Sequel to SoD - Input Requested

Ikisith was a mistake
Not sure whether or not this is what you meant, but I for one am tired of Kaezul and Ikisith in general. I know that many of the storyline ideas people have proposed revolve around Kaezul and the aftermath of the war against him, but I feel that Ikisith in general has me all Kunarked out. The Kunark zones from Live have a great deal of aesthetic variety and could have made for some fun leveling spots for a much wider range of levels than Ikisith allowed. The whole "everything in Ikisith wants to rip your face off and can probably do it in under 30 seconds if you're alone" put a damper on my ability to enjoy old favorites such as Field of Bone and Prophet's Landing (a.k.a. Firiona Vie), and having so many 65+ zones chained together inevitably meant that many of them would be relegated to "passerby zones" (places that a player passes through only to reach the more attractive farming/exp spots).

I'm sure that brushing Kaezul under the rug would do a disservice to the established lore of SoD, but I'm crossing my fingers that Taryth has something more innovative in mind than giving this cranky Iksar even more of the lore limelight.
 
One thing I have ALWAYS missed dearly in SoD is the proper implementation of languages! From all the basic player racial languages to the more obscure languages spoken by the wide variety of NPCs. The _closest_ thing we get to a language at the moment is the skillups from the Fae in Shadowdale, where you need a certain skill level to be able to use their keys, but then came the dissapointment... you can't actually turn on this language as something to speak yourself!

Imagine how much fun it could be if you are doing a questline involving the Gnolls of BlackBurrow! You are looking for an item somewhere in the zone and you are pretty sure they are from time to time speaking about what you need, but you can't make heads or tails of it because you are not a Gnoll and dont speak the local tongue. So you have make an effort to perhaps find individuals that can teach you the basics of their language, you have to spy on the Gnolls themselves and observe their conversations in order to link what they are saying to about the things they are interacting with, for example:

A Gnoll Guard is standing nearby the entrance of the zone and occasionally A Gnoll Patrolmaster wanders up to him to ask a few questions to which the guard replies, over time you figure out he is being asked about what he did/did not see on his watch. Or as you kill Gnolls you figure out more and more what they bark at you in their dieing breaths.

Through interactions such as these or the observation of them you gain language skills and eventually you master the language enough so that you may reach your goal, in this example the ability to overhear a conversation between some of the higher level Gnolls on the whereabouts of the item you are after and I am pretty sure the game could be programmed to perform a check on your skill in said language before spawning the item in question. So that it couldnt be found by chance, but only if you are flagged to find it and possess the proper skill level.

Of course each language you learn to speak you should be able to speak as well, many might not understand you, but thats part of the fun of it. I imagine that the playable race languages could be easily learned between players, much like you could do in the original EQ game (spam large swaths of text at eachother), while the NPC languages could only be obtained through 'observing it in the wild' (with all dangers possibly linked to it, as not each race/monster may be to fond of you eavesdropping) or by basic learnings from other NPCs that have experience with the language, which may come at a cost as well.

ps... Did I mention I like languages? I like languages! Implement languages! w00t
 
One thing I have ALWAYS missed dearly in SoD is the proper implementation of languages! From all the basic player racial languages to the more obscure languages spoken by the wide variety of NPCs. The _closest_ thing we get to a language at the moment is the skillups from the Fae in Shadowdale, where you need a certain skill level to be able to use their keys, but then came the dissapointment... you can't actually turn on this language as something to speak yourself!


You never learned elder fae? Scrub.
 
Not sure whether or not this is what you meant, but I for one am tired of Kaezul and Ikisith in general. I know that many of the storyline ideas people have proposed revolve around Kaezul and the aftermath of the war against him, but I feel that Ikisith in general has me all Kunarked out. The Kunark zones from Live have a great deal of aesthetic variety and could have made for some fun leveling spots for a much wider range of levels than Ikisith allowed. The whole "everything in Ikisith wants to rip your face off and can probably do it in under 30 seconds if you're alone" put a damper on my ability to enjoy old favorites such as Field of Bone and Prophet's Landing (a.k.a. Firiona Vie), and having so many 65+ zones chained together inevitably meant that many of them would be relegated to "passerby zones" (places that a player passes through only to reach the more attractive farming/exp spots).

I'm sure that brushing Kaezul under the rug would do a disservice to the established lore of SoD, but I'm crossing my fingers that Taryth has something more innovative in mind than giving this cranky Iksar even more of the lore limelight.

I mostly agree with what you have said. So many of the zones fell flat ontop of some questionable lore choices. Things were much more simple with just invading elemental planes for god knows what reason (to fuck shit up). I'm also a negative nancy who hated the main quest after a certain point and ikisith heavily tied in with that.
 
1. Go back to the original SoD at the opening of Kaezul and reboot the game at that point.
2. Make it so that the world is divided in half... Kaezul versus Dalaya.
3. Kaezul is a starting continent with full progression aka level 1 - 65+ .
4. Add classes for the Kaezulians (Geomancers, Blood Acolytes, Soldiers, and Berserkers etc.) playable only by the Kaezulians.
5. Continue the current story line of SoD with the players in control.
 
What level limit?

-Levels are a silly concept that have been deemed necessary in gaming for various reasons. Since this would still be EQ I doubt you could get away from levels entirely, but you could get away from the nonsense 60/65/80 cap games use and either:
-Level cap of 10. Each level up is super significant. Focus more on AAs (more below). Content gets used more because using the green/lb/blue/white/yellow/red (or whatever) con system, a "level 5 zone" would be useful for half your leveling experience. More efficient leveling zones mean more zones reserved for endgame and noncombat zones- not everywhere in the world needs to be a meatgrinder. Even better, if you start all new players in the same zone so lvl 1-2/3 would be a completely shared experience (which is beneficial socially) instead of a dozen empty newb zones- let the Newport guards handle those snakes. The close grouping would help control the gross inflation we see in SoD and other games so a finite number of level 1s could beat an endgame character.
-Level cap of 100, a nice round number as Marth mentioned. Make every X0 level a hell level followed by 9 very fast levels with a new spell (or rank, stop giving linear upgrades new names!)/ability at each level. So if someone dinged 51 they could go find a lvl 60 group and fly to 60. This clumping would have many of the benefits of a 10 cap while letting people hear that sweat skinner box ding sound.

How can we make the game more fun for non-raiders? How do we accommodate different play styles better?

-Expand on the bounty system. More than one bounty house would be great. If you're going to keep alignment (please keep alignment) then each alignment could have a bounty organization. Similar to the MQ factions now (+chaotic), but less rigid about who they talk to. That would offer great world flavor since you could, say, poison a well somewhere for the evils while the goods are sending people to cure the town.
-Class/Guild (the ones who gave you the starting tunic, not the fair weather friends) progression quests. It is lazy that guilds will teach you their secret knowledge because you killed some rats and have a few platinum. Makes people earn their hell level rewards by doing a quest. Instead of making 15 separate quest lines (developer ick) do a lot of "at level X0 guild master sends you to talk to captain soandso, just like half the other guild masters are doing." have 1-4 "captain soandsos" at each X0 level and mix and match who guild masters send people to so each class has a "unique" story line that overlaps with all others, but only partially for each. Have an item (a la monk belts/headband), or better yet a choice of 2-3 items (would you like the cleric hat, shoes, or shield? you can always trade them if you get upgrades) that gets upgraded at each step. If you want to move up this organization you're going to have to work for it!
-PVP zones that matter. Not an arena sitting empty somewhere, but a battle zone (alignment factions?) with repeatable quests that will pit you against the environment and the objectives of other players. I don't envision a big stupid brawl, but a very dangerous high risk/reward quest area for people who like that kind of thing.
-Eliminate "green" quests. Quest should always offer some reward, even if it is mere coppers and "mandatory" quests like the faction grinding in the MQ should have an endgame alternative. I cannot express in words my loathing of some dickheads sending me to kill greens and collect uncommon drops all day so they would like me when my character probably had the power to transform their entire society overnight. Oh wait, I can- it sucked and made me not want to play.
-Repeatable solo/group quests tied to instances, possibly with repeatable solo precursors so which would give 2%ers a chance to bring something to the table. "Hey guyz, while you were raiding the planes I tediously collected the 100 donkey ears needed to unlock the Crypt of Amazing Gears that everyone wants to go to but nobody wants to bother with the key, so who is coming with me? Hooray I haz friends!"
-More deity quests (more below)

Progression - what methods are most fun and how do they scale?

-End gross stat mudflation. Remember how amazing it was to get a +3 dex item in original EQ? Keep items simple with +5 or less per stat and don't hesitate to throw negatives in the mix, which bring me to stats in general...
-Rescale stats to a 100 point scale, 100 being god level strength, intellect, wisdom, etc...
-Give each base stat a clear function and advantage instead of leaning on, or even having, advanced stats/focus items.
-The "default" starting stat would be 20/25 (to leave room for negative modifiers, debuffs, and negative items) modified by race. Humans would start with 20/25 in everything with other races having balanced modifiers of +/- 10 of less (ex: ogre +10 str/sta, -5 agi/cha, -10 int). Possible class modifiers too, if possible but of +/- 5 or less.
-Items would have small stat increases to where +5 would be the best an item gives for a single stat and in total accumulating +40 of a stat would require amazing gear and sacrificing other stats (ex:+5 str arms instead of +2 to all at endgame). This makes "backgearing" interesting endgame since maybe I want those +5 Int pants from torment sometimes instead of my baller ass +3 all pants from abyss (using current zones as examples). AC, hp, and mana could still advance in the linear fashion EQ later adopted so "gear check" fights are still a thing and people can feel good about pixels.
-Buffs (which should all die in a fire and be replaced with auras to forever end buffbots and rebuffing and all that other awful shit no one likes) would cap out at around +20 total points divided (ex: Warrior aura gives +10 str/+10sta at lvl 100)
-AAs for stats would have NO CAP! ENDLESS PROGRESSION, fuck tomes! One small catch- each +str (for example) would cost N^2, where N is how many +str you have bought (starting at 1). So, +1str=1AA, +2str=1AA, +3str=4AAs, +4str=9AAs, +10str=81AAs, +21str=400AAs, +75str(godlike str while nude)=5476AAs. Plus all previous levels of course, so gaining +10 would cost 286AAs and +75 would cost, ummm, a whole whole lot.

Example of strength for a lvl 100 raid equipped human warrior: Human (+25 base) + Warrior (+5 creation) + Self Aura (+10) + Gear (~+30) + AA Str (+10 for example) = 80 Strength total.
If that person wanted to gimp themselves they could squeeze out another 10 in gear stats and if they had less than no life they could spend thousands of AAs to get another +10 to go all the way to 100. IT IS POSSIBLE!

Substories. There is one major overarching theme to the game (like Kaezul was in SoD), but other things will be long gone or forgotten. Vah quest won't be a thing anymore. Silver Crown and the like have long disbanded. Relationships built around the Kaezul struggle are largely a thing of the past. With all this - what else makes the world go round? What makes it interesting? One concept being floated at present is that it is the good guys who are the outcasts - various forms of evil-aligned groups run most things, and there's a lot of blending-in that needs to happen to get anything done if you are good-aligned. A significant thought in the game is allowing good to begin to retake some ground, through one-time quests, GM events, etc., but what else can we do here?

-Return of the true gods. It turns out the gods in SoD were shadows/echos of their true glory left behind while the true gods went off on some crazy adventure against an outside entity. The outside entity used their assault as a distraction to pierce the mortal realm and exert his influence on Dalaya. Now the Gods are back, though a few died, and new alliances have formed. Their power in there own realms is restored to its true glory, but now they must retake the mortal realm with our help. They are looking for worthy mortals who can pass their tests to join the fight against the outside entity (expansions).
-Mortals who have aligned themselves with the outside entity (not evil like player alignment evil, more nihilist) have overtaken most of Dalaya! Zones must be retaken through epic quests (one-time per zone, but have a few different ones), GM events, etc.. to retake the lands controlled by the outside entity!

Races and classes. IMO, one of the more uninteresting parts of SoD right now. I'm looking at a complete revamp - what are some of your ideas?

-Meaningful race differences. Stats as above which amount to a correctable (but not really) difference and one unique ability on par with ogre no stun for each race. NO restrictions on race/class combos. If you want to be an Ogre wizard with shit INT (which is waaaay more important now) who can't even wear some of the best gear for the class then go right ahead. mmoRPG. RPG!
-Fewer classes that follow a balance design:
Capture.JPG

-Alternatively you could keep all the classes with Rogues and Wizards occupying the DPS/DPS spot as the premiere dps who aren't good at anything else and other classes moved around accordingly. I just cut the "evil" classes because arbitrary decisions are arbitrary. Throw SHD where MNK is since using your fists to fight golems is beyond stupid, whatever.
-Columns are main role and rows are secondary roles. Classes can be balanced by row and column with Bards being a secondary at all 4 roles. For example, Pal, War, Mnk should tank about equally well and Pal, Ranger, Ench, and Bard would "heal" about equally well. This gives clear metrics for class balance debates which have been a subjective and nauseating topic with SoD thanks to dumb assholes like me.
-Pure classes (looking at you warriors and clerics) are a cancer. Having encounters/situations where one healer performs better than another (ex: hots work great on this fight because of all the moving or whatever) is one thing, but having a class be the best at a role all day every day is poor class design that has been more or less abandoned by games for a damn good reason.
 
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if new classes are an option maybe consider a class that specializes in high chance pbaoe procs that consume player mana when they activate. Envisioning this as a chain int user.

while their group dps would be significant against a single target they would be weaker than other dps classes. right now we don't have many options for consistent non-burst dps on groups in point-blank range. The strategy of the class would be finding the right proc so they go through their mana at the desired rate. Ideally the procs would all overwrite each other to facilitate this.

if their procs were cast-able on others I would suggest a AA or Self only version for them that stacks with the one they give to others or else I could see balance issues.probably be best if they had a stance that could negate or drop their agro while it was active otherwise in some groups this class would be horrid to work with. Another option could be proc buff options with negative hate.

And while I am thinking about crazy things like this maybe make clerics a cloth class. it would make sense thematically and the battle cleric role could be pretty much covered by paladins.

with those changes we would have int and wiz users at every armor level.
 
Oh wow where to start.
Some Ideas I've had for an EQ server like SOD would be...
1. Level cap progress as the server grows level cap would start at 10 and end somewhere around 60
2. Server progress. I would start the server off with only a few races and a few zones and unlock them as the server grows. Think about Newport and Hallas being the only starting cities at first. Content will be limited to Newport, Sewers, Centaur hills, Blackburrow, Everfrost, Halas. Level cap 10. Content would be centered around raids in Blackborrow and raids coming from blackburrow, Everfrost and Centaur hills would be a war zone.
3. SOD has a lot of awesome features but I feel like it got to "Over the top" max level progress (Gold farming, Tome EXP) was to much. The entire game got top heavy no one made new characters because of the amount of stuff needed at max level. I would like to see something like going back to level 1 for some reason.
4. Retired Tank bots were at one point a problem with content. there are 100's of uber tanks out there that people had access to for exp and raids.
5. Rebalance classes so that each class has its own specific role in groups/raids Just like a Warrior does as a tank or a cleric does to heal. Give other classes some really powerful nitch roles and not just with 4 hour long buffs. Paladins - 10% of damage taken by all members of the group is redirected to the paladins and reduced by 50%. Shadowknight - 10% of all damage done by the group reduces the damage taken by the shadowknight.

I started getting to specific.
Long tory short SoD is a great game but it is OLD. Ikisith to me was a bit of a bust like a lot of people mentioned. There were to many walls, Quest, Monsters that kill you, flags. Over all it was not as enjoyable as "Kunark" was on live.

-What to change-
Less Endgame heavy content. I don't think any one re-rolled because of this
Toss Tomes
Remove massive content walls like Ikisith had
More content group sizes, Solo, 6man, 12man
Plat sinks


I'll add more later
 
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1. Level cap progress as the server grows level cap would start at 10 and end somewhere around 60
I like this a lot. It would make sure there was good content all the way up, like there could be raids at each level bracket. It also makes it so people with less time to play can stay leveled up.
 
It would help with a few things.
1. Time to build more content while players beat the previous content.
2. More time for the player base to grow.
3. Pave the way for "Adept" bosses while leveling up.

Take Black Burrow for example a level 10-20 zone.
This zone would be Top tier content while the games cap is level 10. 1-2 groups in Blackburrow getting quest items , rep, loot.
A raid of 18 level 10 players would form to kill 2-3 max level engage (Later to be Max level 15 Mobs)

After 3-4 weeks time Players have stopped the blackburrow invasions, Newport Sewers Plague, Everfrost Snow Orcs. Level cap will increase to 15 or 20 and players will gain access to new areas like Badlands, West, North, East, South and Paw. Maybe add Everfrost for level level 10-20 players and more "Endgame content"
 
3-4 weeks? Thats a bit quick don't you think? In that example a new player that finds such a server after a few months would find it with an already sufficiently raised level cap and zone availability. All the 'high end' people are off chasing stuff in Paw while they are stuck in a Centaur/BlackBurrow that gets raped in backgearing tours for alts much like we see high end stuff go down in SoD at the whims of bored top tiered players right now.
 
Wasn't the point of instancing a dungeon to cater to certain levels? I am aware public zones can be whatever, but instancing could allow certain level ranges for characters. I don't think there would be problems with Adepts being available publicly.

Also, I haven't looked at the EQemulator code to know about the difficulty. I'm just going off something Taryth mentioned much earlier maybe.
 
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Starting over in any form is going to cause some issues. I'm open to anything new there are a lot of really good features that make SOD stand out from other EQ servers. If you can keep things like EXPbands and crafting it would be a better transition. I've also proposed the idea of "Seasons" that would make the game more interesting. New characters made during a particular season would gain some new perks that would make them slightly better then the last character.
 
Been awhile since I've played. I miss this game and would play SOD 2.0. I'd even leave Path of Exile :)

I loved grouping, SOD community, adepts, factions, lore, bounties, raids, and expable items. I even enjoyed list sell.

I never made it into tomes due to grind. The top heavy grind pushed me away. The constant buff interruptions to exp were annoying too.

Chrysocome and Totw...I like druids, what can I say?
 
I haven't read through all 6 pages of this thread (read: I haven't read anything other than the title). But I will echo what I am sure everyone is saying: who cares about sequel to SoD, will there be a sequel to my fomelo?

Edited for clarity -- *my* fomelo specifically
 
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-If it wasn't mentioned, in today's world, quick travel makes life fun. There is nothing more boring that running across 5 trivial zones. Quick travel lets people play the game together more easily...

-Personally, I like raid in larger groups. I find it to be more fun than 6 man content because I enjoy the social aspects more. I think it would be cool to have raids that ramp up difficulty and number of drops based on how many people are in the raid. If there was a way to casually raid /win.

-I don't personally enjoy any of the key/flagging systems very much. It is mostly not fun to back flag, and it is a pain in the ass to need that 1 person who has the key so that 18 people can raid.

-I read that someone said solo content being rewarding. This could really allow people who have nonconsecutive playtime to actually progress their characters.

-Remove the need to camp something forever and wait for spawns. nothing is as fucking boring as waiting for stuff to respawn.
 
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Hello, first time poster but very interesting topic, I like a lot of the ideas here and would like to add a potential rework of some of the hybrid classes to the discussion. Not sure how possible or popular it might be but I would love to see if it's able to be worked into the lore new splashes, for example. A combination of the ranged melee with necromancer spells instead of druid or the plate 2h class with shaman, or maybe a rogue hybrid with druid, monk with cleric etc. Not necessarily as replacements but either way I think it would give many people a newer playthrough experience if we all have to start over why not with something new. PS I vote for Mage/Monk to replace the Bst (2hb obviously). Hope this isn't a terrible idea, just throwing it out there.
I would probably try a new game like SoD2. Sure many others would too.
 
Make SoD.... but with the unreal engine.

And make it brutally challenging. There's too many casual MMO's, most of these requests are "hey this works in WoW, GW2, <insert casual style MMO here>". I can't really think of anything that reaches the level of challenging that EQ did back before the days of Kunark. Anyone else remember finally farming enough money for a full set of leather armor or copper armor, only to die in a dungeon and have to do a corpse run because you nekkid? That shit builds bonds. I can't remember if it was in the early days of Kunark, but I do remember being deathly terrified the first time I got ported to The Dreadlands and had to have a friend escort me to Karnor's Castle because I was afraid I wouldn't make it otherwise (granted I was like 10-11).

A recurring theme I see here that is disappointing amounts to "Person gave me a quest to go to a zone and kill stuff. But I don't want to actually make the effort to travel there, or find the mob, or camp it because 'reasons', so have the quest giver port me there, and have the mob spawn at port in, and have a 100% drop rate on the thing I need."
 
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