Game News New Expansion : Seeds of Destruction [Archive]

Elligen

16-08-2008, 10:19 AM

On Tuesday, October 21, 2008, the inhabitants of the world of EverQuest will explore the realm of time as they take a journey through the history of Norrath. Announcing EverQuest Seeds of Destruction, the 15th EverQuest expansion!

A shining portal leads to a distant future where Riftseekers have used the Plane of Time to corrupt the very fabric of reality. The world has been shattered into millions of pieces that spin aimlessly through the void. On the largest of these pieces is a shadowy figure tending to a lone seedling tree - the last living remnant of Norrath. This lone soul is the fallen god Zebuxoruk and the only being who knows the secret to repairing the shattered world.
To prevent the cataclysm and defeat the forces of chaos, players must journey through time portals to the greatest moments in EverQuest history. From the founding of Qeynos to the battle of Bloody Kithicor, players will be called upon to safeguard history and ensure that events unfold without interference from the gods of Discord.

Linky: http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=51086

Along with the many new quests, items, spells, and alternate advancement (AA) abilities, Seeds of Destruction will include the following features:

Mercenaries - For the first time in EverQuest history, adventurers will be able to hire non-player characters (NPCs) called mercenaries to aid them in their heroic endeavors. They will be valuable player assets as they thwart the efforts of Discord's dark god. The level and ability of the will scale to the appropriate level and will think and act for themselves with limited player guidance. They are designed for extra support or extra muscle in PvE encounters.
Level Cap Increase - Players will now be able to achieve level 85! New high-level item sets, new alternate advancement ability lines and new spells await!
20 New Zones - Features re-imagined classic content and brand-new realms for adventurers to explore, including the eerie wasteland of the Void, the Battle of Rathe on the Plane of Earth, a smell of death in the Bloody Kithicor, the Oceangreen Hills before the founding of Qeynos, and the ultimate heart of darkness in the Plane of Discord.
All Inclusive - The expansion includes all features and content from the 14 previous expansion packs.
Legends of Norrath - The expansion includes Legends of Norrath digital card game client, with starter deck, booster pack and loot item.

Elligen

18-08-2008, 12:12 PM

For the reading challenged, I think I've picked out most Dev responses here :-

(will try and keep this updated as the Q&A's rumble on)

# Will merc healers heal pets? Yes, they should.
# Are they restricted to SoD content? No, though most will likely require that you own the expansion.
# Will they count toward requirements for missions? This is the intent, though we're still investigating to see if there are any technical issues with that.
# Will the AI suck? I hope not. Maddoc and I have been putting a lot of time and effort into this. Though certainly, we have tuning knobs that we can use the make for better or worse performing mercenares (you get what you pay for).
# RE: Concerns about people preferring to use mercenaries over players due to mercs not wanting loot: We've discussed some ideas to address this problem, but the consensus was that making mercenaries take item loot would be very unpopular. Please discuss any other ideas you guys have on this.
# RE: Concerns that making them require plat will cause mercs to not be usable by the players that need them the most. While this is partially true, we do intend to carefully balance the costs. Players without much in the way of funds will likely be able to hire cheaper mercenaries that may not be as powerful or have as responsive of an AI, but that can still give them a big boost in power, thereby enabling them to start earning more plat that they can eventually use to hire a better mecenary.
# What does it mean that mercs are not allowed in raids? Well, as they are part of your group, you have to dismiss them in order to for your group to join a raid.
# Why only Tank and Healer? We're going for quality over quantity. The AI system is very extensible and we will be able to create all kinds of nifty AI's in the future. DPS is next on the list, but we're not willing to say when it will be available yet

They cannot be used in raids. They are intended to help fill a group role when live players are unavailable.

Your mercenary is persistent with an upkeep cost. So long as you pay it.. your mercenary will stay by your side. Sklug and Maddoc are still working on all the specifics, and there will be a great deal of tuning going on for these all through beta. And yes, your mercenary will resurrect you if you die, assuming he/she doesn't also die in the battle.

You can't give the mercenary any gear.

RE: Persistence--Once you hire them they are yours until they die or you dismiss them, or you run out of money. We are evaluating whether you will be able to resurrect them (if you have that capability).

RE: Do they stick around eating plat--yes. You'll need to carry the money around (though it's weightless now).

RE: What happens when you die--If you stick around in over mode the mercenary will attempt to complete the battle and will res you it wins. However, it is a healer, so if you died, it's not likely going to be able to finish off the foe by itself. If you respawn, the merc will re-appear with you at your bind point (if it is still alive).

It is aimed at all level characters. You will be able to pay more money to get a 'better equipped' mercenary for tougher content, though you'll still be better off finding a real player.

Are mercenaries ignored if you do a coin-split with the /split command?
Yes.

Also, how aggressively do they follow you around? I already have a sprit-dog riding my leg and getting in the way when I'm trying to loot. Will I now also have a mercenary standing directly in front of me?
Mercenary movement is very context dependent. When you're not in combat, however, they follow you similar to the way pets do. The distances are easily tweaked if they become an issue. In combat, they try to position themselves in good tactical positions that will depend on their type and what stance they are in.

Does the tanking mercenary do more than just taunt to hold agro? Or does it just taunt like a pet would and leave it at that?
It will do more than just taunt.

If a mercenary kills a mob after you die, will the mob's corpse poof like it does if a DoT kills the mob after you die?
I suspect there will be some cases where the corpse may poof if you did not contribute to the fight, to prevent you from going AFK and letting your mercenary grind XP for you.

Will a mercenary sit down to med? (And more to the point, can you prevent that since sitting is a sure way to die in some zones).
Yes, caster mercenaries sit down to med. You can prevent them from doing this by putting them in the 'Do nothing' stance (all mercenaries have this stance).

For the healer mercenary, can you give as an idea of how effectively it heals? What I mean is, will it generally use fast heals whenever your health reaches a certain threshold or will it blindly chain-cast CH?
This greatly depends on the situation and quality level of the mercenary, but in general it will try to cast the most efficient heal it has that will land before it estimates you will die.

Can a mercenary change its mind and interupt its own casting to cast a different spell?
Yes. This comes up fairly often if you get bursty mob damage with the healer AI.

Will the mercenary complain if I choose to send him to certain death without buffs while I execute a 'Brave, Brave Sir Robin' manouver if I do a bad pull?
You can't really send him anywhere. Mercenaries currently will not attack mobs without the mob being aggro on the group. This could require some skill for some of the more squishy classes, but then, most of the squishy classes can solo pretty well already (soloing being the main situation where this would matter).

Will (future non-tank and non-healer) mercenaries understand the concept of root-rotting? I'd sure hate to get a necro mercenary to help with dotting and find out that it prefers nuking or some-such. I guess this questions could be better worded as 'can there be a dotting only version of a caster DPS mercenary if you happen to make a caster DPS mercenary'.
The sky is the limit as far as making AIs. I'm sure we'll have fun making them for quite a while as long as they are popular.

RE: Requests for a 'fair share' payment method--we have discussed this as a possibility, but we didn't think it would be very popular. If during beta we get feedback to the contrary we can re-visit this idea. It is something that could take a fair amount of coding time to do correctly though, so I'm not sure at this point we could fit it in even if we decided we wanted the option. I'm certainly interested in hearing more feedback on it though. That case of fighting the named mob and having the mercenary ninja the cool loot is something that we felt would leave a sour taste in player's mouths. Now, of course, they could simply dismiss the mercenary before fighthing the named, but perhaps they wouldn't be able to take the named without it. Yeah, there's a lot of things to think about with that particular solution. How to make it non-exploitable could be very tricky.

You can flag real players with a 'role' flag that tells the mercenary AI how to behave. In the example you mention, you set your puller to 'puller' and the healer won't try to do stupid things like heal you from 400' away or throw heals on you when trying to split mobs.

Will we be able to name our mercenaries? Will they have randomly generated names like when you create a character? Will they have pet names like Goner and Zoner?
Will they be called Ivocare's Mercenary? (please for the love of all that is good and pure dont let them be named this).
Or will they be nameless? Random names that are drawn from lists specfic to the type of mercenary. Not the same as pet names.