More risk more reward...

[Valdaglerion]

<p>It is perfectly understandable that mobs are designed for the average player. Epic x2 designed to be taken down by a group of 12 people in average gear and spells. No worries...</p><p>Perhaps though in an effort to add more balance the instance zones could all be designed to scale with different instances available. I have seen this with several zones (Poets comes to mind - you zone in and 3 get instances as an option Hard, Very Hard and OMG!!). </p><p>Anyway, scaling I would see would work like this -</p><p>The rewards for the varying instances would not change. All players would be able to obtain the same rewards BUT the level of diffculty would change (keep reading). The mobs would be scaled up with higher HP and more damage output making them more difficult to dispatch.</p><p>As an offset to this higher level of risk the drop percentages for those zones would increase. This would make the reward drops more frequent for those players who are highly outfitted and seeking a higher level of challenge without hurting those whose play style is more casual.</p><p>Thoughts?</p>

[StormCinder]

<cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>It is perfectly understandable that mobs are designed for the average player. Epic x2 designed to be taken down by a group of 12 people in average gear and spells. No worries...</p><p>Perhaps though in an effort to add more balance the instance zones could all be designed to scale with different instances available. I have seen this with several zones (Poets comes to mind - you zone in and 3 get instances as an option Hard, Very Hard and OMG!!). </p><p>Anyway, scaling I would see would work like this -</p><p>The rewards for the varying instances would not change. All players would be able to obtain the same rewards BUT the level of diffculty would change (keep reading). The mobs would be scaled up with higher HP and more damage output making them more difficult to dispatch.</p><p>As an offset to this higher level of risk the drop percentages for those zones would increase. This would make the reward drops more frequent for those players who are highly outfitted and seeking a higher level of challenge without hurting those whose play style is more casual.</p><p>Thoughts?</p></blockquote><p>Sooo....twinks are bored and should get dev time?</p><p>Too much work, too little reward for dev. </p><p>SC </p>

[Talz]

<cite>StormCinder wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>It is perfectly understandable that mobs are designed for the average player. Epic x2 designed to be taken down by a group of 12 people in average gear and spells. No worries...</p><p>Perhaps though in an effort to add more balance the instance zones could all be designed to scale with different instances available. I have seen this with several zones (Poets comes to mind - you zone in and 3 get instances as an option Hard, Very Hard and OMG!!). </p><p>Anyway, scaling I would see would work like this -</p><p>The rewards for the varying instances would not change. All players would be able to obtain the same rewards BUT the level of diffculty would change (keep reading). The mobs would be scaled up with higher HP and more damage output making them more difficult to dispatch.</p><p>As an offset to this higher level of risk the drop percentages for those zones would increase. This would make the reward drops more frequent for those players who are highly outfitted and seeking a higher level of challenge without hurting those whose play style is more casual.</p><p>Thoughts?</p></blockquote><p>Sooo....twinks are bored and should get dev time?</p><p>Too much work, too little reward for dev. </p><p>SC </p></blockquote>Maybe remove the stick and try to look at it like a big boy.  Your reply screams insecurity. <img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> The majority of people will take the path of least resistance if given the choice.  I read what he said and saw a method for rewarding people that actually try to push themselves to a higher level of play. Do you worry that you won't be able to do it? <img src="/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[StormCinder]

<cite>Talzar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>StormCinder wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>It is perfectly understandable that mobs are designed for the average player. Epic x2 designed to be taken down by a group of 12 people in average gear and spells. No worries...</p><p>Perhaps though in an effort to add more balance the instance zones could all be designed to scale with different instances available. I have seen this with several zones (Poets comes to mind - you zone in and 3 get instances as an option Hard, Very Hard and OMG!!). </p><p>Anyway, scaling I would see would work like this -</p><p>The rewards for the varying instances would not change. All players would be able to obtain the same rewards BUT the level of diffculty would change (keep reading). The mobs would be scaled up with higher HP and more damage output making them more difficult to dispatch.</p><p>As an offset to this higher level of risk the drop percentages for those zones would increase. This would make the reward drops more frequent for those players who are highly outfitted and seeking a higher level of challenge without hurting those whose play style is more casual.</p><p>Thoughts?</p></blockquote><p>Sooo....twinks are bored and should get dev time?</p><p>Too much work, too little reward for dev. </p><p>SC </p></blockquote>Maybe remove the stick and try to look at it like a big boy.  Your reply screams insecurity. <img src="/smilies/1069449046bcd664c21db15b1dfedaee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> The majority of people will take the path of least resistance if given the choice.  I read what he said and saw a method for rewarding people that actually try to push themselves to a higher level of play. Do you worry that you won't be able to do it? <img src="/smilies/0a4d7238daa496a758252d0a2b1a1384.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </blockquote><p>No, you misunderstand.  Has nothing to do with my gameplay at all.  It's economics.  As you say: "The majority of people will take the path of least resistance..."  </p><p>So you want Dev time to work on something for the minority?</p><p>The OP asked for "thoughts."  I gave mine.  Didn't deserve the unprovoked attack.  The middle paragraph of your post is sound.  Would seem much more constructive without the first and last paragraphs.</p><p>SC  </p>

[Salonkolya]

<p>Variable drop-rate seems like a potentially good way to scale content to me. Take the tougher mobs and get a much higher drop-rate while sucky-geared peeps like me could go for the weaker mobs with a small chance of getting lucky.</p><p>eidt: it's basically extending the idea they already use with some instances. having the same instance work for different types of player just by changing a few variables like drop-rate and mob health/damage.</p>

[Talz]

SC, I want people to stop pretending to be experts on how development time should or shouldn't be spent.

[Dasein]

Much higher drop rate of what? In most T7 heroic zones, the drop rate is already fairly high, so increasing the drop rate won't make much of a difference, especially as anyone who is equipped with raid gear won't have much need for anything that drops from an heroic instance.

[liveja]

<cite>StormCinder wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>So you want Dev time to work on something for the minority?</p></blockquote><p>I'd like to see the Devs work on something -- like instance scaling, as in the OP's idea -- that has a good deal of potential to help the majority of players.</p><p>I'm not sure where you got the idea about "twinks being bored", but your initial response would certainly have come across better had you left that line out entirely.</p>

[Salonkolya]

<p>"So you want Dev time to work on something for the minority?"</p><p>Maybe I misread the OP but seemed to me the point was to create stuff that worked for everybody by having the same content scale with the risk/reward you chose. Not so much higher drop rates but *lower* drop rates for the weaker versions. Just an extension of what they already have. Could be an epic version of an instance with a 100% chance of some good loot, a heroic version with the same but weakened mobs with a lower %age, a normal version designed for duos/trios and a solo version. Just seems designing an instance with that in mind where some variables could be changed according to the difficulty would be pretty time-effective development.</p>

[Siogai]

I'd rather see the quality of gear scale with the difficulty setting of the instance.  If you go in on "easy mode", why should you expect to get the Fabled gear?  Conversely, if you have the ability to make it through the "ZOMGWTFBBQ!" difficulty, you should be appropriately rewarded for the heroic effort that such an undertaking required. Though I am a casual player in a non-raiding, RP-oriented guild, I don't begrude the players for whom raiding is the reason they play.  I don't put in the time and resources they do to handle raid-level content, so why should I have the opportunity to have the same level gear they do?  Some dragons aren't meant to be killed by a mismatched party of 4... some treasures aren't meant to be commonly seen except on the best of the best.

[liveja]

<cite>Siogai wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'd rather see the quality of gear scale with the difficulty setting of the instance.</blockquote><p> Agreed entirely; in fact, I think that instance scaling would be pointless, otherwise.</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p>I dont think instance scaling would be pointless without scaling gear although I think based on the nature of the game it would have to be considered due to Epic battles and drops in those. I dont see a solo taking on the Tender in EH for example...LOL</p><p>My original intent was just to make the game content available to more players based on their playstyle and reward the harder instances by adjusting the drop percentages.</p><p>None of the zones should be easy and drop fabled. I agree with this but was thinking more along the lines of Solo, Heroic and Raid levels of the zone. You go in the raid zone the drops would occur and at a higher rate, rewarding a larger number of the party for their efforts. The heroic would have a decent chance of dropping. The solo has a chance of dropping but might require several visits of the zone to get a good drop.</p><p>This kind of scaling just maximizes the content usage. Instead of only raiding parties going to EH for instance, anyone could go there but the mobs would be of an appropriate level for the type of play zone and the drops would be appropriate also. No getting drops off the raid epics for solo effort. Again, risk versus reward.</p><p>Would be nice if the recipes were dropped in all versions of Eh though <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I want Growth Floret darn it.</p>

[Malchore]

<p>I don't agree with the proposal the OP made.  If I understand it right, he saying there should be a level of difficulty for the raid zones.  (Easy, moderate, difficult.)  And that loot drops should scale accordingly.  Ok fine.  But what guild would ever select the "Easy" raid if there was little or no chance for decent gear to drop?</p><p>Gear is the very method we improve our characters.  Better equipment means an improved, stronger character.  Who in their right mind would go to the effort to assemble 24 people for a raid that didn't have a chance of droping fabled?  Why would I gather 24 people together to kill Epic x4 mobs if there's little chance of decent loot?</p><p>If SOE actually implemented the raids like this, I can promise you EVERY raid force would chose the Difficult setting.  And since they'd always chose that difficult setting, it would be a better use of Dev time to only make Difficult raid zones.</p><p>With that said, I agree completely that it would be an efficient use of Dev time to allow every instance zone to be used as either a solo instance, heroic group instance, x2 raid instance or x4 raid instance.  If SOE released 15 total instances per expansion, that would mean potentially 15 different x4 raid zones per expansion, instead of the same 4 or 5 right now.</p>

[Bozidar]

<p>Unless you're talking about lvl 70 instance, it's just not right.</p><p>It's too easy to mentor down to the lowest level in group, go into a "difficult" instance that scales to level, then unmentor and walk through it like a knife through butter.</p>

[Lilj]

<cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote>As an offset to this higher level of risk the drop percentages for those zones would increase. This would make the reward drops more frequent for those players who are highly outfitted and seeking a higher level of challenge without hurting those whose play style is more casual.<p>Thoughts?</p></blockquote>It's not neccessarily a bad idea, but I can't help but wonder if this won't induce a 'rich gets richer' scenario. If you are well equipped you can do these harder places and get even better equipment and then do even harder places. Such scenarios can be hard to balance in a game and there is a risk of 'Monty Haul'. Now, I'm not saying this will surely happen, I'm merely pointing out a risk.

[JamesRay]

<p>Seems reasonable to me to have a higher drop rate % in exchange for mobs of the same level, same drops, with mobs having higher HPs, DPS, etc to make them harder. This would minimize the tougher programming challenges (IE same zone and mobs, but mobs get buffed), and make the whole mentoring deal moot.</p>

[Siogai]

Here's the thing though... if there's a chance on "easy" for the exact same item from "zomg-the-pain"... it's simply a matter of time. You and 23 of your close buddies do a tour of easy zones every night, completely waltzing through them without so much as chipping a nail. Eventually, you're going to kit yourselves out in all the Fabled or Legendary items that the instance(s) are ever going to drop. Worse, if these items are tradeable, it's a botter's heaven.  An instance they can farm over and over for Fabled gear? Woo-whee! Again, though, there is a strata of achievements to be taken into account.  Why should a casual player like myself have a shot at the Sword of Ultra BBQPWN when raid guilds are repeating the content it drops in day after day, either failing to the difficulty or failing to get the RNG for the drop?

[Gnevil]

<p>What you are all asking for is an LDON expansion like they had in EQ1 and it was highly successful.  Basically you had instances that offered points for completeing them and you could spend the earned points on nice gear and adornments to enhance your gear.  There were essentially 4 different zones and you chose difficult or easy, the difficult if successfull offered more points then easy.  Some nice coin would drop in the zones and you could basically have the ability to take different types of groups thru them to earn your gear and adornments.  The gear with cool adornments would be on par with high end legendary gear we have in game today.  Not quite the raid fables we see now but better then the legendary loot dropped by most non raid mobs in game.  This was a highly popular expansion on my server and many a raid toon worked their [Removed for Content] off to max their faction with each of the four zones.  This allowed the entire purchase list to open for you and then you could work for points to get what you wanted.  They had cool spells for each class, adornments that allowed you to customize your weapons and armor and enchance spells, and some [Removed for Content] nice gear.  The beastlord gear from GUK was on par with Planar Gear easily and once adorned actually was in many slots nicer.  Still not on par with the top gear being dropped in the hard raid zones.  So this wouldn't break anything in game today but add more content and an ability to enhance raid and non raid players at their leisure.</p><p>You are kind of seeing something of this nature with the Unrest Zone but instead of killng yourself for up to 5 hours in a pickup group to see nothing drop you need or want you would earn points for a successfull run and after you had earned enough points you could buy an upgrade with them.  </p><p>The gear and adornments and spells had a progression as well to keep peeps interested, the early stuff was ok, the mid was much better and obviously the top end was highly desireable.</p>

[Forsaken1]

<p>OMG, LDoN was the best expansion Sony released for EQ1, IMHO. I can't even begin to guess how many hours I spent in those dungeons.... happy days <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>