Other than a tiny number of people power levelling alts up on PQs and people inside Tomb of the Vulture Lord, there’s nobody there. Why? Numerous factors. The primary one being that there’s nothing to go there for! You probably won’t find any enemy players, the PQ loot is poor, PQs as an experience are only worth doing once anyway and other than that there’s nothing to do outside of the instances.
I think that sparking the zone back to life would be relatively easy. First remove the gated access, so that LotD is available to both factions all the time and then add a wide variety of Battle Objectives. Majority control of those BOs could give a realm wide 10% renown buff. Much like relic control used to do similar realm wide buffs in DAoC. If there was plenty of different BOs, then that would mean people can’t just zerg them all and people have to spread out, which would make for better widespread small scale fighting.
There you go Mythic, a little bit of tinkering and the Land of the Dead expansion would no longer be something to look back on as a mistake.
Like your idea, do you not think it might kill the real RvR? And if it doesn't it might just sit there again "dead" empty.
ReplyDeleteDepends I guess, if the main campaign RvR is good enough we should want to be doing both. If it's not good enough, well, you're probably right, people would go play the good stuff.
ReplyDeleteOf course if the main campaign isn't good enough and there's nothing else do, then people will continue to bail out entirely...
I think it would compliment the "real" RvR more than hinder it. Whatever the realm wide buff given for holding all the objectives in LoTD - damage increase, renown increase or VP increase - then if a faction wanted to organise a big push then part of that push could involve sending a part of your forces into the desert to bolster your main attack. On the other hand, a nice buff to your entire realm would come in handy if you were on the receiving end of an organised push by your rival faction.
ReplyDeleteI'd prefer a capture and hold mechanic rather than the current method of taking and locking a BO, similar to the Battlefied series. If only to break up the zerg a bit :)
The key thing for me, like Boot said, is that it would provide an alternative to city sieges while still meaning you're contributing towards your realms success rather than roaming around a locked RvR zone hoping someone from the opposite faction is doing the same.
Turn every PQ into a BO, kinda. The initial state would be a BO with undead guards. You destroy them to "claim" it which allows the PQ to be started for 15m. Say each claimed BO-PQ in land of the dead gives you 1-2 VP to the main campaign, and dominating the desert grants a 10-20% renown bonus overall. Granted, domination would be crazy hard to do when you're talking about 16 PQ's, but it'd be fun to try.
ReplyDeleteGrimnir's idea is neat too, though I'm afraid it may have some balance issues.
ReplyDeleteI think they are going to do the "relic" thing in forts so it may be a little redundant.
Just open the gate for both sides, allow a 10 min block if one side's airship is destroyed.
This would allow LotD to be a free-roamer's battleground.
Allow both sides to invade each other's instances. Use a "immunity timer" instead of using the PQ itself to determine if the instance can be invaded. End the PQ early if the attacking side has not been in the instance for 5 minutes.
This would make invasion mechanic actually useful and not too tiring for the defenders.
Give a lore end-point to LotD. Remember the "lore" for LotD? The casket of souls is supposed to be a powerful weapon. What would happen if it is unleashed upon the main world?
For a simple idea, give xp/renown bonus to whole realm if one side win against the TotVL final boss (non-world boss).
The resources thing isn't bad but maybe they can use it in reverse - instead of people doing things in campaign contributing to (going to) LotD, let people doing things in LotD contribute to the main campaign. The resources collected in fighting/questing in LotD would initiate some kind of NPC rush in one of the pairings.
Like your ideas and some that are here in the comments. I especially like the LOTD scenario idea.
ReplyDeleteI had posted on the WAR boards that a LOTD Live Event might be nice to funnel players to the "dead" zone. If made worthwhile players will go there. Right now the only real incentive are what you've mentioned.
If I throw a few thoughts into the mix.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I would like this area alone until spring 2010. Lets just focus on the main game, instead of this distraction. 3 or 4 more patches of 1.3.2 quality and I think we could reasonably devote more time to this sandpit. We need more people playing. Though if the city captures happen more frequently then I may well set up shop in LotD.
I don't believe that turning them into BO's is going to go down well at Mythic, considering the amount of effort involved in creating them.
What I would probably suggest is to have the PQ's contribute to the control of the casket of souls (as suggested earlier). The casket though is filled with the dead of each realm who died in LotD.
These dead become available to called into use on the battle field in mainland RVR. I would imagine that we would have soulstones gained from LotD dungeon bosses.
These stones would allow us to call forth 5/10 undead from the pool of undead. Each person summoning would be highlighted with an unearthly glow. If you kill the person, then his/her undead disappear from the battle field. There would need to be limited to the number of stones in use with an area.
I have a concern about how uneven small fights could become.
In my minds eye, I have the scene from Mummy 2 on the desert at the end with the undead anubises. I would prefer to summon my undead enemy though, let me have 4 undead chosen, 3 shaman, 2 zealots and a partridge in a pear tree as my biatches.
Great ideas guys. It just goes to show how under used the zone is and how much damn potential it has.
ReplyDeleteI really like the concept of the Casket of Souls actually meaning something in game. After all the background lore that was included with LotD, it just sorta doesn't go anywhere as things are.