Best Of

Crian said:

HavocCry

• Current Effect: 1/8 universal damage buff for 15 mins - can do 5x a day

• New Effect: Add a 10% boost of damage outside the bodyscan system 

I'm going to be iffy about anything which does increased damage outside of the bodyscan system. That quickly will become a requirement for any min-maxing, especially with damage spam combat.

I didn't notice that on my first read through, completely agreed. Please do not do things outside the bodyscan system. Same reason I'm against a vitals increase on leveling past 100.

Xenthos said:

Also, in case it is not obvious: Writing and building whole new areas is a huge time sink, and has been the reasoning behind not introducing more high end content.  Mirroring existing areas alleviates that burden.  The only new things needed are mobs and mechanics at that point.

I can see what you mean by giving the instance the same name confusing a newbie, so... give it a new name.  The dark moors.  Thornroot's End.  The main goal is to make it so that they are not wasting hundreds of hours building an area out; they could generate multiple areas in a fraction of the time by reusing the hundreds of places that already exist but demigods have moved on from.

We have IG reasoning for alternate histories and temporal fuckery. There's no reason this couldn't be a cause for this kind of overlaid or alternate version of a zone. Minimal changes to descriptions and some new mobs and such to make it fun. 

Instances could always be tied to an expansion of the domoth realms and the havens themselves, which are otherwise pretty much totally ignored?

Also it's not like bashing involves player interaction aside from hunting buddies 90% of the time as is, and that other 10% isn't exactly great gameplay anyways. It's a weird no sell point for a bunch of folks, especially with new players consistently being frustrated by crowded/bashed out/oddly resetting starting areas .

If there is an increase to vitals, the additional levels will be seen as something that has to be done. Likewise with crit increases.
The vitals will be seen as affecting combat effectiveness, and both will be seen as having an impact on various parts of ascension.
Even if the increase is so small as to be irrelevant, it will likely be seen that way - particularly if it falls outside of the bodyscan system.

Personally, I would like to see more RP/flavour things as you go up the levels, rather than things that are going to directly alter combat. Possibly include some things that are, or were before wonderitems, more typically associated with the divine, although that is an idea that came to me just now and I haven't thought it through - it just makes sense to me that you would become more powerful as you gain amounts of essence far beyond what would have been considered previously. Examples include things like:

Opening portals - could even have custom portal lines at higher levels.
Warn-zaps for RP use - probably with restrictions on where or how often they can be used so as to prevent spam.
Flicking people to Astral when masochism is down and not in a peaced area - would need some kind of level restriction to make sure the target can survive there, we don't want players flicking newbies ideally.
Area emotes - put a timer or a large essence cost on these - maybe have a stock set of them so as to avoid the need for admin review.
Choice (or even custom) login messages.

Basically, things that scream "Look how much essence this person has. They must be really powerful," rather than things that affect combat.

Got to say that I am not a huge fan of the idea of more instancing. It would make the game feel even emptier, as well as (imo) having too much of an mmorpg vibe to it. If there had to be instances, I would rather that they be far away from prime, and certainly not areas where newer people might be as to avoid any confusion. Taking the Grey Moors example, I think that it would be a bad thing to have everyone talking about it being overrun by dominators. A new player might then find the Grey Moors and leave, thinking it is a late-game bashing area when they are in the 'safe' version of it.

I do however like the idea of more involved bashing opportunities as endgame content. I just think that instancing is not the way to go about it. If there had to be instances though, I would rather have it tied to aetherspace instead of being an extension of the timequake instances. All in all however, I would rather just avoid hiding all of the endgame content away in instances.

If going with vitals boost, I would rather see something within the bodyscan system: such as at 101, it starts out at a 1/1 to all vitals and every 10 levels it increases to 1/+1 (so a lv110 would be 1/2. 120 would be 1/3 and so on up to 1/10 at level 200)

Crian said:

HavocCry

• Current Effect: 1/8 universal damage buff for 15 mins - can do 5x a day

• New Effect: Add a 10% boost of damage outside the bodyscan system 

I'm going to be iffy about anything which does increased damage outside of the bodyscan system. That quickly will become a requirement for any min-maxing, especially with damage spam combat.

To add one thing to this. I'd be ok with it if it was PvE only, or something akin. I just don't want it unbalancing PvP!