Suggestion: More blessed zone trivia

B

Bwum

Dalayan Beginner
Hi there -- first time poster, long time lurker.

I read an offhand comment today in Discord that there were some anonymous complaints about a proliferation of blessed zones and that those complaints led to restrictions on the number of blessed zones.

I wanted to voice my support as strongly as I can in the opposite direction. As a fairly new player to the server, the plentiful blessed zones and the little trivia events Deein held for them were one of the most fun aspects of leveling up. I loved trying to be the first one to answer a trivia question so that I could ask for Paw to be blessed and then promptly go there and die repeatedly to enchanter mobs (how does anyone survive those mezzes?!).

Encouraging small, positive, fun and often silly interactions between the server administrators and players seems like a really clear win to me. It made me feel more motivated to play and I know that many other people in my guild feel the same way. There was one week when we were able to get a blessing for Requiem of Hate and we spent so much time there that I got down to a -10% zone modifier!

Thank you for the consideration -- I'll obviously continue to love playing on this server either way but just wanted to let you all know how meaningful the small things like this are for many of us new players.
 
the trick to surviving mezzes in paw is to have high enough magic resist to be immune to them. high MR is the best counter for enchanter mobs in general. And while you don't have to go near this crazy here is a toon that took MR to an extreme for that level. https://shardsofdalaya.com/fomelo/fomelo.php?char=Dosai . guessing a MR in the 200s somewhere would be enough.
 
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I support this suggestion and it would be nice if there were rotating blessed zones for all levels on a regular basis but I realize this is more of a manual thing.
 
Did a little more research and they don't seem to have resist adjusts so might be able to get away with 120 or 160 for full resist.
 
Proportional experience needs to be raised across the board, or the cost of AAs needs to be substantially reduced, or more repeatable quests/events that award AAs need to be implemented. Blessed zones are great but also kind of a band aid. I agree that increasingly avenues to more experience is a good thing.
 
I like the way that zones are blessed, but not the way that they are chosen. In my experience in eqemu and helping manage a server, I have become fond of having a set group of zones with certain exp modifiers that changes on a more long term basis that benefits the server's leveling population. Factors that should be considered are how often people frequent the zone, the difficulty of the zone (i.e. - caster mobs vs straight melee and the need to split pulls; no safe spots etc.) It promotes the aspect of grouping and brings a change to the pattern of Level 1 to 15 in zone x, levels 16 to 21 in zone Y, etc.

Things should be planned more than just choosing on a whim with no thought in the process or asking suggestions or by chance (Having the first person to bring you a lightstone gets to pick what is blessed for 24 hours etc)

Engaging gameplay comes from planning, and I think that a set schedule on zones and changes would be a good thing.

Just my two cents.
 
Romulox said:
I like the way that zones are blessed, but not the way that they are chosen. In my experience in eqemu and helping manage a server, I have become fond of having a set group of zones with certain exp modifiers that changes on a more long term basis that benefits the server's leveling population. Factors that should be considered are how often people frequent the zone, the difficulty of the zone (i.e. - caster mobs vs straight melee and the need to split pulls; no safe spots etc.) It promotes the aspect of grouping and brings a change to the pattern of Level 1 to 15 in zone x, levels 16 to 21 in zone Y, etc.

Things should be planned more than just choosing on a whim with no thought in the process or asking suggestions or by chance (Having the first person to bring you a lightstone gets to pick what is blessed for 24 hours etc)

Engaging gameplay comes from planning, and I think that a set schedule on zones and changes would be a good thing.

Just my two cents.
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I want to draw a hopefully helpful distinction here between the system you're describing, a zone experience modifier (ZEM) system (which exists on this and the majority of emulated servers) and blessed zones. Exactly as you suggested, all zones here have different bonuses based on their risk/reward levels. This system is really great and acts as a good incentive to encourage players to pursue experience in more difficult zones -- for example, Citadel of the Claw has a ZEM of 70% because of its relative difficulty compared to other zones.

The blessed zones system primarily serves two pretty different purposes:
1) Incentivizing players to utilize underutilized zones (Cole has mentioned he does this already using a spreadsheet with weights based on utilization and a random number generator)
2) Enabling an easy, low stakes way of healthy and positive interactions between staff and players (this is what I'm advocating that we bring back and have more of)

An additional nice, more subtle bonus of the blessed zone system is that, by allowing the players to select additional blessed zones, it acts as a really obvious feedback mechanism for content developers.

Blessed zone selections by players serve as a weekly-ish pulse check for what players' current favorite zones are. This feedback can feed directly into prioritization decisions for staff, by either adding evidence that a zone which is never selected should receive some attention (e.g., the recent extremely well received Eldenal's Mansion revamp) or that a zone which is being selected every single week might be doing something really right which should be implemented across more zones.

In my original post I'm really suggesting the opposite from what you're outlining in your reply. I think that having a set schedule would be quite boring and doesn't really warrant having an additional system at all -- at that point, the bonuses might as well just be rolled into the existing ZEM system. This might just come down to a matter of a difference of opinions here ultimately, but, I don't think that engaging gameplay only comes from planning -- I actually think these types of small GM events are really engaging, too! Anecdotally, they've resulted in some of the most fun that my guildmates and I have had so far on the server.

Thank you for weighing in!
 
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