It looks like it is going to be done no matter what now, since there has been such overwhelming support for it.

I still think it is a better idea to just drop allegiance housing barriers and that kind of business that we've suggested. Ibn, you guys really need to hurry up and realize that this is going to have to be done someday. The problems that sucked the purpose out of DT in the first place will still be there when these "xp lever" dungeons are implemented.

Don't let this be just another band-aid. The wound the band-aids keep being stuck on is festering as far as I am conerned, and more band-aids sure as heck don't fix that.

[Shon_Tsu]

I have yet to see anyone explain why this will ruin Darktide. The only arguments I've seen are taking away the accomplishments of the high levels (99% of which UCMd and chained), and...errmmm, ruins RP?

[-EtG-]

LOL stupidest idea ever.

Can I ask you if you'll unban all perma banned accounts?

Remove aegis?

Remove weeping?

Remove wards?

Remove housing?

Remove half the high level dungeons?

Remove most lifestones?

Remove Candeth?

Because if you don't the game will still suck & all your changes will still be useless.

You do realise if I wanted to I could get a group of guys to hold these dungeons via macroing? Already got a PvP plugin, wouldn't be hard to program 5-10 mages to macro defend a dungeon while the rest macro the free exp.

Macroing > leveling

[Azrael]

Ftuoil_Xelrash: You mad because you dont have a level advantage anymore?

Learn to PK.

[Pinto]

I said this idea would be excellent if done right......




it is bieng done wrong.....


My faith in turbine is gone :-(

[Sopron]

Skinner, a pigeon and a kernel of corn come to mind.

[Shon_Tsu]

Heya Sopron!

What?

[Alok]

And finally, AC comes full circle. It's now headed down the path that Ultima Online paved long, LONG ago, and look where it's at now.

You want to waste time on PK content? Fine. Do it on your own dime, not mine. I was teetering on the edge of leaving AC as things already *were*, but this is the last straw for me. At least Diablo 2 is better balanced and doesn't have a monthly subscription fee.

[Vitae Boy]

People that worked hard to get to 150+ will now be fighting carebears that just recently moved that are already 100+. This is the worst idea ever..
Nice to know that you can't fight people 50 levels lower than you and win.
Welcome to Quaketide, Where and level 1 can login for the first time and complete with people who have played the server hardcore since its birth. There is no compition on this server and everyone is the same. Don't try to be harsh or a carebear, who started on this server last week, will report you and get you banned.
Just so you know, being a pain in the butt isn't against the rules.
And if everyone is at this xp dungeon, then people that actually want to play the game the way it was designed are screwed both xp wise, and by the fact that there will be noone to fight anywhere else.
It seems to me that this is more of a way to allow people to actually level w/o some lvl 126+ pwning them and camping their lifestone. It will be decent xp yes, but it won't be free, and it won't be too terribly fast. I'm sure there will be people to fight somewhere else. If you really need a fight, I'll come fight you as soon as I get big enough to be able to compete at all (lvl 126 vs. lvl 5 is NOT competition).
From what I'm hearing so far, it doesn't sound like there's much point in bothering with a dungeon like this for the lowest levels. Maybe drop the 1-20 and 20-40? Would anyone really use them?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They were most of the reason I liked this idea. Leave them in, so that I can have a chance fighting people my level and making decent points.
Spoken like a true carebear. IBN your a moron. Once again the carebears win the attention of the design team and eff over the one true winning aspect of darktide. For the love of GOD don't screw over the old school people like this.
There are MANY more "carebears" in the world than "real" players. I love PK. I like fighting people, but only if I have a chance of winning. Am I a "carebear" simply because I don't like all the "real" chars camping my lifestone, so they can kill someone 1/100 of their level because they can't do better? Sounds like a "real" player to me....
great idea for a NEW server.
Not going to happen, don't worry. Besides, there's no point in putting this in a new server. People will have a chance (and maybe some fun) in a new server.
Was nice game....
but when ur idea come i'll leave, may i find another good mmorpg but i didint think
why this idea?
xp xp and xp pfff. GL Ibn to find another job when all players left....
I completely agree. Good bye.
That is the reason for the low population. Noone wants to play a game catered to the slow and weak.
Slow and weak being not fast enough to run away because they havn't been playing long enough to run away from the "real" player that's about to 1 hit them and not able to fight back for the same reason?
Maybe next time you will stop listening to people and their dumb ideas to dumb things down.
I hate to tell you this, but people=money. Making people happy=more people=more money. Money=good. More money=better. Therefore making people happy=better.
More so, the further influx of unwanted folks (if you have to ask if I am talking about you, the reader of this post, then yes I am) because of these low level dungeons/xp levers is not worth it.
What's bad about more people. Are they gonna kill you?
Anyway, good luck with your "great white hope", and with that my last two accounts one from Nov '99 and one from Nov 2000 are cancled, and gone.
/me waves
yeah, seriously, if I had worked as hard as Ftuoil and his clan had worked to get what I had, I'd be pissed if suddenly people were given the same thing for free... that's like... unnecessary effort on your part... it means that all of your effort is now worthless...
IT'S NOT FREE!!! Ibn said specifically that people are supposed to fight over it. Fighting is not free, it's work.
Further dumbing the game down and making it even more impossible to find people to fight.
Bringing people up to a high enough level to fight the almighty Caffeine is in no way making it hard to find people to fight. Maybe it will make it impossible for the almighty Caffeine to find level 5's to fight.
Get rid of the level restrictions and let us all fight it out like men. Bring back the meaning of Free-For-All.
Why? Free-For-All is ok if All are relatively equal. Free-For-All-Level X to Level X is wonderful. Free-For-All-Level-126+ to beat the crap out of level 5's is BORING!
I would rather play my old character on darktide with a low server population of REAL pkers and DTers who know about REAL MMORPG gameplay, WHILE ALSO playing a new character on a new pk server which will clearly immitate a whole new game.
What exactly are "REAL" pkers and "REAL MMORPG" gameplay? Am I imaginary because you're higher level than me?
I said this idea would be excellent if done right......
Define right.

It's a great idea. It's time the REAL players had a challenge. The carebears should be easy to kill anyway. That's all they really ever wanted. Free food. Put it in and laugh while you do it. Put in all the low level dungeons. Don't make it free items. Give the newbs a chance to actually get in the dungeon before the are pwnt by the uberness of the REAL players. 80 in three days is insane. Please don't do that. 80 in a week is more understandable. Maybe 80 in two weeks. I think raising points for killing people in the dungeon is good too. That way people don't hold hands and walk their way down to the bottom. Blood makes the grass grow greener. I'm really looking forward to this. Newb wars are going to be awesome :D.

[GhettoPhabulas]

And anyone with half an ounce of skill will kill all those mages macroing the drop ETG.

[kinslayer]

why not just make me lv 126 why do i have to waste time to hit a switch? I dunno something about this idea just rubs me the wrong way. I don't like how things are just handed to people with no work involed i guess.If anytrhing this would not want to make me play DT.

[Swifty]

Great, theres going to be more people to PvP with now. Also all of the old school players, we are still going to be way higher levels than the new commers so it will just be more DI's for us!! Also as for macroing, its illegal and you will get banned for doing it, this lever will be an alturnative to macroing and we wont be losing more people now. I'd say yes to the 1-20 dungons because Noob wars are great fun. Also put in mazes thats a little larger than most mazes. Fire or acid pits would be great as well.

[HartRend]

Don't drop the 20-40. 20 is attainable in about 40 minutes with the right PL'n from a mage, 20-40 is when your character actually becomse viable in PVP with a hollow weapon, your still a one shot from a mage, but you can finnally do 10-20 damage against other players with a hollow, and mages start to be able to throw vults, it would make for INCREDIBLY fun no0b13 waRz :-D oh... only drop it if it helps you roll out the 40-60 and 60-80 dungeons better <3 IBN this idea is going to work, and its going to work well, but don't be afraid to let the XP flow, after all, its gotta be BETTER than macroing, and we have to fight for it, all of these people giving negative feedback towards this unfortunetly didn't get a chance to read any of IBN's posts, or they're, they're just... reatard, or ... somthing... I don't know, but anyway, its a wonderful idea, and the faster you can implement it the faster i will pull my IRL buddies into this game.

[HartRend]

VITAE BOY!!! U R DA MAN!!!! wonderful points, all wonderful, what these people aren't getting through there skull, is if we don't do something to allow the new people that join the server the ability to lvl a little bit before they get 1 shotted while hunting, they're not gonna play for long. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU GUYS NOTICED but this game isn't for sale on the shelf anymore, and even if it was, nobody buying it from EB would come home, pop in the disc, and choose DT, if they did, they would play for 15 minutes, get owned like 9 times in shoushi, and then say, wtf i just spend 20 bux to get my ass knocked back to the lifestone?? Hello LC... unfortunetly, our best option is drawing carebears, IF YOU WANT SOMEBODY TO FIGHT, IN LARGE NUMBER, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO ACCEPT THE O.o's. and beleive me, IBN is not going to implement this "lever" and make them 150 with 1 pull so all you people that "worked hard" to attain 150, I.E. chains and macro, stfu... oh and to the 5% that actually did it hunting the real way, yes, this is kind of a stab in the back, but, thats like 20 actuall people...

[Caffeine]

What you carebears arent getting through your thick skulls is that this idea is not going to attract new blood. There may be an slight increase at first because people will be curious, but once they realize that they are carebears and they cant handle it on DT, then they will go back to whining about how hard DT is.

These dungeons are gonna be hot-spots for griefers. Not inside the dungeon, but outside. Any true Darktider will just camp the entrance to a nooby dungeon with his lvl 200 and cash in on death items.

Large guilds will just setup easy macro's inside to click away on the npc for free xp, while they have a group of 20 mages outside camping the entrance. How is this gonna attract new players again? lol it's not!

Wanna attract new players to the game? Use some creativity for once!

[SteveJobsDT]

ignore people crying about this not being fair to old players who "earned" their levels. The people making these comments are actually people who bought lvl 200's on ebay. as a darktider for 4 years+ now i can say that all of the old school players don't care if other people can now in theory level easier than they could. we just want fights. also, carebears won't be using my levers to level anyways when my guild and i are camping them =P

[Halloween]

This idea is so bad, it is almost good in a comic relief sort of way. I actually hope that you expand this idea and make leveling super fast so everyone can be level 275. It will be a good case study for the industry of how not to run a MMORPG game.

Microsoft and Turbine have already provided a similar valuable service by allowing macroing and third party hacks. The disaster caused by that misguided policy has helped other gaming companies avoid the same mistake.

I hope you do realize that the fact you are putting XP levers in the game will become known in the larger gamming community? I hope you also understand that this will effect the impression people will have of D&D and MEO. After all, if XP levers are a great idea for Darktide, I am sure they will be wonderful for your other games in development.

[Virindi Clown]

I am tired of stupid people saying that this is a way to get "free levels" and that it would be easier to just make everyone maxed out or some stupid crap like that.

Yeah, if everyone was suddenly maxed out one day, that would get some real fighting going on DT. :rolleyes:

And hundreds of people trying to get to this NPC who all want to kill eachother will sure make it "easy" to get levels for "nothing." :rolleyes:

Some of you people are just pathetic.

I suppose sitting in your own personal dungeon that no one else ever visits, leveling up by yourself with no risk of being killed is putting forth effort and not having your levels handed to you?

[Halloween]

I am tired of stupid people saying that this is a way to get "free levels" and that it would be easier to just make everyone maxed out or some stupid crap like that.

You must not read what IBN posts.

Per IBN:

“For a while now I've been running over an idea in my head that in theory would provide:

- A way to get to high levels
- A way to do this without macroing
- Something to fight over

…Like I said, the goal is to provide a means of powerleveling that's more effective than macroing”

So one of the main goals of this XP lever is to provide a way that people could level faster than macroing. For that goal to be realized, the XP lever will need to be easy to reach and use. Otherwise, people will continue to macro. And it will continue to be hard for low level players to catch up to the high levels.

[Virindi Clown]

But how is it FREE levels, and how will it just make everyone MAXED OUT? It still takes ages to macro and become maxed out. Does anyone saying that have the slightest clue how much xp it takes to max your character out? You pretty much can't do it without a ton of people sworn to you doing the same thing.

If you want to use this dungeon, you are basically going to be fighting the server to try and do so. That is no walk in the park.

The most important thing is that it gets people fighting. Yeah, you could hand the levels over to people, but what would that accomplish? Basically nothing. The game would practically be the same.

Like I said, I am not 100% for this idea, but it WILL get people fighting on DT, and that keeps the xp from being "free." That is completely undeniable.

Most people who are against this have pretty darned ignorant reasons for it.

[Ftuoil_Xelrash]

Ftuoil_Xelrash: You mad because you dont have a level advantage anymore?

Learn to PK.


What? You call a level 161 an advantage? Here we see yet another level 10 carebear pissed off becuase he can't get past the ls at the noobie drop to reach level 11. Get off this post and

gb2ff d u m b a s s

[Happyb1]

Levelling on DT is easy enough. Are the people that are whining about getting to 11 without getting one shotted really the people that should be playing DT?

Who cares if you get killed, and I have yet to have anyone "camp" my lifestone in such a way that I can't get away after dieing one time.

I have always played DT, and some of the comments I hear about unfair advantage and getting one shotted is really a joke. Right now I am playing a level 12 guy and doing it all with only self buffs and no UCM and it's easy, and I have even been able to fight other people my level. Does it need to be any easier? I have leveled about 3 guys to 30 in the last week just playing them the way the game was meant. No powerleveling or hand me down items. Hardly difficult.

[KPD157]

First of all I don't really care if there is a Dungeon with XP levers in them I will get to where I wanna go in DT with or without them :)

A suggestion I liked was to make it an XP gaining Effect not a lever persay. Maybe something like going to the NPC and fellowing with him and allowing him to Fellow with unlimited people. The NPC would generate X amount of XP per Minute and spread it over the fellow. Now if you wanna make a deal with the others you can try and keep everyone from killing off the weaker links but I think it would be a blood fest if such a system was instituted. Also don't forget you can fellow others into your group as well so you could all huddle in one spot get ready then send out a guy to go get the Fellowship link :)

Also you cannot gain XP by leaving the Dungeon ofcourse and once you have left the NPC will cut you off from the fellow. The Lowest XP percentage should be 35% of the Total XP generated up too 75% like it normally is. I would say 10 to 15 K of XP spread out over the fellow every 1 to 2 minutes would be fine for the 15 - 75th level type dungeon increasing as needed for higher ones. Also maybe adding more XP for higher level guys closer to the NPC's level which will be the max dungeon level. Thus you have to get to the NPC Fellow and stay alive to recieve your XP rewards for as long as you wish to stay in the fellow. The Dungeon will definately have to be very large to accommodate everyone and be much like the PK Arenas already in place.

Thats how I would handle it and I beleive for those who like fighting for XP it would be much more fun to do it that way than reaching over to some silly lever and pulling it or talking to an NPC each time.

I also would like to add to discourage just using a Bot to keep you alive in the dungeon that you cannot log out of the Dungeon and return it will send you to your lifestone on relogging in :)

Just My Two Pyreals since finally I found a topic that is worth talking about on these boards )

[Khael]

What you carebears arent getting through your thick skulls is that this idea is not going to attract new blood. There may be an slight increase at first because people will be curious, but once they realize that they are carebears and they cant handle it on DT, then they will go back to whining about how hard DT is.

These dungeons are gonna be hot-spots for griefers. Not inside the dungeon, but outside. Any true Darktider will just camp the entrance to a nooby dungeon with his lvl 200 and cash in on death items.

Large guilds will just setup easy macro's inside to click away on the npc for free xp, while they have a group of 20 mages outside camping the entrance. How is this gonna attract new players again? lol it's not!

Wanna attract new players to the game? Use some creativity for once!

Takes about 2 seconds of creative thinking to come up with a way to avoid this. More than one entrance per dungeon? Maybe you need to try out your own advice =P

[Khael]

ignore people crying about this not being fair to old players who "earned" their levels. The people making these comments are actually people who bought lvl 200's on ebay. as a darktider for 4 years+ now i can say that all of the old school players don't care if other people can now in theory level easier than they could. we just want fights. also, carebears won't be using my levers to level anyways when my guild and i are camping them =P

I agree. Most of the 'older' players macroed and chained their way to 200+... I know I did. Since it was legal you'd be kinda dumb not to do so. This was what the DT was all about for a long time, holding the best macro spots, fighting for them.

If you are one of the players who lvled solo manually to lvl 100+ in 4 years, i guess you missed out, and I am sorry you didnt grasp the metagame of DT.

Anyways, I welcome new players to DT, that will be the outcome of this idea, and I might even reroll to take part in the fun.

[NesTea]

alot of you guys think that this is a free ride, your forgetting they still have to get spells (and money) and armor its not really a free ride...whos gonna dish out
10-20 MMDs to a nobody lvl 80 with no rep at all (be it good or bad) they still have to hunt for their stuff..

[Elakase]

Implementing this is a mistake. You will be localizing all players into small clusters and leaving zero reason to ever use 99.99% of the playing space (read all of the other land blocks and dungeons). How many of you long time Darktide players enjoyed town raids? Busting up the Disaster Maze for a chance to kill a tusker only to be mauled by Dark Doomer? You're not going to have those fond memories and great battles with this system. You will have hundreds of people clamouring like guppies to use this button, massive lag and endless zerg-esque mobs mindlessly and skilllessly blasting away at people.

I don't know about the rest of you all, but a lot of my personal enjoyment in the game was exploring new locations for new leveling grounds in order to compete (and I'm talking when I was level 90 and Bloods were well over the 140 marker). When my room mate and I leveled up to 126 for the first time off of total crap in the eyes of the rest of the server and were finally able to compete with the big names, it felt good to have overcome such a massive obstacle (try having no one around and a target to everyone, adds spice to the game).

Where is the challange and "pride" in catching up or overtaking the power of your enemies if it's just a click of a mouse? It wouldn't feel earned to me. You would have lame Zerg battles in AC and that was never what PvPing was about here.

Part of the fun of Darktide is laying claim to territory and holding it. If you want to revive Darktide and keep people interested, you need to give rewards for land control, not free xps at the click of a button.

If you are strong, you will overcome. You need something tangible for people who don't need xp to battle over. Edges in PvP, territory, skills based on number of pvp wins etc. Something fresh. This solution is patchwork at best.

At first the thought of rewards for PvP had me thinking of cancelling my WoW subscription and re-activating all my accounts in AC1...however after mulling this over, I see nothing but the start of the death spiral for the server. No use of any other areas on the map, zerg battles and un-earned rewards on a silver platter for the largest mob on the block.

Maybe oneday the best PvP MMO will lure me back, this is not that day.

[nd10]

make dungeon huge, with multi xp levers instead of iterations.

if iterations are a must, plz make "iteration hub" dungeon.

these are xp mines, plz consider making level restricted salvage mines.

these would also be something 2 fight over, the level restriction is what is appealing 2 me. I don't mind getting killed comming in a dungeon, or anywhere else, by chars within 20ish levels of me. getting wasted by a level 200 guard macro sucks eggs :) I would totally come play upto the level 80ish dungeons and not level any more. being able 2 log in and find a fight near my level most of the time would kick ass.

[Haus der Liebe]

What Khael said is right .. I lvl'd 2 chars for 4 yrs without UCM .. well, 3 yrs .. I missed out on the chains/macro's .. I didn't get started til a year ago .. and i'm still WAY behind


PL and then fellowed .. 1-80 = 12-15 real life hours (assuming a good fellow at VoD or Caul)

UCM 1-80 .. 25-35 hours depending on what you have access too and template




Either way .. I can't wait for this to be implemented .. one question though .. is lever xp going to passup to patron??

[Zakiel]

Yeah, ideally having 12 vassals doing it at once would give a lot of xp if it passed up.

[Ibn]

What are your thoughts on...

-- Dungeons for initial implementation: 20-50, 40-70, 60-90, and two 80-110 dungeons.

-- Each dungeon has 4 entrances.

-- Each dungeon has two of the XP-awarding NPCs on opposite sides of the place.

-- Multiple paths down to the NPCs and between them, with some intersections. Not many large areas, to prevent huge clumps of players and graphics lag.

-- Some paths have dispel traps in them. Learning the layout of the dungeons will be to your advantage.

Other things that have been suggested internally and/or from community feedback:

-- The XP-awarding NPCs have a chance to do something interesting, so that there is some risk. It might cast a debuff on your or a dispell, or hit you with a war spell, or summon monsters around you.

-- You can't just camp one NPC, you actually have to run back and forth between the two in order to earn the rewards.

Right now we're leaning towards #1 and away from #2 but I'd like to hear what you think.

[Ibn]

Either way .. I can't wait for this to be implemented .. one question though .. is lever xp going to passup to patron??

Probably not.

[Silifi Of Death]

What are your thoughts on...

-- Dungeons for initial implementation: 20-50, 40-70, 60-90, and two 80-110 dungeons.

-- Each dungeon has 4 entrances.

-- Each dungeon has two of the XP-awarding NPCs on opposite sides of the place.

-- Multiple paths down to the NPCs and between them, with some intersections. Not many large areas, to prevent huge clumps of players and graphics lag.

-- Some paths have dispel traps in them. Learning the layout of the dungeons will be to your advantage.

Other things that have been suggested internally and/or from community feedback:

-- The XP-awarding NPCs have a chance to do something interesting, so that there is some risk. It might cast a debuff on your or a dispell, or hit you with a war spell, or summon monsters around you.

-- You can't just camp one NPC, you actually have to run back and forth between the two in order to earn the rewards.

Right now we're leaning towards #1 and away from #2 but I'd like to hear what you think.

1. Sounds good, but include a 1-40 dungeon too.

2. Woah there... I think you should put a few more entrances on there. 4 is way to defensible by one guild. It should be more like 10, OR at the very least, 6. Make it random drops too. The dungeon shouldn't be defensible by portal drops.

3. Good.

4. Good.

5. Good


I think you should go with #1. Make a big group of Biakas spawn sometimes, stuff like that.

[Ibn]

2. Woah there... I think you should put a few more entrances on there. 4 is way to defensible by one guild. It should be more like 10, OR at the very least, 6. Make it random drops too. The dungeon shouldn't be defensible by portal drops.

We talked about random drops -- here's the thing though, if you and me and three of our friends all use the same entrance and end up scattered around the dungeon, doesn't that make raiding it really, really hard?

Or is it even worse if all of us portal into the same camped drop?

Unfortunately I don't have enough experience in the group raid dynamics on DT, I play solo too much.

[Andromedus]

Main thing is make sure there are enough entrances. Maybe a huge structure that isn't a dungeon at all would be best for this.

All four points look good though.

Get rid of barriers, if not housing all together. This really needs to be done.

[minimafia]

Hmm

1) Make sure the hall ways are actually big enough to do some sliding around
in.

2) IMO dispell traps would be a bad thing for this dungeon. More than likely there will be 1 massive allegiance camping it and groups of smaller players trying to take it over.

Getting dispelled would give the larger group way to much of an advantage.

3) Please make the XP not SUCK. Currently in a macro chain (everyone swears to one person and switch) you can EASILY make 50 mil an hour while afk, in even a semi ****** dungeon. Make the dungeon non macroable and let us make some REAL xp. At least on par with the old caul cano.

[Shon_Tsu]

One of my concerns is that you'll end up with a mage friendly dungeon. If you must have maze/passageways, make them wide, dont make them somewhere where you can just shoot fish in a barrel. You need enough room for archer melees to dodge.

I like the 4 entrances, dunno if 5 or 6 would be better. As long as defending the dungeon happens in the dungeon, not by circle ganking. One idea was the BZ entrance concept where each of the drops would come onto a platform so that once you jump down you can no longer camp the drop.

[Andromedus]

If you can't make it a huge structure as opposed to a dungeon, then make at least four different entrances (as you said), maybe more. Each entrance should lead to a different drop point in a different corner of the dungeon. This way parties can stay together while they raid, and camping drop zones won't be as easy.

[Ibn]

One of my concerns is that you'll end up with a mage friendly dungeon. If you must have maze/passageways, make them wide, dont make them somewhere where you can just shoot fish in a barrel. You need enough room for archer melees to dodge.

I like the 4 entrances, dunno if 5 or 6 would be better. As long as defending the dungeon happens in the dungeon, not by circle ganking. One idea was the BZ entrance concept where each of the drops would come onto a platform so that once you jump down you can no longer camp the drop.

Great suggestions, thanks!

[Drainer_of_DT]

do not have the NPC cast debuffs or do anything other than award xp.

I don't even see much point in dispell traps. These dungeons will be HEAVILY fought over. There will be enough chaos with all of the various guilds.

I like the idea of mutiple, random drop points. that is a great idea. I was worried the drop would be camped. It's more fun and fair with the random drops.

I am also glad that you are considering putting in a dungeon for levels 80-110 in feb.

I suggest you add one for 111-125 as well. Up to 125 for feb would be nice.

I do have an interesting idea for this dungeon:

Add some (2-4) floor portals (like the one on the new island with numerida).
Have the portals take you different sections of the dungeon randomly. Each section could have an NPC that awards the XP.

Then, keep the xp reward on a 5 minute timer as suggested. However, make the timers for each of the 2-4 NPC's separate.

So, a guild can either hold a particular NPC and defend or try to raid another guild's territory for an extra shot of XP before their timer on the previous NPC is up.

Also, if they decide to leave their NPC to raid another, it would free up that NPC for other players.

This would be fun.

[Zero_Washu]

Its still a XP LEVER no matter how "difficult" you make it out to be.

Why not just be done with it and allow people to have any single character on their account promoted to 126th by a town crier.

If you had bothered to cap EXPERINECE and LEVEL you wouldn't have to resort to such stupid solutions. But no, you can't annoy your macro payers. Hell you made an entire expansion just to cater to them.


Its an XP lever which is "Game Over" in English

[Caspian-HoS]

What are your thoughts on...

-- Dungeons for initial implementation: 20-50, 40-70, 60-90, and two 80-110 dungeons.

-- Each dungeon has 4 entrances.

-- Each dungeon has two of the XP-awarding NPCs on opposite sides of the place.

-- Multiple paths down to the NPCs and between them, with some intersections. Not many large areas, to prevent huge clumps of players and graphics lag.

-- Some paths have dispel traps in them. Learning the layout of the dungeons will be to your advantage.

Other things that have been suggested internally and/or from community feedback:

-- The XP-awarding NPCs have a chance to do something interesting, so that there is some risk. It might cast a debuff on your or a dispell, or hit you with a war spell, or summon monsters around you.

-- You can't just camp one NPC, you actually have to run back and forth between the two in order to earn the rewards.

Right now we're leaning towards #1 and away from #2 but I'd like to hear what you think.

-- Good.

-- Good. 4 is plenty. Not random would be better, but random will work. Require the drop down to get into the main section of the dungeon.

-- Good.

-- "Multiple paths down to the NPCs and between them, with some intersections." Good. While, "Not many large areas, to prevent huge clumps of players and graphics lag." is VERY bad. We need the larger areas to fight in, otherwise it'll be too mage friendly. Try to make it as open as possible, and make all hallways wide. Also, the prevention of huge clumps of players should be taken care of by the players killing each other, and if you put in the need to go back and forth between the NPCs, that will spread things out as well.

-- Bad. Gives the defenders an even larger advantage as they'll be prepared, and those entering will be stripped of their buffs. The defenders have the upper hand in a dungeon as it is.

-- Again, Bad. Just make them give XP. The risk is the other players. If you do put in any of these, DO NOT put in the creature spawning. Creatures get in the way of PvP in a really bad way. We don't want to have to deal with them. We just want to kill each other.

-- Good idea in my opinion.


As I said before, all we need is a BZ style dungeon with the NPC in it. Mostly large open fighting areas, the need to jump down from the portal drops, and that's it. The more that's added, the less appealing it is. We don't want creatures, at all. We don't want dispel traps. We simply want a resource to fight over, and our fights to be against each other and not the environment. The fights should be, to quote a beloved movie, "Sportsman-like...no tricks, no weapons, skill against skill alone."

[Virindi Clown]

If you had bothered to cap EXPERINECE and LEVEL you wouldn't have to resort to such stupid solutions.

Oh it is capped, but the cap is just completely absurd.

It's just another one of those weird things that was made that way in the beginning for reasons no one will ever understand.

Just imagine what it would have been like if there was no macroing or xp chains, which were unintended and didn't come around for quite a while. Would we just now be seeing the first level 126?

People always say things like, "What are the devs smoking?" when we talk about these things.

The real question is what were the guys who originally made this game smoking? ;)

[Shon_Tsu]

Its still a XP LEVER no matter how "difficult" you make it out to be.

Why not just be done with it and allow people to have any single character on their account promoted to 126th by a town crier.


Because the XP is only the secondary aim, the carrot to fight over. The main aim is to give DT something to fight over. The one off xp gain from an npc has been done, it gave us the best 3 days fighting in the last year and then it was over.

[dirty_elf]

for the random portal drops... just make a slightly larger than normal room to drop in and make the drops random but with in at least a screen of each other, this would allow a bunch of people to portal in at once and raid, but would also make it very hard to camp just one spot or "camp the drop"

[Pinto]

ok how about this.

Each portal in has a dedicated entrance in the dungeon.

Each entrance is on a ledge Creepy Statue style.

Now if you raid the portal to it in 1 spot and camp the drop there are still several other entrances you can take into the duneon that wont be camped.

You are only able to camp 1 ledge at a time unless u have an ungodly amt of ppl gaurdeding every single entrance.

[Pinto]

for the random portal drops... just make a slightly larger than normal room to drop in and make the drops random but with in at least a screen of each other, this would allow a bunch of people to portal in at once and raid, but would also make it very hard to camp just one spot or "camp the drop"

that wont work because as soon as your bubbles show up they have like 30 seconds to reset the circle around you

[Hopeslayer]

Dungeons for initial implementation: 20-50, 40-70, 60-90, and two 80-110 dungeons.



ok so how long you thinking of putting the 110 and up ones in?

hopefully it wont be to long. but i can see where waiting till after expantion will help since the game will actually know your lvl and you can have lvl 126-140 and like 140- 160.. stuff like that instead of 126+


however you mgiht be able to put in the 126 plus at the start then change it later.

[Swifty]

4 dungs is good, no diss spell, no NPC doing any thing other than give XP, diss spell and monsters only gives out lagg. 2 NPC's at both sides is cool,
running back and forth to 2 NPC's is good, will have a little higher risk, it's more harder to get the "free XP". More space in the mazes so it wouldn't be a mage war battle senerio.

[Fenix]

Why two 80-110 dungeons. ??? the more people in the same dungeon the more fun it is... why make two dungeons with low population when 1 dungeon with high population is way more fun?

[Khael]

-- Dungeons for initial implementation: 20-50, 40-70, 60-90, and two 80-110 dungeons.

Hm ok sounds fine i guess. Maybe just one though. But ok with 2 dungeons you can set them up to give slightly less xp. If only 1 youd need to make xp better, because the downtime will be great, when everyone are fighting for just one spot.

-- Each dungeon has 4 entrances.

Good.

-- Each dungeon has two of the XP-awarding NPCs on opposite sides of the place.

NO, this is a bad idea imo. Might be tempting for some carebears to just leave eachother be. 1 npc, NOT 2 please.

-- Multiple paths down to the NPCs and between them, with some intersections. Not many large areas, to prevent huge clumps of players and graphics lag.

As long as you realize fighting in hallways is an advantage for mages.

-- Some paths have dispel traps in them. Learning the layout of the dungeons will be to your advantage.

Hm well ye sure ;) im sure people will memorize those spots very quickly tho hehe.

-- The XP-awarding NPCs have a chance to do something interesting, so that there is some risk. It might cast a debuff on your or a dispell, or hit you with a war spell, or summon monsters around you.

lol ye that would be great.

-- You can't just camp one NPC, you actually have to run back and forth between the two in order to earn the rewards.
Right now we're leaning towards #1 and away from #2 but I'd like to hear what you think.

hm Ahh now I see why you want 2, good idea. Forget my comments above.

[Verio]

I still think you should impliment the 1-20 dungeon.

Also I'd say 2 80-110 dungeons are good, if there is too much fighting in a dungeon and not enough XP, whats the point in fighting over a spot, when I could just go macro somewhere else safe. Or if only put 1 in, with great XP... Just remember, Risk vs Reward.

Also, like everyone else said about the hallways, I definately support that, you need bigger hallways or whats gunna happen is, your gunna have some melee tankign the hallway and everyone behind him is gunna get blasted like fish in a barrel.

If your going to stick dispell traps in, put them on random spots on the floor, not just your typical spot like in the middle of the hallway. Stick them next to the NPC as well, so if your trying to straffe a spell or arrow and accidentally hit that spot, WHAM!

Monsters are a stupid idea, just another way to add more graphic lag to the already intense enviroment (hopefully).

I dont know about the NPC casting spells, it seems just kinda stupid oh boy, a spell hit me for half my life. Unless your talkin about an insta kill spell cast randomly, random spells are useless.

[Roland Deschain]

How bout this...

When you hit up the NPC for the free XP, there's a certain % chance (low) that you are portalled out of the dungeon. Would make it a bit tougher to actually hold the dungeon, if several members of your party are portalled out periodically.

Or, since groups would get around that by having two separate squads (defenders, and XP getters) just randomly portal people out, ala portal storm.

Dunno.. just ideas.

[Feeble]

Make the NPC Bael... yay!!!

[Virindi Clown]

Ibn, the idea of going between two NPCs is good.

The other stuff looks pretty good, but the dispel traps and having the NPC do something to you aside from giving xp are a bad idea IMO. The only way I can really elaborate on that is that I just think it would take away from it and make it more tedious than it needs to be for no good reason.

Four dungeons drops would be cool. However, I see an issue that you will have to work out here.

If there are two NPCs, it would sort of suck if two entrances lead to each one, and then the room with the NPC leads to the side with the other NPC. You couldn't just run to your friends if they hold one side because you might have to cross an army of your enemies all alone to get to them.

However, it could also suck if all the entrances lead to one place that diverges to the two sides for the two different NPCs. People would camp this middle spot because it would be where everyone comes in.

It'd be in everyone's best interest to find a happy medium somehow, but I think you might just have to go with the lesser of two evils here and figure out which of those it is.

One option would be to make all the entrances lead to one place, where you would drop down a hole you can't get back up. This hole drop zone could be sort of the mid point between the two NPCs, but the NPCs would be made to be VERY far away from eachother (in dungeon size terms, at least).

That way people wouldn't have time to try and camp an area because they would have to spend more time running back and forth between the NPCs to keep their xp up. That would make the actual fighting over the NPCs move around and wouldn't result in people who are just getting down there being immediately ganked.

How bout this...

When you hit up the NPC for the free XP, there's a certain % chance (low) that you are portalled out of the dungeon. Would make it a bit tougher to actually hold the dungeon, if several members of your party are portalled out periodically.

Or, since groups would get around that by having two separate squads (defenders, and XP getters) just randomly portal people out, ala portal storm.

Dunno.. just ideas.

Sorry, I think that would just get plain irritating.

[Ibn]

One option would be to make all the entrances lead to one place, where you would drop down a hole you can't get back up. This hole drop zone could be sort of the mid point between the two NPCs, but the NPCs would be made to be VERY far away from eachother (in dungeon size terms, at least).

Mmmm, that's an interesting suggestion, thanks!

[Ibn]

I just fired up some preliminary numbers for the % XP awards, based on some time estimates I've seen in this thread and elsewhere.

Here's an example... if you're level 109 and you have completely unrestricted access to these NPCs -- no one is trying to stop you at all and you're just running back and forth or standing there using the NPC, whichever it turns out to be...

You're making about 55 million XP an hour.

How does that sound for 109? Too much? Too little? Is this something you'd be willing to crawl through a pile of dead bodies and massacre all those in your way in order to get to?

Like I said, these are JUST PRELIMINARY NUMBERS. Please don't look at this and scream "DARKTIDE IS DOOMED!" Just calmly tell me why you think it's off. Thanks!

Again, remember that if anyone gets in your way or you have to kill the guy who's lobbing spells at you, that number starts to drop.

[Andromedus]

Couple things.

First, everyone should be able to enter any dungeon regardless of level. This is what DT is about. Level 150 killing lvl 20's is part of life. Anything less would not be genuine.

Second, once you click the npc, there should be a brief timer during which you must not be in combat mode and you must not be hit in order to get the xp. This will prevent people from simply charging the npc through these "wide hallways" as people keep saying, clicking the npc and bolting. It will make it so that you must have at least a small level of control over the situation in order to get the xp.

Only way to know how much xp is good is to test it, but that number sounds low to me. The difference between unrestricted access and constant struggle could bring that number way down, especially taking into consideration possible restocking of DI's, losing vitae, etc. I must admit I don't remember how much xp is required to go from 109 to 110 though... But if you implement some sort of timer as I suggest above, that would be a factor. My concern is that control won't be necessary to aquire the xp, so a quick run in, tagging, and leaving, is all it would take and could allow a person access far less "restricted" than they should have.

[Silifi Of Death]

I just fired up some preliminary numbers for the % XP awards, based on some time estimates I've seen in this thread and elsewhere.

Here's an example... if you're level 109 and you have completely unrestricted access to these NPCs -- no one is trying to stop you at all and you're just running back and forth or standing there using the NPC, whichever it turns out to be...

You're making about 55 million XP an hour.

How does that sound for 109? Too much? Too little? Is this something you'd be willing to crawl through a pile of dead bodies and massacre all those in your way in order to get to?

Like I said, these are JUST PRELIMINARY NUMBERS. Please don't look at this and scream "DARKTIDE IS DOOMED!" Just calmly tell me why you think it's off. Thanks!

Again, remember that if anyone gets in your way or you have to kill the guy who's lobbing spells at you, that number starts to drop.

I think 60 mil sounds about right. 5 mil per pull, or base it on a percentage. Of course, in practice the char. will probably only get 10 mil per hour.

The more and more I think about it, I'm thinking maybe this should just be ONE dungeon. I mean, why not? Just make the NPC give a percentage amount to anyone that goes in.

[Virindi Clown]

The more and more I think about it, I'm thinking maybe this should just be ONE dungeon. I mean, why not? Just make the NPC give a percentage amount to anyone that goes in.

Or maybe just have one that is 80+? A level 80 can contend, especially in a group. Anything below that is usually stretching things, and a lot of other "high level" content is restricted to 80+ already.

I think we need the lower level ones because there would be no other way to encourage low level PvP.

[Drainer_of_DT]

If my goal is to level, why would I waste my time in thse dungeons for what will likely be less than 55 mil an hour. I can make 60 mil an hour at caul or a few other place in a fellow while I SLEEP.

The XP reward has to be substantially more than macroing would get me.

I would say 100-150 mil would be best. It is highly unlikely that many would ever have unrestricted access to these dungeons. They would be the central focus of DT. The constant fighting would not allow unrestricted access.

Only in the wee hours of the mourning would you actually be able to pull that off.

What I think seems fair:

20-40 (20 mil an hour)

40-60 (40 mil an hour)

60-80 (60 mil an hour)

80-100 (80 mil an hour)

100-120 (100 mil an hour)

This would be good for FEB. I think that the pattern should continue that way.:

120-140 (120 mil an hour)

140-160 (140 mil an hour)

160-180 (160 mil an hour)

180-200 (180 mil an hour)

200-220 (200 mil an hour)

240-260 (220 mil an hour)

260-275 (240 mil an hour)

That seems perfect to me.

[Pinto]

2 hours unrestricted access sounds good for 140-160

However at the lower levels i think it should be much easier to lvl.

The idea is to get everybody to a fighting lvl quickly, not max everybody out...

Maybe 160-180 can be 3 hours

then 4

u get the picture....

[Silifi Of Death]

Or maybe just have one that is 80+? A level 80 can contend, especially in a group. Anything below that is usually stretching things, and a lot of other "high level" content is restricted to 80+ already.

I think we need the lower level ones because there would be no other way to encourage low level PvP.

How about just two? Under 80 and over 80? I think that would probably be the best solution. There are plenty of true DTers that are still under 80 or have rerolls under 80. That makes sure that the newcomers from carebear servers won't get a free ride.

Ibn, listen to this, please. I think the best possible solution is to have just two dungeons that have Percentage based rewards, one under 80 and one above 80.


Dragula: He said once every 5 minutes on the original thread. So that means you'd have to use the NPC twelve times in an hour to get full xp.

[Storyteller]

IBN, I would like you to take into consideration that this dungeon should not only cater to one type of player. The dungeon should have halls that are both wide, and halls that are narrow and hard to dodge in. I rely heavily on tactics and holding a defensible position in PK and it makes things more interesting. These halls shouldn't be the only way to get to the NPC's, but defensible positions should be available at least somewhere in the dungeon so tactics come into play.

The xp awards sound pretty good. I know I would claw and murder my way through a dungeon of my fellow players for 55 mill an hour. Of course, I would claw and murder my way through my fellow players just for the loot they provide.

Now I'm assuming these Player Vs. Player dungeons will be on all servers and not just Darktide right?

I would really rather have the high level dungeons released in February so the rest of us who have attained high levels will have something to do. Aside from that, my last complaint is that you haven't given me credit for suggesting this idea like three months ago. Oh well, that's the biz I guess.

Ilumini

[kioskies]

Please make the first set of dungeons go from 1-100, not just 1-80, thankyou.

[kioskies]

I say at least 6 random-drop entrances (fellowship sensitive if you can though)

Lockpick has an advantage (you can lock/unlock some doors to your teams advantage)

Make it so you can't just click on the NPC and you receive xp. That would be really lame, there would be people who would do nothing but run between the two NPCs. Make it so you have to click on the NPC like 15 times (very crude idea, but if you have a better idea of how to make it so there's a delay I'm all for it).

Also, PLEASE NO DISPELL TRAPS OF ANY KIND

They are lamer than lame. So lame. It takes little skill to lure a melee into one of the dispell traps because of sticky melee. Then the melee is screwed, nothing he can do except for take it, becaues it's all template when it comes to resisting the traps (melee generally don't have as high magic defense as mages). I'm not saying this because I'm a melee, because I'm not. I just don't want the melees to whine and I just like having skill involved. Plus I don't want to have a melee on my back, and then be forced to jump a dispell trap or get completely screwed, and because of it lose a quarter of my stamina (can we get a REAL jumpspin fix please?)

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Make war magic traps and not dispells. Make RANDOM VULN TRAPS AND RANDOM WAR BOLT TRAPS in designated places but make it so that they are hard to avoid every trap while you're going down a hallway and those that know the layout well might still have trouble going through while those who don't will just have to learn the hard way. That's the advantage of the holders.

War bolts are good because they can be dodged. Dispells are just stupid, and very very annoying. Did I mention they are lame?

[Silifi Of Death]

Now I'm assuming these Player Vs. Player dungeons will be on all servers and not just Darktide right?

Ilumini

No, it's just Darktide. If it were on most of the other servers, there wouldn't be enough competition.

Though, I'm sure if it were on Wintersebb... we'd all be in there for the sole purpose of ganking you and your followers.

[Shadow Mouse]

Regarding the problem of having your group split up upon entering through a random drop:

Have the entrance to the dungeon be an NPC that summons a portal. What entrance he summons is random, and your whole group can go in through the same portal, keeping you all together.

Side note on how I think the dungeon should work: Make it so that the lever will only give out the xp every few minutes, this way people won't be nice and let everyone talk to him. Sort of like how a font has to recharge before it can be used again by anyone. Make the XP share in a fellowship, this encourages a group to hold it. It would suck if your holding the lever and some asshat in your fellow grabs it before whoever was supposed to get it, get's it.

[Storyteller]

IBN, these Pk dungeons need to be on ALL servers, not just Dark Tide. The other servers are what need Red PK help the most. You almost never see a red PK on any white server, and unless I'm given the option of moving my main to Dark Tide its unfair that I leveled on a white server always expecting great pk action then pink nerfs it.

Listen, for the white servers the xp reward wouldn't even have to be all that great. I mean, even if it were 28 mill an hour would make it comparable to a full fellow in tusker lacuna and I'd be willing to fight for that alone just so I don't have to pretend like I like my fellow members.

This shouldn't be a dark tide only gift. Us whities have been clamoring for something to bring back red action on white servers for a long time. This could be just what we need to bring the life into the game. Give it consideration.

When I first read this thread I called up several friends who also play on WE and told them that we would finally get what we wanted; a reason to go red. We were all seriously overjoyed, especially since many people left AC simply because pink destroyed Pvp. We hoped that this would bring a few of them back. This will be seriously disappointing if its only the dark tiders getting catered to.

[Monster]

This content is kind of pointless since at least 90% of the server is 126+. This isn't giving anybody anything to fight over. Just place for low levels to level up in peace. There are already plenty of dungeons for that.

[Lutieus]

IBN, these Pk dungeons need to be on ALL servers, not just Dark Tide. The other servers are what need Red PK help the most. You almost never see a red PK on any white server, and unless I'm given the option of moving my main to Dark Tide its unfair that I leveled on a white server always expecting great pk action then pink nerfs it.

Listen, for the white servers the xp reward wouldn't even have to be all that great. I mean, even if it were 28 mill an hour would make it comparable to a full fellow in tusker lacuna and I'd be willing to fight for that alone just so I don't have to pretend like I like my fellow members.

This shouldn't be a dark tide only gift. Us whities have been clamoring for something to bring back red action on white servers for a long time. This could be just what we need to bring the life into the game. Give it consideration.

When I first read this thread I called up several friends who also play on WE and told them that we would finally get what we wanted; a reason to go red. We were all seriously overjoyed, especially since many people left AC simply because pink destroyed Pvp. We hoped that this would bring a few of them back. This will be seriously disappointing if its only the dark tiders getting catered to.
Take it to a different thread. Darktide is COMPLETELY different from white servers, so whether to add xp levers is a COMPLETELY different discussion.

[Hopeslayer]

WE dont need it i played there to and ill yo have to do is macro. you would have people going red nodrop all friends getting xp and maybe a few people wanting to kill them for the heck of it.

Played DT from retail had to leave cause it got to where i was standing still for a min and still would fizzle movment. I hear its better now but dont have the time to relvl.



As for the xp given, Ibn dont forget we will be fighting so make the xp worth it.

Dont forget that if you make it only worth what can be made macroing and only what can be made when your online, people will still rather macro most of the time and asleep. Id rather have a big reward for the time since im going to be fighting and probly wont be hitting the Npc every 5 min. and I want a good reason to stay on for hours AT my comp not just log off after im tired of fighting and go make the same xp macroing.,

[kioskies]

Will the xp be greater if you're in a fellowship?

[Storyteller]

I would like to point out once more that there is NO NEED for this dungeon to be a darktide only dungeon. Let me explain why.

First, aside from that useless Bael Zharon dungeon that you gain access to via the small statues in the towns there are no real hunting areas to fight over to make it worth while on a white server to go red. This dungeon would be great, and worth it except you must submit a shadow fragment each time to gain access, and that becomes difficult to do on a constant basis everytime you wanna recomp and come back. Remove the shadow fragment requirement on that dungeon so it can be hunted freely.

Two, there is no reason to make a PK only dungeon on Dark Tide where everyone is already PK. If players there want a level specific hunting dungeon they have to look no further than all the existing dungeons that have a level requirement. It's useless, and pointless to make further dungeons that accomplish the same thing and show blatant favortism to one particular server while leaving the vast majority of the Asheron's call population with nothing to show for it.

Yeah, on white servers a lever that just magically grants you xp, or NPC's that do the same might not be fought over with as much competition as you would have on dark tide. So make the xp rewards on such a server much less than on dark tide, but still worth going red and losing all your best stuff over. I'd say 40 mill an hour would be worth losing everything I own to do that over and over.

Make sure that people can't just run into this dungeon naked, not risk anything, and earn the xp rewards. Put some monsters in there that would slaughter someone without armor on. That way players can just die, come back, get xp, burn vitae, die, come back, rinse and repeat. There has to be a risk.

Ilumini, the one person who wants this on white servers more than anyone.

[Lutieus]

We do not care. Start a separate thread.

[Storyteller]

Your opinion is noted Lutavius, or lucias, or lucas, or whatever your name is. You may leave now.

THE Ilumini,
Worst Grieffer in Asheron's Call
Lord of Eternal Darkness

[Monster]

This is almost as bad as putting level ranges for who you can attack. This is making safe zones for carebears to level up in peace. You know noobs will truce in the lower end dungeons. Have no level limit to enter them, only a level limit for using the npc, otherwise this is creating safe zones. Noobs trying to level should get pounded on by highers levels, thats always been the case on darktide. I don't see the reason for this to be added in the first place. It's not giving us anything to fight over, just easy leveling. It's already easy enough to level at the lower levels it's being implemented for, with buff bots/powerleveling. This takes away a big aspect of DT. Save this idea for the new pvp server or a carebear server. There are plenty of better things to do to help Darktide. Start by dropping barriers.

[Storyteller]

Bingo Monster. This is NOT what Dark Tide needs. This is what all the WHITE servers need. Give it to us IBN, we're begging for it!

Ilumini

[WarsongDT]

Though, like I've made in other posts, IBN's idea as it stands simply shouldn't be added I do think that having a level cap to enter dungeons is a very good thing. I'd like to actually see ranges like 1 - 20, 21 - 40, 41 - 60, 61 - 80, 81 - 100, 101 - 125, 126+.

This promotes alot of interesting aspects such as the ability for new characters and rerolls to compete in pvp without having to worry about 126s coming along to gank them. Yes I know mindless rpkers want easy kills and ganks but I'm sorry we need players and the mindless pk of new players to the server discourages them from playing cause they feel they'll never be able to compete.

IBN, if you go through with your idea as it stands, make sure you add these dungeons with level ranges.

[Virindi Clown]

This content is kind of pointless since at least 90% of the server is 126+. This isn't giving anybody anything to fight over. Just place for low levels to level up in peace. There are already plenty of dungeons for that.

There's going to be a 126+ dungeon, though. Considering that the vast majority of the people playing on DT have a character of that level range, just like you yourself said, that will give practically EVERYONE something to fight over.


This promotes alot of interesting aspects such as the ability for new characters and rerolls to compete in pvp without having to worry about 126s coming along to gank them. Yes I know mindless rpkers want easy kills and ganks but I'm sorry we need players and the mindless pk of new players to the server discourages them from playing cause they feel they'll never be able to compete.

Ok, but why would a level 100 have to worry about a level 126? I think even a level 80 can handle a 126 in a lot of cases, though it isn't always a given. IMO, it'd be fine to have the top dungeon be 80+.

Or are you saying that you think people should be divided up more so that there are more smaller, more closely matched fights, instead of a lot of upper levels fighting in one place?

[KeisotsuCOTH]

Something to consider. Think of the xp over a whole day. Macroing a 150 million in one day is probably a good guess. So, say I do this. Then afterwards I want to raid. Let's say I go out raiding for 3 hours at the computer. So over the whole day I made 150 million xp and killed people for 3 hours. So I would suggest that to make this useful, I would be able to make 150 million in 3 hours while fighting my why through. Which means your numbers of 55 million an hour when not fighting at all are a little to low.

[Aden]

There are still flaws in the plan. One that I see will be that it will indirectly promote a few LARGE factions instead of the more smaller guilds. Say there are about 10-15 smaller guilds all fighting over the same place. Thats great, but there will probably end up being one single guild that will control it a majority of the time. People wil see this, then jump ship to that guild. Soon creating a Tusker Island situation where there is 18K members in one guild.

Here is an idea, not perfect, but just a suggestion. Make it so quest rewards are worth a grip of xp.By doing the quest you get an incredible amount more of xp than say hunting/macroing. The one flaw I see in that is that it doesn't exactly promote something specific to fight for, but with some more thinking, I believe it would work.

[Gonzolio]

those numbers were for the under lvl 80 chars

over lvl 80 im positive u would get more than 55 mil an hr

if u are under lvl 80, u shouldnt be making over 20 mil an hour while fighting.

that makes leveling past lowbie lvls too easy.

in fact i dont think there should be an xp lever until u are at least lvl 80

[Andromedus]

Another thing. I keep reading people saying they think the dungeons should only allow specific levels to enter. I understand your argument about it being discouraging for newbs. BUT, everyone keeps whining "Waaa waaaa we have nothing to fight over waaaaaaaa" well this is your chance. Now you anti types can fight to protect/help newbs in these dungeons while you pks can kill them, both sides can recruit them, guilds can fight to control them and use them for recruiting. THIS IS SOMETHING TO FIGHT OVER BESIDES SIMPLY XP FOR THE SAKE OF MORE XP. It is also an aspect that DT no longer has! There are arguments for both sides but PLEASE consider this. EVERY change that dumbs the game down (in other words makes the world LESS harsh) has hurt darktide in some form or fashion. Just consider ALL the parts of this decision before you jump to any conclusions.

[Aden]

OK, lets take a step back to see what we are trying to accomplish here. Is it 1) To be able to compete at pvp by making lvling easier. in other words...making things even 2) make macroing obselete. 3) make something to fight over. 4) all of the above. 5) a combination of 1, 2, or 3, or 6) something else.

[Storyteller]

Andromedus? Only gimps and tinker mules are named Andromedus and you don't look like a tinker mule to me.

It's not fair that Turbine is catering to Dark Tiders. The rest of the AC population needs something to bring the fun of being Red back to the game. Mind you half the server will go red if I do just to try to kill me, but once they realize I'm invincible they give up and go hide or just go white.

I've got a great idea. Let's delete Dark Tide altogether, and make all other servers red! Then smack talkers like Andro will have to come to MY world and get the chance to play. Then we'll see who they are calling carebears.

The Nightmare Prince,
Ilumini

[Aden]

Few things I was thinking of:
When creating the dungeons consider haveing the level restrictions overlap. example, instead of 1-20 20-40 40-60 do something like 1-40 20-60 40-80 and so on.
Consider broadening DTs options. Maybe incorporate something similiar to classic warzones like the Sanc. Make Towns and Dungeons worthing fighting for again and do something about mansions(safezone). Lets keep the ball rolling here.

It's not fair that Turbine is catering to Dark Tiders. The rest of the AC population needs something to bring the fun of being Red back to the game. Mind you half the server will go red if I do just to try to kill me, but once they realize I'm invincible they give up and go hide or just go white.

I've got a great idea. Let's delete Dark Tide altogether, and make all other servers red! Then smack talkers like Andro will have to come to MY world and get the chance to play. Then we'll see who they are calling carebears.

The Nightmare Prince,
Ilumini
Good God man, if you want to be red play DT...

[GhettoPhabulas]

Come to solclaim or DT and fight me 1on1, my char on dt is 142 grief bm, on SC its 150 war spec only, this is to you StoryTeller.

[Dj_Viper]

Two things. One, there should be no level cap on these dungeons....that is what makes DT what it is. I will never pay a dime for this game if there are level caps on dungeons in DT, that's just ridiculous..every DTer will tell you that.

Secondly, I could EASILY make 450mil a day at certain places without even being at my computer....so I'm hoping level 126+ will get much more than 55mil an hour. This would have to make up for a few hours considering you will be dying CONSTANTLY, replacing DI's, burning TONS of plats and rebuffing.

[Virindi Clown]

Good God man, if you want to be red play DT...

Incidentally, that is exactly what these xp lever dungeons will allow people to do. People complain that they can't just switch to DT because they would never be able to reach a level that they could compete at. Well, here's your chance. There are no excuses now.

[Cage]

Andromedus? Only gimps and tinker mules are named Andromedus and you don't look like a tinker mule to me.

It's not fair that Turbine is catering to Dark Tiders. The rest of the AC population needs something to bring the fun of being Red back to the game. Mind you half the server will go red if I do just to try to kill me, but once they realize I'm invincible they give up and go hide or just go white.

I've got a great idea. Let's delete Dark Tide altogether, and make all other servers red! Then smack talkers like Andro will have to come to MY world and get the chance to play. Then we'll see who they are calling carebears.

The Nightmare Prince,
Ilumini

You are a complete moron. What makes it worse is that you are role playing by calling yourself "The Nightmare Prince." Are you related to Sweet Mary in some way? Even if you are not, please shoot yourself irl for making all of us risk IQ point decrease by reading your crap.

[-EtG-]

"And anyone with half an ounce of skill will kill all those mages macroing the drop ETG."

Tell you what, if I make an extra $50 off WoW above what I paid for it, I'll resub a few accounts, try to convince some friends to as well, & when these XP lever dungeons come out for 126+ people I'll show you how it can be macroed without anyone being able to take over unless they bring in 2x the number of guys I have camping it.

For a while I had Lacuna 100% macro run - defended, xp making & even an alert to tell me when to log on my melee to drop tapers to guys.

An "exp lever" will be a piece of cake.

[Cage]

Thats because you were in Sang and Blood Goatse. You had it easy.

[-EtG-]

Way to show you know isht about me, I was NEVER in Sang. I defended Lacuna solo & won against Doom, Addi, all the bolps, Skat etc etc.

Me & my brother were the only people in our monarchy for a time after we both left Blood, & (usually solo) kicked Blood, Sang, Hells Armed Forces, Virking, TLS & a few other n00b allegiances out. I killed bloods 1v7, I killed a full fellow of TLS solo (or made them recall out).

Nothing was *ever* easy about Lacuna, at least after the Blood split. before that happened, I had enough friends I could trust to run it almost 100% with macroing.

If I had an extra 2 other accounts I still could have done it making 20-25 mil an hour after the split.

[Ur-red Ur-dead]

why not juste make monster's XP * 10 ?

It takes ages to get to 200, if everyone could make 200 in a few months (lets say 6), there will be more ppl PKing rather than macroing.

[Cage]

Do not personally attack other users.

[Aden]

Another thing I was thinking about was, loot. Loot as in, majors and what not, DI's and loot you sell to buy plats and tapers. The Lever XP dungeons don't really promote any of that as far as I can see. Now I don't know if that is by design or not but it;s something to consider when attempting to "bring back DT". Thats part of what we fight over, use Light Prop for example.

Cage, we all know goatse is one of those poeple that likes to get under everyones skin, thats why he has names like enter the goatse and ucm on my face... Not alot of people know what the Goatse is, I'm sure if Ibn knew he would frown upon that name... Anyways, lets keep this thread on topic, I want to see Ibn post here again and not close this thread because it turned into a flame war.

[HeXt]

Holy Crazy Idea...

[Virindi Clown]

why not juste make monster's XP * 10 ?

It takes ages to get to 200, if everyone could make 200 in a few months (lets say 6), there will be more ppl PKing rather than macroing.

Omfg...

BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T GET PEOPLE FIGHTING!!!

After like 50 bajillion pages of posts on this, people still don't get the basics. I am getting irritated.

[Gorash]

I hate this idea. I've played DT on and off since 99 and this could be the end for me.

I geuss I should leave some suggestions on why I hate it, so...

1. Put these in towns. Maybe random spawns in different towns with level reqs. Just don't make this as simple to get to as /marketplace.

2. Something better than a lever. Whats to keep a large group of antis from sharing the lever and not killing each other? What if its late and there's only a few people inside?
Suggestion: You need to get a pk kill to be flagged to use the lever. Or scrap the lever, you just get lots of bonus exp for pk kills when inside. This requires people to fight, which would be funner and get people practice.

3. Put these in towns. Seriously, please put these in towns. There will be a lot more variety this way.

4. Just increase the exp for pk kills anywhere. Killing another person can be one of the most challenging things in the game, it should have an appropriate reward. DAoC had this on its free for all server, you could level at a decent rate from pking. Its easy to prevent exploitation and the only reason I could stand that game for the short time I did. Or perhaps if I kill Bob the Mage, his corpse has an "essense of Bob the Mage" which I can turn in for exp, with an appropriate timer on it. Perhaps the collection spot for these could be in the new dungeon.

5. This will ruin role playing on darktide, the server where it can work the best.

In a few months I will run into one of these situations.

I raid a town or dungeon to find it deserted. If there's anyone there, they probably won't even bother to fight since this isn't the special dungeon and theres no point. I quit the game.

or

I fight to control the town with an exp lever with my guild. We occasionally hunt the surrounding countryside to keep our loot as good as our level, then go raiding lots of towns trying to find where the lever respawned. Its pretty fun, better than hunting in one monotous dungeon for the rest of the game.

or

I hear a global message "The spectre of Bael Zharon is spotted over Mayoi. All player kills in the area yield an increased exp bonus for the next x hours" Its very fun, and I buy an extra account. Same result if the message was "Bael Zharon smiles on all of Darktide. Every pk kill now has a larger exp reward.

Sorry for the long post, but this idea as it stands sound like it will kill AC for me. And unfortunately, these dungeons are going to recieve a lot of positive feedback from people just coming over to Darktide who haven't experienced everything else it has to offer. I just really, really, really, hate this idea. But thank you for trying. (not being sarcastic)

If you want to make PK/Darktide specific patches, I suggest you go back and examine a great one from December 2000 before altering the game in ways like this.

[Virindi Clown]

4. Just increase the exp for pk kills anywhere. Killing another person can be one of the most challenging things in the game, it should have an appropriate reward. DAoC had this on its free for all server, you could level at a decent rate from pking. Its easy to prevent exploitation and the only reason I could stand that game for the short time I did. Or perhaps if I kill Bob the Mage, his corpse has an "essense of Bob the Mage" which I can turn in for exp, with an appropriate timer on it. Perhaps the collection spot for these could be in the new dungeon.

That is an awesome idea. It would prevent macroing if you could only hold one of the automatically generated items from a person's corpse at a time and had to turn them in for xp inside a dungeon.

However, one problem is that groups of people could purposefully kill eachother just once in a day, and they would likely make more xp from that than PKing all day long. :(

It could be made so that people who are in the same allegiance can't loot the automatically generated item from eachother's corpses if they kill eachother, but that would only slightly limit the ability of some people to exploit it beyond what a person actually PKing would make if the xp was worthwhile.

[.Eden.]

Ibn I've read all your replies on this thread and I appreciate your ability to listen to ideas.

With regards to the amount of xp that you think should be given in the levers, I think you are looking at it wrong.

Lets look at it logically, rather that counting it in "uncontested" xp per hour.

The fact of the matter is, if you implement this, the dungeons will be packed, and the idea of getting a set amount of uncontested xp will be insane.

if you run into a dungeon, and make it to the lever and pull it once at level 109 like you said, you will get 5 million.Now you've got to make it accross the dungeon, through a mass of people to make it to the second lever.The likelyhood is that if you make 3-4 lever pulls without dying, you're lucky.

Even at 4 lever pulls(20 mill), taking into account the time it takes to get down the dungeon to the first lever(probobly past a mass of rabid PKers), the time it takes to pull the lever 4 times(20-30 mins) and the time it takes to get back after losing vitae and getting DIs, it doesn't seem worth it.

You're looking at a max of 20 mil an hour realisticly at level 109, which is useless.Not only will people start to get very annoyed after they get sniped before their first pull, but the amount of effort(fun though it may be) is not worth it.

You need to consider seriously increasing the amount of XP per pull, especially in this tester from 1-80.The worst you can do is make it too easy to get from 1-80, and who's going to complain about that? I think "a week of serious gaming" is far too much lever pulling to get to 80.I think this being the tester and all, and 80 being a non-factor level on DT, it should take a max of 12-15 hours to get to 80.

Even making it too much per-pull and therefor making it easy to get from 1-126 isn't that much of a threat.Its perfecting the 126+ lever system in the expansion pack that you wanna be careful of.

I've played AC since day one both on TD and DT, and have read these boards.Never before have I felt strongly enough about an issue or felt that my opinions would be worth inserting until now, so I ask you to at least acknowledge the 1 posters like myself, even though I appreciate that you're probobly very busy atm.

cheers

- Eden

[Virindi Clown]

Its perfecting the 126+ lever system in the expansion pack that you wanna be careful of.


That made me think of something. If it is coming out after the expansion, it leads me to question what alleged 'elder content' the expansion is supposed to bring.

So there won't be anything worth fighting for control of even in the EXPANSION?!?

The last thing added that was really fought over for control was the tusker island in November of 2002, aside from that dungeon next to Mt. Lethe where the undead dropped lots of majors, which was short lived. This is sad. :(

[arcgremlin]

just a thought
you mentioned before about differet instances of the same level range

perhaps
just two instances of each level range
one for good loot
one for xp

*shrug*
just an idea

or perhaps
one of the two npcs gives xp
one gives a random item (maybe too hard for you guys to make these items worth getting..i dunno)
and you have to alternate between the two

dunno
as i said before, just some ideas..

[Karakak]

If the XP reward in the 126+ dungeon is too high it will pomote forced grouping.

Two instances of the 126+ dungeon will have the desired effect in that people will be fighting over them all of the time. The large allegiances will control the dungeons and other large allegiances will be the only ones able to compete for that control. If the experience reward becomes too high, ala the 120-240 mill that someone had suggested earlier, things will turn ugly. Solo players or players in small allegiances will be at a constant disadvantage while players in larger allegiances will prosper.

People will realize this. Larger guilds will grow larger still; both from the crazy experience that their members earn and the people who will swear in after they realize they cannot compete. No one wants to engage in dreary button mashing for their XP when they can earn equivalent or greater amounts while enjoying PvP. If the experience reward is too high these dungeons will make solo leveling and solo PvP a thing of the past.

Another problem with making the experience reward too high: you invalidate the rest of the world. You have more than enough resources now; I've been leveling on my own for the past two days, during prime time and earning good experience, and haven't seen a single person. Making a place that people can fight for is a good idea, but a better idea would be to find a way to encourage people to compete over the resources already available. The world is barren enough as it is and adding these lever dungeons will not help anything.

--

Now I do realize the problem with this: if the XP isn't high enough people will still macro. I have no idea how to solve that problem; you're the dev, you figure it out. I beg you though, please don't ruin my gameplay more than you already have.

[Gorash]

Now I do realize the problem with this: if the XP isn't high enough people will still macro. I have no idea how to solve that problem; you're the dev, you figure it out. I beg you though, please don't ruin my gameplay more than you already have.

I think people will still macro no matter how good the exp is. There are going to be people who suck and can't pvp well enough to actually pull the lever enough to make it worthwhile. Or the place will be camped by a large group and they really have no chance. Either way, some people are going to be frustrated and go macro. They will also still macro for salvage.

Back to the exp discussion, I think the rewards should be comparable to good hunting, not uber macroing. Then stop macroing with a tech fix or more active admins. You have to take into consideration both people who will do really bad in these places and people who will monopolize them.

I think that hunting exp + pvp fun + pvp loot > hunting exp + hunting loot most of the time. At least it would be for me. This would keep people fighting more of the time, but still hunting a bit. And then make it so that hunting exp +pvp fun + pvp loot > macro exp + getting banned for sure.

As long as people can macro, they will. This isn't going to stop it.

[-EtG-]

Close Aphus drop again?

[PillowAttack]

I think the prize should be a huge ammount of xp. Not on the lever click though. I think when you click the lever the character should be flagged at that time. Now as long as that player is alive within the hour they get a percentage of the ammount of xp for how long they live. If the person survives the hour, they should be allowed to retag themselves for xp.

This allows multiple people to gain xp. Making it worthwhile. It also makes the individuals struggle for survival to get the BIG xp ammount. Plus if they survive for one hour they should get an extra bonus of so many million xps.

When a person is deemed enough xp on death to reach the limit of the dungeon they should instantly be killed and receive the xp when they return to the lifestone....kinda like a sacrifice for being so good. :)

Anyway, maybe those are some good ideas??

If not, make the xp award fairly large.

--Pillow Attack

[khanivore]

For the low lvl dungeons 1-20 21-40 you should make sure that all spells including itemspells above lvl IV for 1-20 and lvl V for 21-40 will be dispelld in the portal to the dungeon..

Then we will have some really fun low lvl PK fights inside, just the way it was in the past.

i think if its possible to get in to that dungeon with full lvl7 buffs it will take away 50% of the fun.

[Gurtalop_DT]

the fact that this thread has over 5 pages of you guys whining back and forth about something that nobody has the details on is pretty stupid. They nerfed chains and UCMing after 5 years and i think we all agree that that was a bad idea. They are trying to implement something that will compensate us b/c of these nerfs... bring it on. I have been playing DT on and off since summer of 2000 and as far as population goes it cant get much worse... so let them try there level lever and either it will spark some life into DT or it wont and we will all go play other games. end of story.

[Cezium]

For the low lvl dungeons 1-20 21-40 you should make sure that all spells including itemspells above lvl IV for 1-20 and lvl V for 21-40 will be dispelld in the portal to the dungeon..

Then we will have some really fun low lvl PK fights inside, just the way it was in the past.

i think if its possible to get in to that dungeon with full lvl7 buffs it will take away 50% of the fun.

a level 39 mage could be capable of casting 6's.

better would be strip all "other" cast buffs if they go this route.

[Kyros Devantar]

Your new PK dungeon may work and may not, Either way you will have alot of long term players mad for all the hard work they went through and now all those levels are basicly handed to the new comers. I am undecided where i stand at this point.

I read some where they you guys are hoping this brings back some conflict to the Pk server. Its very simple, if your want conflict lose the Alleg housing and housing barriers on DT, give the people a reason to hold up in towns once again and this will bring all the conflict and unity you need in your server once again. :cool:

[Vap0r]

Make dungeons 1-20, 21-40, 41-60, 61- 80, 80+...
People will come and fight over them, especially the people that already play DT they will be trying their hardest not to let people level in these places. And whoever says this is a bad idea because of carebears etc etc. is just flat out stupid. like stated above, look how lame DT is now.