War? What is it good for?

This needed to start at one point.


To give an example, a while ago we had a similar event happen where we were overrun by Kaezulians. The waves started out with 40-60 mobs with occasional mobs below and occasional mobs above. It was all in all pretty balanced out for level ranges 20-65+.
The only problem is, if you trigger a war and start with level 20-30 mobs or even lower and then slowly build it up the highend toons will simply overrun it.
There needs to be some sort of challenge for the entire server and giving highend raiding toons a hard time is the best thing to slowly work DOWNWARDS. If we (highend players) are busy defending certain places Wiz can go and swarm other areas with lower mobs w/o having them overrun by us.

All in all it seems pretty logic to go this way although I admit it kinda suck to be lowlevel at the beginning. But I'm pretty sure as time goes by everyone will be part of the war and I've already seen some neat suggestions in here.
 
The Adept thing does break a idea to mind.

What if the zones around the war zone would also spawn "scouts" groups of 3-5 lower level Kaz that have a Adept tag on them. So they spawn at level 20-25 range but have adept taged. Higher levels couldn't run in and blast them away, so only PCs of the the max engage or lower could deal with the scouts. Though the adept tag here might not be needed as lower level scouts spawning really should not have any interst for a higher level toon. (no xp, what ever loot they have would be very subpar for a higher level)

Adding the quests is obviously another great way to go. I would also say along the lines of the scouts prehaps have some of the many unused camp sights around sod spawn lower level Kaz scouts as well. Kinda like how Lake Star fall already has a small group of "scouts"

Again with the Adept note.. it might be intersting in the waves of higher level troops to have 1 Adept mob spawn.

Say something like a Portal Keeper (say level 30 Adept.. why is he weaker? he study magic alot and is concentratiing on keeping the protal open useing much of his power so hes weakened.. hense lower level.), this guy spawns with a portal and as long as the portal is open every so often spawns reinforcments troops. The Portal Keeper has a strong Antimagic Aura on him (aka Adept) so people with a lot of magic (aka higher level toons) can't harm him, unfortunely lower level people are not so lucky with magical gear so he is vunerable to them.

This would allow lower level players to not only particpate in a war zone but also promote team work as the higher level toons would have to keep safe the lower level toons who are going after the Portal Keeper.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. I am sure what ever you guys are working on will be good.
 
Atriedas said:
I will think of more ideas of how to incorporate lower level players. Creating nothing but end game content is a down fall for mmos. To keep games alive for longer time you should make more lower end content at the same time of higher end content. Having people create multiple accounts/characters and maxing them is what keeps games alive. If you ask a person on wow how many 70's they have they might say 1-4 but they will most likely have 2-4 60s and more lower characters.

But right now... its bed time.

we have the beginning content out there.. people really dont like to go back and chill at low levels. they work their ways up.. and raid.. and whatnot... if people hit the ending mobs... then they get bored.. so without creating more high end content... people get bored... i dont think many of the low levels can really say the content is boring and whatnot... while new lower end content is cool its really not needed..

as far as the war goes. i think it is pretty cool and all.. but the lag and crashing issues did suck on the first night. i wasnt at the second attempt though. hopefully it will run a bit smoother.. i personally would like to see it possible to go in and be able to do something with just 1-2 characters.. currently if you dont have a raid formed and whatnot... your just going to get plowed over. hopefully the war idea will evolve a bit and individual players will feel there is more they can do other than pair up with the top tanks and other top raid geared people. i found for the most part the top end players stuck with the other top end players.... thus leaving most others not caring to even participate.
 
In the same vein as what has already been said and as a suggestion for lower levels being included:
- I like Kirin's idea. But I would apply it for the 40-55 crew.
- In the zones near the one(s?) where war takes place, why not implement scouts and quests? Why wouldn't the Newport and other towns authorities decide to set resupply camp close to the zoneline, with a healer and some merchants (arrows, potions and whatnot) to help the adventurers with the war effort. After all they are concerned as well. This would include resupply quests, courier quests, clearing out the scouts; also crews of "residents" (goblins, orcs, gnolls, young giants and cyclops, bandits?) from the zone taking advantage of the disorganization (?), making gangs of 8-10 and roaming in the zone...
All of this wouldn't necessitate any GMs or scripts, and would still make the lower levels feel like they are included in the war.
 
if you add new begining/mid content then people would reroll to experience that content. and what keeps you from adding end game content at the same time.

in a simple class such as intro to game development and marketing they teach you about having enough replayability.
 
Atriedas said:
if you add new begining/mid content then people would reroll to experience that content.

No. This has never happened in the history of the server.
 
Kirin said:
This would allow lower level players to not only particpate in a war zone but also promote team work as the higher level toons would have to keep safe the lower level toons who are going after the Portal Keeper.
-Man that's a cool idea, reminds me of the Frodo mission to go past the enemy lines while the other high levels are struggling in war, just to throw the ring in the lava. Here we'd have a few lowbies that would absolutely need to kill those adepts. I wanna see lvl 65's "LF full group lvl 20-30 to gank portal keepers !" :toot:
I'm sure there are a lot of nice ideas to dig here ; let's just sit , relax and enjoy the content, let Wiz fix the few bugs and polish his ideas, then he might rearrange stuff neatly.

-Quests would take a lot of time but would sure be a great addition. Remember, though , the "entirely too long to-do list" of Wiz (Jayelle trademark iirc)

Kirin said:
What if the zones around the war zone would also spawn "scouts" groups of 3-5 lower level Kaz that have a Adept tag on them. So they spawn at level 20-25 range but have adept taged.
-However, I'm wondering how your first adept idea could be transplanted into waves of scouts, I'll explain : you have like 4 Kaezulians coming, adepts level 24-26 ; you got a full group of lowbies, ranging from 18 to 24. One or more of your characters are basically screwed, cause the scouts level would be too low to engage :/ hence you get kicked in the ass possibly, and the highest levels of the group are screwed cause they cant engage neither the adepts nor the higher levels. You see it's a very complex situation.

Nothing to do with it, but I found an avatar for you :
the_kirin.gif
 
sry, im not use to eq terms. rerolling = creating alts.

and i meant for it to be implemented, not that it has happened.

and your right it hasnt happend much in any game.
 
Don't take this post the wrong way if you are lower level, but I casually played for one month and was 57 with a handful of AA. The war will be going on for quite some time (assuming, it is a war afterall), so this will give you plenty of time to level your characters and participate. Meanwhile, I am sure the administration will involve the lower characters at some point. And, as Wiz pointed out...not all new content has to include levels 1-65. I haven't heard any level 20s complain that they cannot raid Towers of Tarhyl (yet...).

To reiterate my point that I detracted from...just go out and play/quest and you will be "high" enough to participate in no time. If you aren't on enough to do that, then you won't be on long enough to help in the war effort either.

I've already said it, but this war and all of the great content on this server is what makes SoD way better than live.

Felyn
 
Something folks may be overlooking is that this new dynamic system may be able to be expanded on, and used elsewhere. So while the current war may not include content for all levels, we may be able to use the backend code of the war for future dynamic content.
 
I envision the kobolds invading valley of erimal, then mistwoods, then erudin, then the world!
 
Most of the lag and DCing is caused by many ppl zoning/logging on different chars to participate in the war. The login server (not sure if its the same box or not) is whats causing most of the DC and 1017s while logging in. Every time you zone you connect to the login server.

~Jaen
 
Xeldan said:
Something folks may be overlooking is that this new dynamic system may be able to be expanded on, and used elsewhere. So while the current war may not include content for all levels, we may be able to use the backend code of the war for future dynamic content.

:dance: The war is awesome... tell me more.
 
Perhaps the number and level of the encounter could be scaled according to the number of people who are logged in at that moment in certain level ranges. For example, a small incursion will happen during off-peak times when only few people are online, but a huge battle could erupt when there are more. Perhaps a guild of wizards can maintain a portal in the war zone, so that people can easily go there. So when the event starts, there will be 2 camps, one of Kaezuul's legion and one of the players. The camps are chosen on opposing sides of the zone, when the player camp is overrun, one can no longer port there via this means. The idea of not killing Kaezuul's scouts making the encounter harder and protecting NPC scouts (or scouting yourself) making the encounter easier would create a nice dynamic as well. Just some ideas, this war is already awesome :)
 
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