So adventurers, let's talk about WE want.

[Phillip]

because there aren't enogh stuff on what we want around here...[:|]

but seriously...

there seems to be abundance of those who believe that adventure gear, and rarity is something sadly missing in HZ, hence part ofits demise. the adventuring crowd have left the bus. their second coming can helpf this game strive.

quests, events, fighting back the blightand such can help, but truly, are they enough?

HZ, is now packed with those who rather HZ stick with conformity, justify with "community" and "potential", and saturation of marketsfor 'all shall have' sort of fairness, outlook, mantra.

it's nothing essential imo.

and no, i don't consider 'expert forms' rarity. give it a bit more time and all will have them.

since its a new year, i like for us to discuss on the concept of rarity, of adventure gear, if distinction, of an adventurer's ability to relate, identify with their personas, let's discusswhat may work here, and maybe come up with a resolution.

and you know what, i believe we can think of something good for adventurers without first seeing how "crafters will benefit". i mean we can be brave, can't we?

discuss, and happy new year to all.

maybe dragons can do a thread like this too, right Vah?

[Vahrokh]

Well a separate thread is not necessary. The soup is one.

There are several ways to toss in game nice stuff.

It's not even an adventure only thing. All like things that let you go "ooh cool".

First most have to agree that Horizons has to have... horizons.

I.e. not a stagnant "safe" (and slowly decaying) situation, but to have bold, fantasious new objectives.

Like it was possible to introduce claw slots and handwraps, I don't see the difficulty in adding some other named slots to carry drop only rare stuff.

So, crafters would not be affected at all, adventurers would have the emotion of.. "dropped -> usable" and not that sensation of "having to pass thru crafters for everything".

Of course you would devise either stuff spread in many mobs in with almost non existant probability to drop or to implement "hard bosses" specifically for it. But that would lead to more camping for sure.

Notice how an hard boss is not your usual Mhedon. An hard boss is something godlike you need a real non single man party to kill. I.e. 2000 damage a hit, huge hp, tricks to learn to i.e. exploit vulnerabilities, special "potions" to unlock his vulnerabilities...

All stuff doable with things in game already.

All what's needed is the will to do that, to find that it's a smart thing to do.

Untill gray people will want a gray game, Horizons will be gray Horizons. Bleeding players away out of boredom.

Really, looting a formula or a tech is not an end. Having your gear done with them and ready to fight, just makes you ready to fight. If you are ready to fight but there is nothing to beat to pulp... why do you bother preparing yourself for 100s levels? Why playing at all without an objective?

[Helcat]

Placing rare items on bosses that require a group to
kill is not the answer. It promotes forced grouping,
something many have left EQ2 because of. The MOBs
should be tough, but not hopelessly impossible for
a solo player to eventually defeat.

But I completely agree, we need items that are truly
rare, truly unique, and vastly superior to anything
that every Tom, ********, and Sally can make in 30 secs.

I think the answer is simple. Randomness. Have rare
items dropin a different spawn area each time. Oncea
particular itemis foundin a particular spawn area, that
item doesn't drop thereagain for weeks. That takes care
of your camping problem.

Another concept I like is MOB bosses that constantly roam.
You never know where it will pop next, and the respawn
timer should be completely random as well. Remove all
predictability from the equation. Make us have to really
get out there and adventure to find and slay these evil-
doers. And make the rewards something to be proud of.

[Vahrokh]

Well, there is a difference. In EQ you must group to do anything, even your very quests. Btw Dragon MUST force group for RoP already and un-roleplay like with non dragons.

In Horizons you'd still have all your live group free unless you want to get the best and rare stuff. It's nota need that makes you go get it, but your pure greed or spirit of adventure. It's you that "force" yourself do to an all but obligatory quest.

[gopher65]

Well a separate thread is not necessary. The soup is one.

There are several ways to toss in game nice stuff.

It's not even an adventure only thing. All like things that let you go "ooh cool".

First most have to agree that Horizons has to have... horizons.

I.e. not a stagnant "safe" (and slowly decaying) situation, but to have bold, fantasious new objectives.

Like it was possible to introduce claw slots and handwraps, I don't see the difficulty in adding some other named slots to carry drop only rare stuff.

So, crafters would not be affected at all, adventurers would have the emotion of.. "dropped -> usable" and not that sensation of "having to pass thru crafters for everything".

Of course you would devise either stuff spread in many mobs in with almost non existant probability to drop or to implement "hard bosses" specifically for it. But that would lead to more camping for sure.

Notice how an hard boss is not your usual Mhedon. An hard boss is something godlike you need a real non single man party to kill. I.e. 2000 damage a hit, huge hp, tricks to learn to i.e. exploit vulnerabilities, special "potions" to unlock his vulnerabilities...

All stuff doable with things in game already.

All what's needed is the will to do that, to find that it's a smart thing to do.

Untill gray people will want a gray game, Horizons will be gray Horizons. Bleeding players away out of boredom.

Really, looting a formula or a tech is not an end. Having your gear done with them and ready to fight, just makes you ready to fight. If you are ready to fight but there is nothing to beat to pulp... why do you bother preparing yourself for 100s levels? Why playing at all without an objective?

I AGREE COMPLETELY Vahrokh!!!:D:D I've been trying to express my frustation for a long time, but to no avail.

Here is mysingle biggest problem: I actually read about HZ before I bought it. I know, big mistake. I raised my expectations. And when I bought the game two things were missing (well three, but player castles can wait:)).

1. A sense of danger when exploring -
I ran all over Istaria. Even to the ED when I was low lvl. Yet what did I find? No "risk vrs reward". No towns to be defended against brutal enemy attacks. No "frontier to be settled by brave souls willing to risk all for honour and adventure". I shouldn't have read that:(. That made me excited. Especially the(paraphrased as always)"onlystrong adventure groups may travel the unexplored wilds of istaria; only the bold will reap the reward". I miss that in this game[:'(]. There is no real sense of exploration, and no real sense of victory when you win a fight.

2. Objectives to take, with rewards -
I touched on this above, as have others. There is nothing to fight in this large land of ours. Oh there are mobs. But why fight them? Will one more ogre really defeat the WA? Ogres aren't even PART of the WA. Why fight them? Will my town be destroyed? Will Aug or Dalimond fall? Nope. If I go and sit in the healer tower for two weeks (as my main has been doing while I am on vacation hehe) NOTHING HAPPENS! WTF? I thought we could affect the world? I thought we could change the outcome of events? Apparently not.

Not only do I not see a clear purpose to fighting, I see no reward to doing so beyond basic lvling. No extra slots given by quests. No secret manouvers my school can learn (only 1 so far in game. Envenom arrow/spear. I don't count dragon quests. I suppose I should, since I would like to see similar quests for other schools. Granted, I don't want an EverQuesting® situation where I do nothing but quests. But I would like a bit of an evolving storyline for each school and race, with hidden secrets to be discovered. Or in my case, read about forums and then taken with little problems

[Hiko]

a lot of this touches upon the reasons why I recently canceled my sub, as Aamer stated so clearly: no purpose. I renewed my account back around thanksgiving to see if anything had changed, if I could remotivate myself to play - no. What was there to look forward to?? The pain in the ****** of trying to get new comps for my tier V teched armor, which I gave up on. The annoance of 7x100 players who brag of their rating while their char build makes absolutely no sense. There was absolutely no reason to log on.

of course, these problems are not without their limitations. Let us be so bold as to imagine a game in which what we did really effected the world. There would be absolutely no mobs left, we would have wiped them out to extinction. Loot? I dont give a ******** about rare items. Techs shouldnt even be considered loot. The highlight of this game was back when teching your equipment was fun, and trying to defeat the dryad bosses was what you worried about.

[Tryagain]

Its simple since people havemoney to burn 'round here these parts ;) .

One of you buy 6 copies of WoW and have them shipped to Tulga Games. That game right there is a fine example of PvE adventuring done right. Despite the rather lax death penalty I feel plenty of Danger when going into a new higher level area.

Imagine the PvE adventure aspect of WoW with Horizons Plots and crafting. What a fantastic game that would be.

Looks at Wish beta.... Big Dynamic world... oi vie

Better hurry ;) .

Easily countered with a Plot system that is continually enhanced and a Ancient Dragon ROP... well there is the client and server stability thing.

All in time I guess ?

[Aquarius]

What i think Horizons need is really reward for adventuring, loot.. if you see this skeleton wield a short sword and a shield there should be a short sword and a shield on the corpse.. but they dont need to be in perfect conditions, it should be different qualities of the loot´(random).. so there could be a rusted/broken/blighted or whatever sword, but if its there maybe u could take it to a crafter who could mend it, or deconstruct it for xp if it looks hopeless. And if your lucky it could be a pretty good sword even with techs applied to it.

Then there would be the really special loot, the magical ancient equipment with special techs better than can be crafted.. but since this is horizons and things should pass through crafters i did a horizons adaption to this with the Exceptionally rare lootsuggestion.

If not something like this comes along i doubt i will stay in this game in a few months when WoW and other games are released.. but we will see. Will pickup Dungeon Siege 2 for some real adventuring when it gets released..

[Aquarius]

Another thing if they want to regain an adventure spirit to this game, there needs to be chests locked or open, pottery with hidden items, secret staches in the forest for coin or weapons, take a look at Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights and probably most other rpg games andyou know what i mean.

[Aquarius]

there is another thing that is easily forgotten.. if you have a door that is closedyou have no idea what is on the other side until you open it. Old houses, castles, and dungeons that in some places have doors and treasure chests and pherhaps an old graveyard with a tomb wich you could enter and find old cascets wich could possibly have treasure in them, then in this tomb could be a hidden door wich leads to a dungen.

[Phillip]

the idea of Mob Boss spawn in random would be very nice. i remember the floating castle in AC1...finding it was tough, but great once you get in it was very exciting. can the system in HZ handle such randomness?

also the basis here is getting into the state of mind of the many who are still around. the bigger problem i see is that no matter how grim things may get, people here still simply want things their way, ie crafting and all things reliant to, and use it as the general outlook to bash any loot concept as "bad for a community game", or "go play EQ if you want uber® loot", and so on. how exactly can such ideas here make it through this crowd?

i think 99% of my old guildmates are playing WoW right now. they find it addicting. yet, these people were big name crafters in HZ. i mean seriously, can we even dream of such adventuring system like WoW ever breaking the surface in HZ?

i do believe the day that happens, HZ will be the best MMORPG in the market.

[Syrith_Ice]

I realised something before Christmas I was so bored of playing Horizons because there wasn't any thing exciting going on I could have more fun playing NWN. So I've been adventuring with my Druid/Shifter in a DnD environment playing Hordes of the Underdark.

I?ve not found the same fun I had pre merge. I find that the game no longer holds my interest. I like the idea of having an interaction with the landscape of which there is very little Horizons ? crafting does the peripheral but there is very little interaction with the whole landscape. Has Istaria never heard of doors!

I too read up on Horizons before joining European beta so was expecting a dynamic WA ? I know the blight anchors have been added to try and get this dynamic going but it is still all far too static. Where are all the wandering mobs that turn up in outlying towns and attack them? We don?t even have AOP anymore, not that he was much help, as you?d know he was going to Harro.

What Tugla has to do before the whole community leaves is get the game back on track, I like the randomness idea we need something to make it more fun. Maybe do something for the really high lvl people who are fed up before they leave ? maybe the PvP arena idea that was floating around.

I no longer know what this game needs but the sad fact is that I for one probably won?t be around much longer as I?m not willing to waste my time and money in something that just doesn?t work for me anymore.[:(]

[Tryagain]

Tulga Games also needs a few of their devs playing the WISH beta.

A fine a example of a dynamic world that game is.

[Serat]

I don't really care that much about loot rewards. I would much rather have areas that you actually have to battle through to get to a point. Outside dungeon crawls as it were. Workingone's way through a massive fortification with many different encounters, perhaps even some traps, some randomness to it for repeatability, a quest that directs you there, things like that--thats what I consider fun combat. Pulling for farming techs/formulas is ok if you get a bunch just to tempt fate/challeng you, but the objective isn't very alluring to me. So, simply adding useable loot would not change that much. I want action oriented objectives.

[bright]

one way they could have added purpose was instead of littering the landscape with plots they could have created towns that have spirratic spawns. and these towns would have first needed to be conquered and then constandly defended, like when AoP attacks Harro hehe, or atleast he used too

[DeathTiny]

Slots for crystal-type "usable drops" on many parts of our equip is the easy way to bring in drops ... they could be completely random in statz and something like sets with nice bonusstatz if combined ... those 2 things would bring in some loot that don´t harm crafters at all. Everything else is "killing" the market for crafters .. but to face it ..

HZ is done for most players .... adv. and craft both are too easy.
With the unlimited vault ppl have done 200 400 or 600 craftlevels without problems.
I have stopped before merge with Craftrating 151 and adv. 134 and was one of the highest on earth with 3 expert-crafters on one char ... today everyone and his mother has this adv and craftrating easy done with T5 resources and WA-mobs.
Ppl have leveled far too high .. craftrating 180+ adv. 200 (thokk) .. and if AE will bring in now caps of 120 this is nothing that will hold the players for a longer time here.

The risk vs reward is completely nonexist in HZ ... bosses ? 3 stacks with snowballs for 15 times from a named mob level 90+ ? why fight them ?
Why fight non WA-mobs at all .. some are really hard compared to the easy farming satyr-mobs and they do not drop the blighted things (at least we had no drop so far) and they drop formulas and techs on a much slower rate too.
Why level my 5th class to 100 as many have done in the last months ? or the 6th ?
There is not much use for this .. same for my crafters .. everyone has 1 2 3 5 expertcrafters now ... why should i level mine ? to find orders placed that i can´t craft because of still missing techs ? only to have them at level 100 ? thats not enough.

what maybe would help is something like advanced craftschools with reqs of two or 3 craftclasses at 100 to join. Jeweler+Armorer or Jeweler+Weaponcrafter as an example to create special weapons (design and statz) ... and those should be extremely hard to level.
Adv.-side of the game is dead with so many ppl with ratings 130+ ... a new cap with level 120 will not work for long.
What would work (but would drive away 90% of the players) would be a cut in the game and all levels cut in half ... so all level 100 classes are level 50 again and to redo the exp-system completely. no level 80-100 in one day needed here ... this kills the game as everyone is "done" with the char too soon.
Same for exp-penalty for DPs .. would drive away many players .. but i am still looking for a game where i can identify good (adv)-players at their levels again. Here you only need 2 or 3 weeks at the satyrs and good groups there to be a "hero" even if you have not damaged a single mob there ... this again killed some of the fun i had in HZ.
Next problem ... leeching .... if you have a rating of 100 and level 20 you should get exp from highlevel partys and mobs .. but not with rating and level 20.
If you are .. hm .. say 30% lower in rating of the highest groupmember you should get no exp at all. Even harder would be to base the exp on the actual adv.-level .. so you could not hunt with level 100 until you are 70 adv. with a new class.
(this would really slow down ppl with 5th ++ class as i know only one or 2 players who have done this without leeching)

But HZ has this problems since release .. the players are allways 20 40 60 or more levels/rating above the content .. and now a cap-raise by 20 levels will not be enough. There has to be much more if they plan to continue this game for a longer time.
The can´tdo unpopular things if they want to hold the playerbase(or to raise caps to 160 and bring content ingame quick for those levels)... but to let things go as they are atm is no option too as the players they want to hold will leave the game if they are "done" with craft or adv. part of the game (or both).

[IndyMan]

>Tulga Games also needs a few of their devs playing the WISH beta.

>A fine a example of a dynamic world that game is.

oh lord NO. WISH is definately not fun at this time (we shall see how beta 2 goes)
the fact that NPC's run out of cash and wont buy items is the yuck. there will be players who sell out an NPC just to make it a pain on others. there will be players who buy out an item so that others cannot get them. the last 2 betas could not hold my interest enough to play more than a couple times. maybe beta 2 will do better, but I have my doubts.

to check out a fun game, look at WOW. My crafted armor is better than most drops, yet magical drops exist for those who do not wish to go thru me.

[imported_Leannae]

"also the basis here is getting into the state of mind of the many who are still around. the bigger problem i see is that no matter how grim things may get, people here still simply want things their way, ie crafting and all things reliant to, and use it as the general outlook to bash any loot concept as "bad for a community game", or "go play EQ if you want uber® loot", and so on. how exactly can such ideas here make it through this crowd"

Not to open a can of worms but isn't this what you're saying in the topic title alone? "So adventurers, let's talk about WE want."

Reply: "people here still simply want things their way"

And seriously.. AC1 exciting? 1 patch a month, 1 event a month, 1 uber loot a month and the other 29-30 days you were bored to tears. Quests were on 1 month timers, and could not be repeated for that month. AC2 had it's share of problems with it's crafting system. Sure you could make armor but when you found better armor off drops than you could craft, why bother crafting?

[Aquarius]

Leannae i dont know how long you have been playing but if you where here in the beginningwhen there waspeople everywhere.. lots of them, and ithink it was the same on all 3 servers.. now the company almost had to closeits doors because so few was playing their game, or so few was happy with the way this game was working compared to other games.. most of these other rpg games have features such as NPC (non player charactairs) walking around, a working world model with doors, they have (dungeons) caves with trolls gnomes welgars, dragons to fightetc.., castles, abandoned houses, old temples, cemetaries ridden with zombies etc..things like this that adventurers crave to make it a fun adventuring experience.. and maybe most important of all with them other games people have been playing for years, they all have usable loot, and chance of finding exceptionally good items.

I do think there should be more interaction with the world somehow in Hz.. there is plots, and now blight anchors but its still all to static.. there need to be invasions and mobs roaming the country side.. npc's walking around doing things.. better mob ai with a working world model where city walls plot walls etc.. make a difference, there need to be ladders to the walls or towers, for archers to make a differense inthe battle for a city.

Blight fortresses that can be overtaken by players.

Maybe a portal to the blight dimension and other friends/enemies than the WA continuation of the story.. more info on other dimensions in this world.

There needs to be a library somewhere where history of istaria can be read or pherhaps even written by players.
Then ancient books could be saved from a blight fortress and brought back to the Tazoon library, the capital needs to be useful.. why have a magnificent city like this and no use for it. Here players can come and study the history of the different races etc..

More water to the land, rivers and lakeswhere small ships boats and rafts to use for travel.. maybe new continents without portals so travel there could only be by ship. Mobs that attack from the water, and even amfibious mobs near the coast line, that can walk short periods on land.

Animals to the land.. animals that could be fought for meat resources or xp.. and also could be tamed for companionship or trained for hunting, depending on the type of animal.


i know its all a dream... i very much doubt this game will ever become somethinglike this, would probably take a big amount of extracoders to make this avalible and lots of time [:|]

ok one can dream of that perfect mmorpg [:#]

[evilkarl]

Risk vs reward is not present and it needs to be.

Adventure loot would be great. they have a random effect generator now. Implement it on a non blighted weapon drop. Decrease the drop rate maybe 1/10000 or something and never let any two items with the same effects exist. This would add uniqueness. You could have a two hand sword with +20 str +20 2hs a 1 handed sword with +20 str and +20 1hs..but only one of each per shard.

I don't care if anyone thinks this will promote elitism as undoubtedly someone will say it will. The fighters of the land need a better bone than blighted weapons

I want to see stage 2 of the blight anchor stuff its already been stated this is the preliminary stage. It does let you affect the world in that the sky becomes unblighted and resources will not continue to blight once you fell them.

However the mobs do not attack towns our structres are never in any form of danger at all, only our immortal bodies.

Random named mobs with random stats would be a nice addition. Instead of knowing mhedon the level 109 named mithril golem who hits like a mofo is hiding at a mithril field....have him get random level (101-140) random stats/level random abilities and a random location. So while its still called mhedon its possible no two battles with him will be exactly the same.

Just my 2 c