THE CORE DEMOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTER PART IV: ALTERNATE PATHWAYS

The current investment requirement to obtain or experience top-level content in Everquest can be summed up simply: Investment = Total number of man-hours required to obtain desired result, including aggregate and accumulative investments of effort, planning, organization and information-gathering.

I’ve already demonstrated that there is no real risk involved for those that attempt to experience acquire top content; it is just a matter of invested time. The problem with the current system is that it removes even the attempt at top content from the realm of possibility for about 80% of the customer base of Everquest. They cannot attempt it because, while they are willing to invest the same amount of time, they are not willing to, or are unable to, invest it in the manner currently necessary.

The CDE (Core Demographic Encounter), which is defined by 4-6 players with 2-2½ hours to play, absolutely cannot hope to ever accomplish the top content. It is impossible by definition. Let us talk about alternate means for the CDE to obtain top content, or experience top content, without there ever being the risk of “abuse” by professional players.

I will provide several examples of how alternate pathways could be introduced into the game; it isn’t important whether or not particulars need to be addressed or ironed out, because the basic concepts are sound.

1. The Rare Drop Quest

All that is necessary here is to create a table of extremely rare quest instructions that drop off of ANY target level MoBs in the entire world. Let us use level 45-50 creatures as an example. CDE group “A” is fighting in GD against crystal shardwurms, or in Karnors, or at the Ry’gorr Orc Fort. Let us say that there are 8 items per 14 classes available through this system. That is 112 items offered through this system. Furthermore, SOE only wants one item from each class table to enter the world every 3 days; that is still about 4 drops a day.

The instructions for this quest involve gaining no-drop combining boxes after turning in the note (which is NOT no-drop), and then collecting 8 no-drop ingredients. For example ... have shard spiders in Velketor’s drop a new no-drop “black crystal silk thread”, install no-drop “remarkable manticore tails” as rare drops in Eastern Wastes, then no-drop wurm venom from the wurms in Burning Wood, and no-drop vials of “glowing primordial ooze” from the oozes in City of Mist and in the Tower of Frozen Shadow. It is important that the drops all fall in zones, even if rarely, easily accessable to the target casual levels.

We’re not talking about extreme rarity, but perhaps just one out of 100 kills on average. You have to collect 8 such items in all from various places around the world where the target level CDE can enter and fight effectively. When you combine these items in the no-drop box you get the no-drop “Dread Summoner’s Cloak”, AC 12 MANA 50 INT 6 ALL RESISTS 7 CLICKABLE EFFECT: Healing - Magicians Only, All Races, or something similar.

There isn’t any item that the CDE can’t obtain in that list (remember, the CDE isn’t just 4-6 people at target level, it also refers to something they can accomplish in 2-2½ hours increment investments. However, it would take the CDE, as defined previously, months of real time to finish the quest after obtaining the quest instructions. It would effectively be a quest of epic proportions for your average player, and the professional player couldn’t really care less, because they have the SAME chance of randomly acquiring these quests, AND they also have the option of engaging in current means of getting top end reward, which is much more reliable than waiting for an ultra-rare quest instruction drop.

Now, are all the professional players going to be running around killing level 45-50 creatures like crazy all over the world hoping to get this quest? Of course not, because they have more sure means of obtaining high-end content. Sure, every once in a while they might get the Rare Drop Quest Instructions, but more often than not it’s just going to fall in the hands of your average player who is fighting things his regular or make-up CDE group normally fights. He or she can then embark on the quest by simply finding pickup groups in the areas that drop the items, investing exactly the same thing - time - that the professionals invest for their items, and taking relatively the same risks.

The only question is making the investment necessary to gain the item sufficient to warrant the reward of the item in terms of the CDE, not the professional gamer. How quickly the professional gamer **could** get the quest done after the drop of the instructions isn’t relevant whatsoever, because the quest isn’t designed around the 10% of the clientele that are professional gamers ... what they do with it is immaterial, because the entrance rate of the items are controlled anyway. What is important is creating a system of quests that provide top level reward in a reasonable manner for the enjoyment and hope of your average player in a challenging and fun way.

2. The Random Log-In Quest

When you reach level 50, you go to a special guild NPC and through some interaction announce that you are prepared to begin your Heroic Trials. You are advised to always keep at least one small inventory slot open. Your character’s name is put in a pool of all others of your class that have activated this quest sequence.

Every 3rd or 5th day a random name is selected from the pool and whenever that character logs in, they find a no-drop quest note in thier empty inventory slot. This takes them through a similar set of acquisitions such as in the Rare Drop Quests... or it provides them with a key coded to their class.

This key acts as a group entrance device (like the keys to the different levels in the Tower of Frozen Shadow) to a special dungeon/area that houses quest areas for all classes doing the Random Log-In Quest. Every class goes down a specific pathway separate from every other class in this dungeon/zone, or there could be separate dungeon/zones for each class. The dungeon is set up like the Tower of Frozen Shadow, in that it is “doable”, eventually, within the CDE (4-6 players with 2-2½ hours to play).

There could be a sequence of keys that moves the group through levels, and at the end the original quest dungeon key must be turned in to the last NPC in the dungeon for the acquisition of the final, no drop item reward.

3. Mini Zones

Let’s face it ... when you can throw a virtually endless supply of bodies and resurrections at a MoB, you’re not really doing anything special other than just being able to organize. SOE could create “mini-zones” which are specifically tuned to be difficult for the for a CDE group. These zones would be duplicated for any group entering so that each group faces the zone by itself, and could be subject to the "Warrens Loot Rules'.

This would open up all sorts of possibilities in designing content and fun dungeon scenarios. It would make the “dungeon crawl” more realistic, since ... well, in what heroic literature do you meet up with seven or eight other bands of heroes trying to accomplish exactly the same thing you are? Death in these zones could mean simply the expulsion of your body to some outer waiting area, where you have to recover it., instead of SOE servers keeping all parallel zones active while corpses inhabit them.

They could also be limited by making it only accessable via random-drop keys. The bosses in the maximally hard mini-zones, which would be limited to participation of one full group only, should drop the best stuff in the game .. because you can’t simply throw more people and more rezzes at it ... you only have 6 people, and you can’t exit or retreat without exiting the dungeon and losing your ability to re-enter.

4. The Truly Epic Quest

Make these quests branching and real-time oriented. You collect certain ingredients and the NPC creates for you a reserve of liquid mithril (or adamantium or whatever), and gives you a receipt that is dated. You may not do the next part of the quest until the date on the receipt, so that the NPC has sufficient time to prepare your metal.

There might be many branches that you must choose by selecting certain gems and metals and how much metal you wish to provide, viscous mana, etc. Each step requires a real-time delay, and each step has several branches of choice towards a final outcome, and no other “Truly Epic Quest” can be embarked upon simultaneously.

Each piece of armor or the weapon take a certain length of time for the NPC to create as each step is completed. A no-drop Bracer of Shadows (AC 6 STR 5 ALL RESISTS +3 HP 20) might take 2 months to create (after you reach a certain level, of course), and a no-drop Jungle Lord Tunic (AC 20, STR 10, STA 10 , DEX 10, Effect: Invigor) might take a full year to complete. And this is AFTER you’ve hit, say, level 50.

The bonus here is that this kind of quest would reward loyalty to the game instead of unprofitable focused consumptions of bandwidth - which is the kind of play encouraged now by the current epic quest system. Alternate methods of distributing top level content is possible, obviously, without any chance of professional gamers “abusing” the system, or in a way that cheapens the current method of experiencing/obtaining that content. To claim it can’t be done, or would even be difficult, is absurd.

 

Tell me how stupid these ideas are here.

Next: THE ECONOMY, BALANCE, RISK VS REWARD, AND OTHER TIRESOME JUSTIFICATIONS