The structure of NL/DL

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Brad
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Re: The structure of NL/DL

Post by Brad »

Initially i was thinking for NL "A bunch of camp sites", of various challenge. At the time, people wanted quests to grant access to areas, ( i guess so they could have the areas to themselves ( smile ))

Then, i wanted a HUGE dungeon stocked with cool stuff, but this tanked real bad because of scaling issues and the fact that there wasn't enough "level spread" available to really make it feel like nork 1-10 again.

So dornar, etc.. were "small dungeons where you could hang out and get something cool", then move on. I wanted a puzzle/challenge for each one.

Drakkar has been around so long i've waffled on the best way to encourage people to think and not just "form firebreath w w w nw w sw"

But, there is a segment that wants that.. so i tried to do both in NL.. a lot failed, some ended up cool.. some ended up getting used in a COMPLETELY different manner than i anticipated.

Don't forget, when i started NL, it was still accepted in gaming to allow people to have to spend months gathering a single key to give them access to a chance at a single crit who had a small chance of dropping a small key which would break upon opening a door a single time revealing a huge boss who had a small chance at dropping a quest, which, when ten of their friends had done the same thing, allowed them access to a dungeon where they could spend hours questing for a key to kill a crit to get a chance at a treasure drop.


(smile)

Cobra
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Re: The structure of NL/DL

Post by Cobra »

I think looking back overall NL/DL was a pretty good success. Most of the ideas were good, maybe a decent place to xp early on other than dornar that needed a drop to get to. I personally killed Forestkins on my barb to get to 55 because it reminded me a lot of km5 back in the day.

Mormar was a fantastic idea, and maybe making pages drop faster on the lower lvl where there's 10 mobs to the whole floor, the rare drop stuff was ok. I also love how you changed it to where bloods dropped in there too. I personally love having rare stuff drop like that just to break up watching the numbers go by.

Mormar's other issue was the difficulty for certain classes to even kill one mob on m1. I feel mormar was never properly looked at to try to make it even for all classes and doable from 55+. Most of the time you just did the first 7-8 lvls to get where the xp would be worth while in the few you killed. I feel like maybe every 4th lvl should have been immune to physical and scaled to be doable for psi would have been awesome in hindsight for those classes.

NL/DL also focused a lot on grouping, which at the time is what mainstream gaming was going to, but drak was always a solo to grow game. You never had a party to skill/xp in when growing, especially under the old party system that I'm sure you remember well.

Speaking of the new party system, it is part of the reason some people only know form firebreath w w w nw w sw. The other part is the new skill system. Under the old skill system, you got skill per hit, so you never cast AoE cause it killed your skill. Once the new party and skill system was put in, you got skill for the killing shot, which AoE still turned to mush. So you just AoE and one-shot with DD.

I think the rare item for progress is still 'ok' if not taken to extremes. Maybe a rare for the end boss of a segment (kind of like Uther and Koss/Duke), and maybe rare drop for entry into the best place for skill and xp. For mormar it probably would have been better to do away with the rings and pads, and just have the pages for the book. Of course scaling would have come into this where you can only go down as far as you can survive, which for some classes wasn't even m1.

All in all I look back and see NL as a good segment, that is broke in some areas and was never really attempted to be fixed.

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Darge
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Re: The structure of NL/DL

Post by Darge »

Brad wrote: Then, i wanted a HUGE dungeon stocked with cool stuff, but this tanked real bad because of scaling issues and the fact that there wasn't enough "level spread" available to really make it feel like nork 1-10 again.
I'd say Mormar tanked because it was 25 levels of same-ness. If all 25 floors had been condensed into 10 levels, and each floor was crafted to have a particular feel and flavor, quests beyond the killer upgrades and wisdom ingot, and differing enemies, I think it would have been a smash success (much like n1-10 and UD1-5, which I consider to be the pinnacle of dungeon development in Drakkar). But you look at mormar, and the early groups just wanted to farm up enough rings to get their group through pads to the next one so they could get more exp or take down a lair every 5 floors because they had no reason to not ignore the easier floors until it was time to farm pages.
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Migam
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Re: The structure of NL/DL

Post by Migam »

I like a large number of floors only because I can pick a quieter floor and hunt without interference but it sucks for the need for scrolls/rings; 25 each. 10 floors that were much larger, even with 2 stairs per floor would solve that, would require much less drops/trials needed and less chance players are dragging away your zoo.

I wish completing the Nameless quest didn't make you lose the page drop enchants. I can't imagine my other slots on pally acct surviving long enough for it down deep or even my other acct with the help of my pally. I expect the replies to be "do it with a good party" or "how about with guild hunt"... well, we aren't all in large guilds and most I party with have quit. I will just wait until I'm 70 on those crits and try then somehow. If that non-existent 5% hit wasn't around, I'd fare better.

I could offer to buy deep Mormar scrolls but I've seen the disdain aimed at those who do.



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Ghost: Which one wins?
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