New Vanguard screen shots!

[Braen]

heh with that levle 7 in the group with the level 25-26's I guess they will have powerleveling!

[Gryzx]

That's the screenshot but it's hitting the other people for 0, though I suppose everyone may be invul.

Jalen is the lvl 7, but it says:

a tomb walker scorpion visciously strikes Varinda with it's deadly tail for 0 points of damage.

... then a little later in the dialog

a tomb walker scorpion hits Mordant for 0 points of damage



That's what I was looking at, but I'm sure it's prolly just some mode like you said on, how do you tell he's in invul mode though out of curiosity?

[Fammaden]

Originally posted by Gryzx
That's what I was looking at, but I'm sure it's prolly just some mode like you said on, how do you tell he's in invul mode though out of curiosity?

He said so on the official forums. Maybe they were all invulned just for the purposes of the screenshots. Someone mentioned that they look better than usual and Brad said that was because he didn't take them this time.

[Fammaden]

Originally posted by Braen
heh with that levle 7 in the group with the level 25-26's I guess they will have powerleveling!

Yeah that was brought up too:

Quote:
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That's why I said it could very well be a "buff up" type sidekick system. If not, I find it very strange that the devs picked a picture to show us with a lvl 7 with lvl 25s.
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In this case, that was me popping into the dungeon with a n00b character. Just after this was taken, I was reminded by one of those scorpions to turn on invulnerability while taking screenshots. How rude.

[Neric]

After I have been recently hired by SoE I was asked to post my true opinion on this thread.

Kids, don't look at these screenshots! They will hurt your eyes and you don't want to be blind one day, don't ya?

Vanguard is the evil! Go play the original thing EQ2 produced by people who were originally....ehh scratch that...who introduced all new and improved ideas. EQ2 is the only place to be and only in EQ2 you can order pizza while playing the game. If this doesn't convince you what else could?

I mean for only 7.99$ you can buy an adventure pack. That's a full new instanced zone where you can zone in and stuff. Hey, you guys gonna love it and we will offer new adventure packs every month. You can even make a deal and we send you 10 of them for only 79.99$. Now how about that?

Forget Vanguard and join the EQ2 community. We are waiting for you!

[Brash]

**EQ2 in game popup** I notice you are running low of health and about to die. Please press 1 for more health credits at $2.95 per 10 heals. It’s the right thing to do. And remember having the right gear lessens damage taken. Oddly enough all high end gear has had “no drop” removed and is for sale on our web site for outstanding prices! Check it out! With much love, Smedly.

[Jooka]

"Advanced Encounter system": This is keyed of mob loot. Essentially, while all dungeons will have wandering monsters that will let casual hunters get in a few fights, some monsters will drop encounter-specific items, such as a bracer, which, when equipped, will spawn all-new monsters along an "encounter route." These monsters may be targeted only by the party that possesses the item, so these adventuring parties will have no shortage of enemies to fight and won't have to worry about other players stealing them away. Once an adventuring party has such an item, it will be lead along an encounter route by a series of onscreen clues that will continuously bring the group into contact with more encounter-generated enemies that only they may fight, leading up to the climactic end of the dungeon's quest. In this particular dungeon, we watched as a giant skeleton rose from a crypt to attack us. Defeating it set the stage for the final encounter, a huge insectlike creature who, before attacking, demanded to know what puny adventurers had disturbed its slumber. Sort fo a limited form of Locked Encounter in EQ2, except EQ2 went totally overboard and made every encounter locked.

depending on the specifics on how this will work, but at first look Im not to thrilled. Hey look, cool mob, oh shit its not part of our encounter route! Once more info is out I hope this is not the case, nothing worse than seeing a mob you cant attack in a hostile dungeon and even worse is this mob ignores you like its not even there.

[Rune]

there was a minor shitstorm on the VSOH boards about the AES, but it functions as a way for developers to freshen up the repitition of a dungeon run, not provide as the main encounter in the dungeon. in other words, it's a rare event

Basically Jooka you wouldn't be seeing something that's not part of your encounter route, but supposedly the folks at vanguard have some super secret method of not allowing people to farm these special encounters

[Fammaden]

Originally posted by Rune
there was a minor shitstorm on the VSOH boards about the AES, but it functions as a way for developers to freshen up the repitition of a dungeon run, not provide as the main encounter in the dungeon. in other words, it's a rare event

Basically Jooka you wouldn't be seeing something that's not part of your encounter route, but supposedly the folks at vanguard have some super secret method of not allowing people to farm these special encounters

One of the posters on the VG forums made a very nice complilatoin of all the dev responses to people's concerns about the AES. You can find it here.

The post that stood out most to me was:

Originally Posted by Kendrick

Quote:
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My instincts tell me in practice, some of the types of mechanics discussed here will work to diminish one of the golden pillars of a fun game -- allowing players to approach and conquer challenges in creative and unique ways --
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We shall see.

I think you'll find that the encounter route system allows you that sort of challenge. It's no different than defeating a challenge in a "traditional" encounter, if you get right down to it. It just insures that YOU get the chance to defeat it, and reap the rewards of your creative and unique work, without locking you in a box with five of your closest friends.

And to reiterate what Tagad said earlier...we're still populating "old school", and we're doing that in a big way..it's what we know, what we enjoy, what we're good at, and what works, no sense discarding that for some new-fangled idea.

Encounter routes are just another layer on top of that. With some forethought (and there's no shortage of that around here, or hindsight), encounter routes can help keep a dungeon/adventure area fresh, elminate some of the "groundhog day" syndrome, advance storylines, introduce new storylines, allow the players to have impact on the gameworld, etc.

Been to DeepDarkScary Dungeon 20 times this month, and getting a little tired of the same old same old? It's a lot easier for a Live Team to add a new encounter route (or set of encounter routes) to DeepDarkScary than it is to totally repopulate it, and besides, you LIKE DeepDarkScary, it's just gotten a bit stale. By refreshing it with new encounter routes, you don't have to deny the players who haven't been through DeepDarkScary the same "classic" experience you had.

Lets face it, the biggest challenge we as designers have to deal with is keeping up with the amount of content the players can consume.

We can't.

We will never be able to, as long as it is handcrafted. But encounter routes can help keep breathing life into an area for a long time, in a manner that we CAN keep up with, and with quality handcrafted content while still retaining the benefit of all the work that was done to an area before, rather than discarding it for totally new content.

It's a great tool to have in the toolbox, but it's not the only tool..you know the old saying about hammers and everything looking like a nail..we're doing our best to avoid that.
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Hell, if they can come up with just one handcrafted dungeon that I fall in love with half as much as I liked Seb then they can have my money for a number of months at least. If they can create as many of those quality dungeons as vanilla and Kunark EQ did, then I don't think years will be out of the question.

[Ravensign]

What I like about this, is a) that its the exact opposite of the worst dungeons in the universe: LDON lego dungeons and b) these people "get it" about the difference.

[Jooka]

they still havent answered about if you will see other group/raids while on an encounter route or mobs for other people's encounter route.

Remember, the point here is that you have multiple parties in the dungeon, looking for loot and experience AND encounter routes that lead to the better loot.

so basically you can get some ok loot from the normal dungeon but the best loot will be from farming for encounter route items. Another post on the compilation mentioned getting the lore out of the event was also part of the design. Really sounds like playng in a mini dungeon until you find access to a item that will enable a semi instance for your group/raid to get the real meat of the game. Im not sayig its a bad design but see little difference from this and just instancing areas where the better loot is.

[Olio]

Body Part Targetting: Most likely it's just flavor text with no real affect. Perhaps you can actually target bits of the opponent, in which you'll nearly always target the one thing that works best (most defensive, or most damaging, or occasional snare). As for the flavor text everyone will turn it all off and just watch the numbers.

GUI: It looks like the default EQ GUI. It's probably customizeable. That one looks clunky and uninspired like you would expect from an early version. In particular I always disliked the titles on fixed windows. They take up valuable space for things that are blatently obvious after the first day of play.

Particles: They're nice for a day, then you turn them way down so that you just have the minimal indicator of what spell a person is casting. It would be especially nice if they made it so that you had several level of detail settings: Raid, Group, and Solo. It's annoying to have to keep pulling up a GUI to turn those on and off. Typically what happens is that you turn them all off on a raid and then just give up on turning the back on because it's a nuisance and you don't care that much.

Pictures: The super shiny water looks funny. Harbor water is usually dirtier than that and has foam on it. That looks like mercury or some otherworldly material instead of water. Overall they are too clean, no dirt or dust anywhere (and everything is super bumptastically shiny). Apparently paint and dyes are at a cost premium in this world because they're still very drab.

Olio

[Brash]

Pics keep coming. dinosaurs with 6 legs? Now i know Thad smokes pot.

[Brash]

Looks like a nice sized marketplace. I wonder if players will be able to leave vendors there?

[Murr]

rofl, Cornrows.