The future of D2 - D3? -- old --

[Tolakram]

See the other D3 thread to respond.

http://www.dolserver.net/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=21520


Population is way down and now is a good time to see if D2 met my goals and what the future might hold.

It's not clear I will have the time to do anything about this, but I thought I would review my opinions of the state of D2. I have considered a character wipe, and I want to be clear that I think it may be a good idea, but only if the game changes enough to make replay fun. NO WIPE, new version will live alongside old one.

First off, let's review the D2 philosophy that I follow. D2 exists only because I try and implement the most for the least amount of work. I never have that much time. Diablo II had a unique loot system and very few hard coded items. I wanted to make a system where the loot generator ruled and everything was fairly unique. My vision was that new bonuses, a simplified quest system, and time spent on a couple of loot generators would be where all my time would be spent.

Most important; it had to be a game I WANTED TO PLAY. I don't really want to play D2, so here we go ....

What I'm not happy with.

- Leveling is too fast. I listened to the game burners, who burned it up and left. Leaving is not bad, but I'm not a full time game developer so content will always be limited.

- I need some filler quests or increased leveling guidance for the initial 1-80.

- Player Level, quests, and modes. This flaw was obviously exposed when the final quest allowed people to jump to level 80. I don't like it. I think one mistake here is not handing out XP for the quests. Quests limit where you can go, so must be done, but there is no big incentive to do them. This ties into #2 ... take the first big boss, Blood Raven. You can get this quest a lot earlier than you can solo the mob, which causes some confusion. Carefully awarding XP for the earlier quests to put the player in level range for this quest is one solution.

4. PVP power level zone. Not really anything else to say.

5. Loot; this is the big one and probably what I'm most unsatisfied with:

I got away from my unique loot idea and started creating fixed loot for the bosses. This takes a LOT of time, is NOT FUN FOR ME, and became nearly impossible with the limited time I have, so I devised some fixed loot with sockets and made a game out of collecting combiners and socket wrenches to customize the end game loot.

That's not how I pictured the game ending up. What I wanted was a system where you never knew how good a drop was going to be, but you did know that a boss would usually drop better random loot than regular mobs. I can pickup the old Diablo II game and still be thrilled when my first rare drops. What seemed to happen to D2 was that DAoC mentality crept in and some players demanded known high end gear from boss mobs.

Diablo II dropped a ton of loot, and the interface made it easy to ignore the crap and pickup the good stuff. The DAoC client makes this difficult. I went as far as devising a system where an invisible mob would pop over a drop so you could easily see the loot name, color coded for quality using the CON system. This never worked right, plus there is a limit to the number of mobs a client can handle in a zone which made this damn near impossible to work.

Based on that experience I think the solution is to severely restrict loot drops, perhaps eliminating all crap drops and instead only having rare and unique drops, plus tools to improve purchased and crafted armor. Right now everything is COMBINE to 255! I hate that, still thinking about how to fix it.

More to write but out of time at the moment. Not sure that many old timers read this, but if you do fire away.

[Tolakram]

Let me continue with loot.

- The economy: Too much money, no incentive to use it wisely.

- Henchman: Too powerful, being used for mindless leveling, and unusable by pet classes who want to play with their pet. My idea here is to use a system I already wrote for the private version of D2 where the pet window is not used and henchman can be semi-controlled with verbal commands. In this case all henchman are humans, and can be given weapons and armor. Damage is similar to a players damage.

- Potions: Diablo II was always an intensive potion chugging game, but not 1000 potions every 30 seconds to stay alive. You had a limited belt space and limited inventory space in Diablo II for potions, which created a strategy of taking on only what you thought you could handle on a full belt. With D2, since you can stack a lot of potions, boss damage was inflated to make it more of a challenge. This ends up being silly, and one of the reasons the end game charge (abhorrent) is so popular.

I thought of many ways to handle this. From a 1 second re-use timer, and I hate timers, to a very small stack size. The "belt" becomes how much space in inventory and on quickbars to devote to potions. Once again, though, the Diabo II interface was built around this (yet still annoying) while the DAoC interface requires a lot of fiddling to keep potions on the quickbar. IMO this is why Diablo III went with a timer instead.

[galimoth]

I'm not an old timer (I've been playing for 2-3 weeks at present) but I'll give my opinions.

A little background that may color my answers:
I played the 'original' DAOC as my first ever online game back in 2004-2005 and haven't touched it since. I've been playing this version for a few weeks since I've been in recovery from surgery. Maybe 2-3 hours a day online time. I have a list full of characters, but two "main" characters. One is a 56 Cabalist, the other is a 55 Friar. I've been limitedly involved with crafting on the Friar. Fletching is somewhere in the 400's with other crafting skills too low to mention.

As far as a character wipe is concerned, that really doesn't bother me too much. I've gotten pretty far, I think, in the short time I've been playing but I'm never opposed to starting fresh, especially if you feel that changes/improvements warrant it. However, I have not leveled all my crafting skills or farmed for hours for the 'perfect' set of gear.

Concerning your philosophy for the game, I think I would have to agree with you. Why on earth would anyone create a game that they didn't want to play or that they didn't enjoy playing? It seems that your intentions were set in one direction and over time things haven't turned out the way you originally planned. No matter how much I may like this game, I have to say this. This is YOUR game. Make the game that YOU would enjoy playing. The rest of us will either like it or not, but if the creator/maintainer of the game doesn't like the game then it seems like it won't stick around/improve. Just a quick question for clarification purposes: You say that "I don't really want to play D2". I assume that you are speaking of this server, D2Storm?

Leveling does seem a little fast for me, but I also think that mob levels are somewhat off. For example, in Tal Rasha's Tomb at the end of Act II, the mobs are level 63 or something like that. When I completed the "Kill Duriel" quest for the first time, I think I was level 40-45. Whatever the minimum level for the quest was, I was just a level or two above that. So this may not be a case of "too much xp" and instead be a by-product of constantly fighting (and being able to kill) deep purple mobs.

As a side note, the hardest thing about leveling my Cabalist was finding spawns of mobs to kill. It didn't matter that they were 20+ levels higher than I was and I was a "fragile caster". They and all of their friends died in seconds. My Friar is different. Leveling speed is much much slower than on the Cabby, but still pretty good. Certainly Twister doesn't compare to spell echo/AOE dots, and it actually seems a little bugged, but because of the 'fast leveling' I think it balanced it out fairly well. Now certainly I can hit 50 (or maybe 80 is a better comparison when I get there) on this server much faster than in the original DAOC, but I also felt it was much too slow to go from being a completely new level 1 player to a level 50 player.

I would also like to see more quests. I don't really know how you would do that and still stay true to D2 though. Maybe instead of new quests you could add sub quests. For example, if Dipplefritz is really that much of a nuisance then he should have been taken care of by somebody else by now. But maybe they have just never been able to catch him because he runs away at half life. So you would need to ask Charsi's help to fashion a special pair of manacles that slowed his running speed so you could kill him. Or maybe you would need to concoct a Rage Potion and use it on him in order for him not to run and to stick around and try to kill you. Both implementations would, of course, have special materials that needed to be gathered, or special places that the items in question had to be made, etc.

I think quests should be assigned XP. Or better yet, levels. Treat them as a mob. Or maybe as a group of mobs. Let's say a quest would reward you with the same amount of XP as killing 10-15 mobs of the same level. I think that's roughly the size of some small spawns of mobs. And let's have minimum levels to get those quests just like we do now. And let's work it so that these quests could also help with the "too many Unique items issue to". How about after killing the mob, you have your choice between a Unique weapon, a Unique chest armor, or maybe a socket wrench/combiner. Then the boss mob could be "trusted" to just receive the normal randomly generated items like normal mobs, but with some modifier that treats them as being a higher level than they actually are. And you would also cut out the farming of boss mobs for items.

Confused yet? Let's take the quest to kill Blood Raven as an example. Let's say the quest to kill Blood Raven is level 10. Since it's a level 10 quest, you shouldn't be able to get the quest below, let's say, level 5. Then, you have to kill Blood Raven, and let's say her level is 12 or so. The loot generator would treat her as a level 16 mob for determining level of items she drops. Once you manage to kill her, when you turn in your quest you should get xp for killing a 10-15 mobs that are level 10. So, if you kill her at a lower level (hard to do since she is higher than the quest level) you would get more XP than if you leveled up to her level and then killed her. And since the quest is level 10, eventually you would could out level it and not get any xp for it at all. But you should always get some reward and some coin. I hope that made sense.

I have no input on the PVP powerlevel zone, as I don't even know what that is!

Loot is a big, big issue. And I mean that because of the sheer amount of items and complexity. Diablo 2 had a large amount of random prefixes/suffixes based on level. In addition, there were different item types (magical, rare, unique, set, etc) and different item qualities. I think what made Diablo 2 loot so varied is that there were multiple "categories" and several "types" in each category. On D2 Storm, most of the time a staff is just a staff. It has a level and can either be magical or rare or maybe Unique. In Diablo 2 it could be a level 14 quality rare staff that has 3 sockets and 2-4 random prefixes and 1-4 suffixes. Diablo 2 loot was extremely random, even among the Uniques (and sets) that had a known property. A certain Unique bow would always have Knockback. Just sometimes it would generate with more than other times. Maybe the loot generator could be modified so that all 'magical' items had the bonus property set at 10, 'rare' set at 15, and Unique set at 20. (I'm not too familiar with DAOC-I'm thinking that the "Bonus" property affects the actual potency of the item. For example, if the "Bonus" is 10 and the life steal value is 27, then the actual value for the life steal would be less than if the item had a "Bonus" value of 20. Is this right?) Maybe just have 'magical' items have a range of values that is the lowest, 'rare' have a range that is higher, and Unique have the highest range. So the ranges for life steal for a level 18 dagger might be 8-14, 12-19, and 18-25.

I'm not familiar with the end game, so I can't comment on "replayability" or end game loot. What I can say is that I feel like I have a lot of money and no real reason to spend it. Aside from a house and the furnishings, there's not a lot of demand for my money. And houses require lots of money (at least I think they do, I haven't really checked into it a whole lot). My big money sink was going to be crafting. Specifically, (with my Friar) Fletching, Alchemy, and Spell crafting, with a minor in Armorcrafting. For some reason, I just like the idea of making all of my own equipment and putting all the slots in it and filling them with all kinds of cool bonuses. I haven't looked at spellcrafting at all, but I'm assuming I could add bonuses like "reduced endurance cost" and "increase style damage" and drop those in a weapon slot. If not, I'd be farming for lots of socket wrenches to remove the bonuses from drop items and placing them in crafted items.

What I'd actually like to see is a 'good reason' to level crafting professions. If we go back to the idea of certain types of items having certain "Bonus" values, then maybe crafted items could have the highest values of all, or at least tied for the max. I want my "Big Whacking Stick" with 15% reduced endurance cost, 80% chance to steal 250 life, and 30% increased attack speed. Crafted items in Diablo 2 weren't really anything special because there wasn't a lot of customization. That's where I think D2Storm could improve a lot and also solve the problem of custom coding 5 million different Unique items. Why not have all "Unique" items actually come from crafting? They wouldn't drop in game, but you would have all the "puzzle pieces" in the crafting professions to make them yourself! You craft the item (the "Big Whacking Stick"), then drill sockets (maybe have "Socket Driller" be a crafted item not available at the merchants or via drops?), make your Alchemy proc (or "Enchantment") and add it, then Spellcraft your Unique properties into gems (EG "[Open that Can!]: 15% chance to randomly open a can of whoopazz and instantly kill any mob except boss types" and "[Going NEO on 'em]: 10% chance to increase attack speed by 150% for 3 seconds", etc), drop them into the weapon (or maybe you have to use a Combiner for player crafted bonuses?) and get ready to roll out the hurt.

I can't comment on anything else right now. I don't think I've ever used a henchman and, just like in Diablo 2, I try to play the game without using potions at all. Yes, I've died a lot on my Friar, lol. Not really so much on my Cabby. It seems that casters (in plate armor, no less!) have a lot easier time than melee characters.

Anyway, that's just my rambling input. I think I might be off to try to level some crafting so I can make my "Holy Carp" staff that has a random chance to fling a fish at the attacked mob who is so dumbfounded by the fact that a fish just hit them that they are stunned for 5 seconds.

[Graveen]

I had to play Storm:D2, and the leveling was very funny (normal for a PvE oriented game). I second you when you say it is too fast.

For the money make pets expensives (but, really expensive) and you solve both powerful pets and create a valuable money sink.

Once again, many thanks for this pack of pure fun !

[baradien]

i did enjoyed d2 a lot. It is indeed very hard to create d2 as daoc.

[Lurikhaun]

I have been away for a while but I think I may be one of the "power players". I just graduated college and have been working full time now, so my time is much more limited, but Storm D2 is always the server I play whenever I get the chance to play daoc. To answer your question, would I play if there was a character wipe, the answer would be yes, I have played every character to 80:H at this point, so it would give me a reason to play characters all over again. As an old-timer and someone who would probably play more if the server had a grand reset and improvement I think this would a great idea to take what we have learned from this version of D2 to improve the next version. You know that I have always been willing to work with you to test things etc.

As for the things you mention:

Leveling: Completely agree leveling needs to be revamped, it needs to be a little less efficient, but that doesn't mean it should have less intensity (frequency and density of spawns). Possible Solution: Increase respawn time of all non-boss mobs to 5-10secs (to give the appearance of never ending zergs); Decrease individual mob exp to roughly 25% of current server; Increase Group XP Bonus (to encourage grouping); and then remove instant 80 at the end (xp should be awarded but not enough for 80); If we disconnect final quest from 80;

Filler Quests/Level Guidance: I completely agree, one possible solution would be the implementation of kill tasks where the guard points them into the direction of mobs their level. Possibly also a side boss every 5 or 10 levels that is just some random daoc boss. It could be as simple as X is causing a nuisance around this town and needs to be dealt with. I think the quests should provide levels/xp, if they gave you a couple of levels for each major quest, I would incorporate them more into leveling as opposed to maxing level then doing them all quickly.

PVP Power Level Zone: Don't know why this ever happened, I rarely use this. if its a pvp zone, than there shouldn't be mass quantities of mobs together to begin with, only random mobs for pet charmers etc. (which ironically doesn't work in pvp zone); they should be removed.

Loot: One of my favorite things to do on this server was spending the days collecting and compiling combiners/wrenches and gear with bonuses that I could use to create my own epic armor. I think that we could definitely change the way it drops, perhaps making drops a lot less frequent, but enabling them to truly have random stats, with bosses dropping rog more likely to have the rarest stats. Perhaps you should tie specific graphic models to bosses such as d2, but enable the stats to be completely rog. I think the wrenching/combining/crafting aspect was one of my favorite and time consuming things on this server (it was my primary end game) and with loot in general being more rare and having less crap stats, it would be more fun finding it all.

Economy: I agree the money had little use on this server. However, I think that problem stemmed from a lack of things to buy with money. Maybe offer better merchant options, where if you wanna drop like 50plat on a merchant, they have some really epic thing for you to buy..

Henchmen: I think henchmen ruined pet classes to an extent, everyone had a pet that was better than pet classes, that was unbalancing. I agree with the semi controlled henchman, they should also only fill minor necessary functions. Maybe one henchman that heals and engages in defensive combat. And another henchman that pulls mobs and is more aggressive.

Potions: I agree that we shouldn't have to spam potions, but sometimes you have too because that's the only option, there should be some balance, I think a 1-second reuse timer on potions would be great. What if all potions had unlimited charges but a one second recharge? You would hold onto the potions and they would be a rare drop with random values (increasing with level of mobs). So you could randomly find a potion that might heal 50 once every second, or 300..

I think this is a great opportunity to make a great server even better, and I want to do what I can to help!

[Skyful]

I really agree with Lurikhauen.

First of all, yes, levling is way too fast. But I think this is one point why D2 is so unique. Some guys really enjoy levling fast. On the other hand there should be less xp for the quests in NM and H mode. It's just fine if u reach level 80 fast on the normal mode. Maybe u should think about making different kinds of xp where u don't reach level 80 in NM and H when u're only level 66.

Another point is that there maybe should be a "Farming Map" where u can earn some money but no rps and less xp. The point in it is to get players back to crafting 'cause the crafting system on this server is really nice 'cause u can make ur own D2 stuff. But this also requires some improves on Spellcrafting.

What we also should try is not only to improve the server or change some things on it. No, we also really need to get a community. I don't wanna say with it that u guys are bad or something. I just wanna say that playing D2 is really funny but I remember the old times. It maybe is a year ago but there were some more players and the communication was better which made playing on D2 awesome.

Now I'll continue with the Potions. Some of u think that they're over powered. Well, they aren't. With weak gear u're lost at the Ancients if there is a delay on it. I can't imagine that I would've finished NM Quests now if there was one. So as Lurikhauen said, if u do a delay u also need to nerf the boss monsters.


I don't make typing errors I just write freestyle.

[Lurikhaun]

So will this version be D3? LOL (Going to call that for ease of discussion)

Skyful- I agree 80:Normal should probably stay at current settings, the harder difficulties should take a lot more time. Perhaps they should break down like this roughly: Normal Mode:100%XP, Nightmare Mode:50%XP, Hell Mode:25%XP, and Realm Mode:10%XP.

Hell Mode Zone: I think there needs to be a Hell Mode unique zone in mainland Hibernia (I know its a lot of work but it is necessary for two reasons) to provide a new zone to explore (since exp will be longer) and also because mainland Hibernia is the only one not included, and for nostalgic reasons as someone who always played Hibernia.

Access to Previous Modes in subsequent Mode: I think that we should have access to previous mode zones, with the order being Normal -> Nightmare -> Hell -> Realm. This would enable Realm Mode to enter all zones, Hell mode to enter all zones apart from those in Realm Mode, etc. This should help newer players group with players in other modes more effectively.

[Tolakram]

I like a lot of these ideas.

So far here is the plan, but no timetable yet and this is not final.

• Server will remain named D2.
• Initial changes will be made to current server. Once everything works well then I'll backup the current character table and create a new one. In effect a character wipe, but no chars will be lost for good.
• Experience rate will decrease at all levels but mobs will spawn faster.
• Nightmare, Hell, and Realm XP rates will be reduced.
• Add a unique hell zone and allow each advanced mode access to all previous mode zones.
• Trinket drop rate will be reduced sp there will be more reliance on socket wrenches and items with bonuses needed.
• Wrenches and Combiners will be made available for sale at very high prices from elite merchants in later zones.
• The PvP zone will remain but the farming mobs will be removed.
• The final quest in each mode will no longer grant enough XP to level to 80. The required level of the final quest will be increased with a quest given letting the player know what level has to be achieved to face Baal (or Diablo III)
• The council quest will be fixed to allow players who can't read to complete it without getting confused.
• Henchman (work in progress)
• Potions (work in progress)

[Lurikhaun]

Thanks for the reply! I am excited to see the changes that you are interested in making, so far they all look great!

Loot::

Trinkets: I think these ought to be eliminated entirely. Collecting a bunch of random trinkets got really hectic. Perhaps they could become crafting purchases (like the socket drills) that require a minimum level in spellcrafting (or other applicable trade), so that they can be purchased when needed but otherwise not taking up valuable inventory space or loot drops.

Scrolls of X Move: I think these should also be eliminated entirely. With every class having access to some form of attack, this is obsolete in my opinion.

Alteration Trinkets (Wrench, Combiner, Drill, etc.): I think all of these should also be 100% purchasable and be eliminated from the drop list. They should also be in general relatively affordable if only accessible through merchant. I am thinking prices like this: Socket Wrench for 500 gold; Socket Drill for 2 plat; Combiner for 2 plat; Heavy Weights (Value 5) for 1 plat; DPS Modifier (Value 5) for 1 plat; Level Reduction (10 Levels) for 1 plat; etc. Perhaps the merchants for these should be in the starter town for Nightmare Mode?

Procs: Should also be removed from drop list, another type of wrench should be developed specifically for removing procs from unique items, weapons, and armor and they should be added as a possibility in the random object generator.

Potions: Should be removed from drop list and made to be purchasable only.

Weapons/Armor/Jewlery: These should be the only drops that are possible from mobs in the game (apart from coin). They should always be unique, with bosses always dropping loot with greater odds of having rarer stats (like boss damage or Earthquake Proc). In general I am thinking maybe one in ten mobs should drop anything at all, half of all minions should drop loot, and all bosses. For some of the rarer bonuses, maybe they should be linked to specific mobs that we will have to discover like boss damage and the daughters of medb in the current version..

[Tolakram]

I'm still not sure I will do any modifications, but wanted to get some of these ideas down. Don't get your hopes up too high yet, because some of this requires an amount of work I may not be able to do.

- - - - - - - - -

I like trinket drops, that were a part of D2 that I want to keep.

I'm still not happy with specific drops for specific mobs. Diablo II did not have this, and I think it was a mistake to have it here. I like the idea of rare bonuses being tied to mob rarity, and I should be able to code this so I can eliminate the specific loot tables.

Item Types:

• common
• magical
• rare
• unique
• custom

Unique items are currently coded to look at an item template with a set of bonuses, each with a value of 0. The engine randomizes the amount of these bonuses to generate the item. In addition, the bonus0 slot will never be modified, enabling me to place a specific bonus and amount onto an item and guarantee every generated unique will get this bonus with that fixed value.

I made the Unique Items because Diablo II had them and it was the only way to utilize specific models and effects together.

I want to eliminate custom. There are two types of custom, the ancients drop fixed items that cannot be modified. These will be removed. The second type of custom was the high end weapons with one bonus and all sockets, designed as a reward for the end game bosses and other elite mobs. I want to eliminate the gear full of sockets idea and instead make them random and modifiable via wrenches, combiners, and drills.

DPS and Speed will need to be modified to better work with D2. Still working through this one. Ideally each class of weapon will have a set speed with no weapons able to max out swing speed even when the player has maxed out their stats. This probably means significantly narrowing the speed ranges.

DPS is a trickier issue. 255 is the max supported DPS. We've had a spate of DPS inflation where all weapons past a certain point had 255 DPS (25.5) and speed was used to make them hit harder, exploiting the weapon speed cap bug. This problem was mainly caused by D2 being under constant development for a while and adding new modes every few months. I have ideas here, but they all have problems.

My current idea is as follows.

• When you reach the highest levels in normal mode mobs will be dropping weapons with 20 DPS and the speed appropriate for the weapon type.
  
  Nightmare will max out at 21 DPS
  
  Hell 22 DPS
  
  Realm 23 DPS

I'm hoping the spread is small enough that Realm players get an obvious damage increase but not so much they one shot everything.

[galimoth]

I'm just going to be throwing around all kinds of random ideas here. I'm sure they could all use some elaboration and fine tuning.

How about we don't reset character levels between modes? D2 didn't reset levels, and that (for me) helped keep the motivation to play through everything all over again. On Storm, the entire character isn't reset since we get to keep all of our abilities, but starting over at level 1 where a Filidh can knock you on your rear makes me slightly depressed. Of course this means that mob levels will have to be redone for all acts/difficulties. I'd have the max quest level/mob level set it up something like:

Normal Mode
Act 'Max' Level
1 15
2 25
3 35
4 45
5 50

Nightmare Mode
Act 'Max' Level
1 60
2 65
3 70
4 75
5 80

Hell Mode
Act 'Max' Level
1 Champion Levels
2 Champion Levels
3 Champion Levels
4 Champion Levels
5 Champion Levels

Realm Mode
Keep all Abilities, reset player level to 1

Or something along those lines. You would, of course, also cut mob xp down to probably about 10% of current values.

The Terrible Beast. Or, as I call him, The Sumo Rabbit (after an old Lawnmower Deth song). I have never used one myself, but I did recently group with some one who used him. We went from 1 to about 39 in about 45 minutes. This henchman is basically a /Level command that takes you all the way to 40 while earning you money and gear to offset some of the cost in the process. I'm not sure how everyone feels about /Level but in my opinion, if it's something that's wanted on the server, why not just implement /Level with all its usual restrictions? We could always keep the Sumo Rabbit as a super powered mob akin to the mobs in the cow level.

Potions. If we reduce mob levels to something more in line with player levels instead of a level 14 character fighting (and killing) a level 30 mob, potions wouldn't be as needed. The current state of the game makes the difficulty not in hitting/killing the mob, but in surviving the relatively large percentage of your life bar the mob is doing to you compared to what you are doing to it. Two to three hits and you are dead. You rely on your evasion statistics to keep you alive long enough to chug another potion. In my opinion, a mob of your level should be slightly dangerous. Five mobs of your level should be a dangerous challenge. Ten mobs of your level should be deadly. If you up the mob level to your level plus two (red), everything should shift down one tier. So one red would be a dangerous challenge, and five would be deadly. Going up to fighting a grape, a single mob should be deadly. By the way, I define 'deadly' as a mob that you can't blindly rush in and swing/cast away and take them out. These are the mobs that would require smart play/tactics, use of consumables, kiting, etc. If that grape can kill you in two hits, potions aren't going to save you. If you level up a bit and the grape turns red, now you have a much better chance of survival. And that would reduce the reliance on repeated potion chugging.

Block/Evade/Parry. The maximum values on these need to be reduced. Having all of them capped means a mob only has roughly one-third of a one percent chance to actually hit you. Granted, being surrounded by 30 mobs means you'll get hit enough that you wouldn't want to stand there for very long. Lower the avoidance values to max out around 40% or so. Then you would need to rely on your HP to soak the hits instead of relying on avoidance. And if mob damage was reduced (because you are now fighting mobs closer to your level and they deal less damage), this makes a more even spread of damage over time. Instead of "Please don't hit me, please don't hit me. Crap, I got hit once and died" things turn into "Wow, the rate of damage over time this guy is doing to me might be too much. I should consider a tactical retreat".

Casting versus Melee. There is a large unbalance here, at lower levels at least. I'm going to go ahead and admit that I have virtually no experience at higher levels. I'm too much of an altaholic. On storm, casters have some huge advantages over DAOC. They can cast in melee. They can wear plate armor. Insane mana regen/mana steal items. They can block/evade/parry. Every caster here is effectively a mage tank. This basically means that any single mob without special defenses against magic probably isn't even going to make a dent in a caster, and groups of mobs won't either thanks to Spell Echo. Melee on the other hand has one big disadvantage and no real advantages. Styles really don't work too well here. If it's not an anytime weapon style, you can't use it. This eliminates about 90% of the 'flavor' of raising a weapon spec and also cuts down on the amount of damage that melee can deliver. Casters get cool new spells every few levels. Meleers get another weapon style that can't be used. Something needs to be done to change that other than a blanket increase in weapon damage/dps. Maybe increasing the minimum cast/swing speeds. I'd like to be able to get off a style chain. Reactionaries are another story, but if we reduce the maximum number of mobs fought at any one time from 30 or so down to about 5, you would be much more likely to execute those as well. The alternative is to implement some kind of timer where if you've used an opening style or fulfilled the condition of a reactionary, you have one or two seconds to execute your chain/reactionary. Tola has already said he doesn't want to do this. Another option would be to make all styles 'anytime' styles. This would take a lot of custom editing, and may not be a reasonable option either. I have no more suggestions on how to fix this.

Too much money. See Crafting.

Crafting. This was, for me, relatively expensive. I've only leveled Fletching, and it's not yet maxed. My skill is just over 1000 or so, and it's taken me somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 plat. Granted, I didn't (and still don't have) any idea what I was doing or the most efficient way to level up crafting. I tried salvaging mats from crafted items, but it seemed too slow for me to put up with. So I 'rushed' things and just sold back crafted items for a hefty loss in gold but savings in time. Item creation time is fine. I'd like to see some speed added to item salvaging time, although I realize it may not be possible. Then, when I got my Fletching that high, I was stuck. I'm still in Normal mode and the high level materials drop in later modes. And being stuck where I am, with a "maxed" crafting skill, there really isn't much use in having just one. Weapon drops are much better than anything I can craft, both in the DPS department and in the special abilities they have. The former part would be fixed by having a socket driller and inserting a trinket, and the latter part may be fixed by leveling Spellcrafting. I'm not sure on that part. I'll have to level Spellcrafting and see what the results are.

Crafting part two. I think it's so cool, it gets a second entry! Let's incetivise it more. Remove socket drillers, socket wrenches, and combiners from NPC merchants (if they are there). Make each one a craftable item, and give each profession one. Weapon crafting would get socket wrenches, Armor crafting would get combiners, and Fletching would get socket drillers. The recipes would be high level (probably somwhere in the 800-1000 range) and may require some special NPC bought materials to help regulate the price of the item. And, a personal request here, make them stack in bundles of ten each. The question for crafting then becomes, what bonuses do we give to the other crafting professions? Spellcrafting could make stat enhances and all the various abilities found on MOST trinkets now (like 'spell focus of 50'). And alchemy could make weapon/armor procs, dyes, short term buffs (like "Potion of Front-Facing Hindsight: You always have 20/20 vision-of the future! Increases your block/evade/parry chance by 5% for ten minutes.") and HP/Mana/Endurance potions. I'm not sure what to do about the other crafting professions. For example, why would you ever craft a cloth chest piece when all classes can wear plate? That's a good question. And one that I don't have a solution to yet.

That's about all I have at the moment. Input, discussion, and replies of "You have to be out of your mind" are all welcomed.

[Tolakram]

I enjoy reading all the ideas. I don't like some of mine a day after making them, so don't be afraid to throw down what you have.


I though about level ranging each mode, I'm still trying to figure out how much change would be required. A lot of changes that can be made easily, like level ranging mobs via coordinates, is not that bad, but quests would have to be changed as well. My underlying goal is to do as much in the code as possible to automate the experience, making it re-playable because each experience is so random. Have not achieved that yet, not sure I can.

[Tolakram]

FYI,

wiping or resetting your character will not really be a wipe. I wanted to describe how it will be done.

Each character you have has an internal ID, which is a GUID or a big string. Let's say you are 123ABC just for a simple example. When you change modes I append a mode designation to the ID just for quests, so you have to re-do all of the quests. I also store your level in a different location as well. So for quests, you become 123ABC-NM or -H etc.

For the new version of D2 I will append something like V2 to all ID's, so you become 123ABC-V2-NM for everything. So your character exists, but no gear, no quest record, no house, etc. The only difficulty with this, right now, is how to reset your stats. I'm considering a process where you talk to an NPC who will do a reset, a feature we have had for a while, setting you back to level 1 and remembering your current level, so you can be restored when needed.

This will allow me to introduce parts of D2v2 for players to try out to see how it works. It will also maintain continuity between old and new characters. I haven't decided if I'll keep the old D2 zones running if we switch, but I know the server can easily handle it. In addition this will allow me to make titles for old version players to somehow display their old achievements.

[Lurikhaun]

I completely understand you being busy, life should always come first. I realize that this is going to be a massive project on your behalf, but I think it is probably a good idea to implement them over time. Thank you for all your work!

I actually enjoy leveling 1-80 in each of the different modes. If Hell was in a unique zone, each mode will be different enough to not feel like your repeating the same location each time. I think that access to each mode should probably be tied to the quest line instead of level 80, meaning most players upon completion of the final quest gain access to the next mode.

Styles: I agree, due to the nature of the server, using styles are nearly impossible unless they are anytime. I think we ought to make all of the melee styles anytime and if there are any particularly overpowering moves, we should make them positional.

Wrenches/Combiners/Drills: I completely agree with galimoth, these are essentially tools for crafting. Making them dependent on having a trade would mean that some sort of economy would have to exist. At the very least, people would have to devote time/money to level multiple skills to the max. I think Weapon Crafter should get access to the Socket Wrench at 1200 skill; Armor Crafter should get access to the Socket Drill at 1200 skill; and Spell Crafter should get access to the Combiner at 1200 skill.