The idea of what is unique or custom varies from person to person. If you have a grand vision of a unique server then implement the idea so we all can see it. Creating custom content is a ton of work and it is not as simple as it may seem as myself and many others have discovered the hard way.
Yes, there are similarities among a lot of servers but maybe some of the things you described as being common place are there for a reason. Spellscribers are not needed on some servers due to their high population but on lower population servers finding any specific spell would be a considerable task if not near impossible, malo and mala are good examples of this problem. No drop and lore flagging are situational and SOE used those very badly. I don’t see anything wrong with people finding a piece of gear and then deciding they want to give it to one of their other toons. Yes it can be unbalancing but it can also be fun.
Buffbots are a good and bad thing at the same time. The way they are implemented in most cases where they cast one set of buffs for all level ranges is a very bad idea but if the script is adjusted to be tier based for say 1-5, 6-10 and so forth then the biggest negative surrounding the buffbot would be severely diminished. The same idea needs to be applied to exp mods which is why several people had made requests for tier based exp mods. A positive exp mod is not needed at low levels but levels 50-59 is a much different story.
I don’t like the idea of free gear or excessively common gear drops either but others may disagree. Epic 1.0’s are subpar for most of the EQ game world, enough said. The same thing can be said about Epic 1.5’s. Epic 2.0’s only good for a while and not worth the time or effort it took to get them on live. If they are upgraded then yes they should be hard to get but otherwise I will stick with my original statement.
Solo, group and raid content must have a balance and it cannot be all one way. Using the live version of Crystallos as an example, the common everyday folks would have considered the key quest as raid content but at the same time it was group content to others. This type of thing has a lot to do with the experience level of the players and not so much to do with the number of players.
SoF disregards the balance for most of EQ but does that mean it was a bad idea to make? Content must get harder or more challenging and items but get better otherwise progression merges with bland all is lost. More is not always better but less is not either. Replacing more content with creative content is probably ideal but not always practical or possible.
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