New Content Update Part 2
Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 1:44 pm
Hi THF!
This is our second instalment of updates to give you an insight to our progress with the new content, coming soon to THF.
Brief recap summary
First up, a recap/update on some of the numbers and stats relating to this new content (this is a nice summary for the TLDR amongst you
)
And we're still not yet done.
Overall Content Design
To recap what this content update is all about, it will be T9 content that sits alongside the existing T9 content (DSK3, VT) and continues the story that starts in T7 (the Foresight of Farseer and Citadel of the Worldslayer, released in December 2018). It will be a large open zone (no access requirements but tough T9 level content) and an instance, which you’ll need to complete an access quest for. Below I'll go into some more detail about one exciting element of the new content.
Something that you should probably be aware of and will be reminded of again before and after release of this upcoming content: This is story-driven content where a lot of the work going into it has been on building up a rich story and interesting lore. As such, it won’t be a quick-fire “jump in and farm” release; you will need to get involved with the lore, read up the story (all available in game) and solve quite a lot of puzzles and quests in order to even find the content. There is plenty to do for a quick session if you only have a short time to play and quite a few of the tasks you're required to do can be completed in a short time-frame (once you've worked them out) but to really enjoy this story you'll need to get a bit more immersed in it. There are a couple large quests that should really test your thinking power so we hope those will excite those of you who enjoy puzzle solving.
This does all actually mean we won't be telling you where this new content is. A bit like the 3.0 epic quests, you have to find out how and where they start. However, the Foresight of Farseer story and existing content does actually provide you with clues and the new content will expand on those to provide hints as to what you need to do and where you need to do it.
Customised NPC interactions
We mentioned in the first March update that this new content is heavily customised, more so than most of the custom content on THF to date; NPCs have been given new tactical and strategic enhancements! I’d like to use this update to give you some more information on what that actually means.
Consider priest NPCs for a moment, so clerics, shaman and druids. In general, the expectation might be that an NPC that can heal should heal other NPCs on the same faction if they need it. On EQEMU, at least the current version THF is using, that just isn’t the case (or if it is, it’s not consistent). I believe an NPC may attempt to heal itself but this isn’t particularly reliable and so isn’t really a tactical consideration; if you see a healer, you don’t need to worry about whether you kill it first or not.
In the potactics instances (Tallon and Vallon) there are cleric NPCs that do some rudimentary self-healing. This is scripted and is relatively simple (they heal themselves once every so many seconds, they don't actually cast a healing spell and they just set their hit points to a set level). I wanted to expand on this and a considerable amount of work has gone into it.
In the new zones, all of the healers will attempt to heal any allies and themselves if they have lost a certain amount of health; they'll do this by actually casting a heal spell (so in some cases may be uninterruptible). Some of the healers will only care to heal other NPCs if they’re the same race and some will heal others no matter what race they are. All of this adds to the strategy of an encounter where multiple mobs are pulled.
I took it a few steps further as well. If you start to attack a healer, they won’t just heal themselves and do nothing else… they will now call for help from their allies nearby. If a tank is in range, can see you and you are doing a lot of damage to a non-tank friend of theirs… expect them to take some action (and by "action", I mean physically stop you attacking that healer).
What else? I won’t go into too much more detail but I will say this… at least three other classes have custom code written for the trash in the new zone. They will act much more like how you’d expect their class to act if controlled by a player and this means you will need to adjust your strategy around this. And, in the case of one class type, they'll have a brand new spell never seen before on Everquest that will take you by surprise You have been warned!
This work took us in a new direction for custom content. It enabled us to create some very interesting, totally new (I don’t think any server has done it before) events and encounters. Without giving too much away, one particular encounter has custom scripting that effectively replicates the behaviour of all 16 classes, to varying degrees. Can you imagine a group encounter where your NPC opponents are a group of 6 NPCs that have a functioning tank, healer and dps setup, where the actions are much closer to what you’d expect from those classes?
Oh and PS, how about friendly NPCs that actually help you in battle instead of standing by and letting you do all the work?
The future plan
We mentioned that this content update wouldn’t be the last and it certainly won’t be, with the current story (and others) pencilled in already to take content into a brand new Tier. What has changed since the last update is we now have Peterigz on board to head up development of ROF2, which is long-awaited to say the least! Our current plans are to complete this current content release but then focus all efforts on getting THF fully ROF2 supported. We feel the benefits of this are huge and well worth focusing on.
Here’s a brief (not exhaustive) update on our progress so far, this includes work on ROF2 and also other general fixes that are awesome:
Our long-term "roadmap" looks something like this (not necessarily in a strict chronological order, subject to change, no promises!):
We may release one final update before the content hits. In that case, we'll talk about some of the encounters and events/tasks this content will provide (there are a large number, at least 15-20+) and what you can expect.
We’re about 75% completed with the new content and are beginning internal tests as we write this! We’ll keep you updated in the next few weeks with more information about this exciting development!
This is our second instalment of updates to give you an insight to our progress with the new content, coming soon to THF.
Brief recap summary
First up, a recap/update on some of the numbers and stats relating to this new content (this is a nice summary for the TLDR amongst you
)- 129 new npcs created or edited from existing (non-custom) npcs [121 last update]
- 143 scripts written for npcs and quests (with between 300 and 1000+ lines of code each) [99 last update]
- 13 new quests written, some including events/tasks not yet seen on THF (so not exclusively kill/loot types) [11 last update]
- 90+ items created (most of these are quest related but still nowhere near finished with this yet)
- 51 new player spells/item effects [15 last update]
- 5 new recipes
And we're still not yet done.
Overall Content Design
To recap what this content update is all about, it will be T9 content that sits alongside the existing T9 content (DSK3, VT) and continues the story that starts in T7 (the Foresight of Farseer and Citadel of the Worldslayer, released in December 2018). It will be a large open zone (no access requirements but tough T9 level content) and an instance, which you’ll need to complete an access quest for. Below I'll go into some more detail about one exciting element of the new content.
Something that you should probably be aware of and will be reminded of again before and after release of this upcoming content: This is story-driven content where a lot of the work going into it has been on building up a rich story and interesting lore. As such, it won’t be a quick-fire “jump in and farm” release; you will need to get involved with the lore, read up the story (all available in game) and solve quite a lot of puzzles and quests in order to even find the content. There is plenty to do for a quick session if you only have a short time to play and quite a few of the tasks you're required to do can be completed in a short time-frame (once you've worked them out) but to really enjoy this story you'll need to get a bit more immersed in it. There are a couple large quests that should really test your thinking power so we hope those will excite those of you who enjoy puzzle solving.
This does all actually mean we won't be telling you where this new content is. A bit like the 3.0 epic quests, you have to find out how and where they start. However, the Foresight of Farseer story and existing content does actually provide you with clues and the new content will expand on those to provide hints as to what you need to do and where you need to do it.
Customised NPC interactions
We mentioned in the first March update that this new content is heavily customised, more so than most of the custom content on THF to date; NPCs have been given new tactical and strategic enhancements! I’d like to use this update to give you some more information on what that actually means.
Consider priest NPCs for a moment, so clerics, shaman and druids. In general, the expectation might be that an NPC that can heal should heal other NPCs on the same faction if they need it. On EQEMU, at least the current version THF is using, that just isn’t the case (or if it is, it’s not consistent). I believe an NPC may attempt to heal itself but this isn’t particularly reliable and so isn’t really a tactical consideration; if you see a healer, you don’t need to worry about whether you kill it first or not.
In the potactics instances (Tallon and Vallon) there are cleric NPCs that do some rudimentary self-healing. This is scripted and is relatively simple (they heal themselves once every so many seconds, they don't actually cast a healing spell and they just set their hit points to a set level). I wanted to expand on this and a considerable amount of work has gone into it.
In the new zones, all of the healers will attempt to heal any allies and themselves if they have lost a certain amount of health; they'll do this by actually casting a heal spell (so in some cases may be uninterruptible). Some of the healers will only care to heal other NPCs if they’re the same race and some will heal others no matter what race they are. All of this adds to the strategy of an encounter where multiple mobs are pulled.
I took it a few steps further as well. If you start to attack a healer, they won’t just heal themselves and do nothing else… they will now call for help from their allies nearby. If a tank is in range, can see you and you are doing a lot of damage to a non-tank friend of theirs… expect them to take some action (and by "action", I mean physically stop you attacking that healer
).What else? I won’t go into too much more detail but I will say this… at least three other classes have custom code written for the trash in the new zone. They will act much more like how you’d expect their class to act if controlled by a player and this means you will need to adjust your strategy around this. And, in the case of one class type, they'll have a brand new spell never seen before on Everquest that will take you by surprise
You have been warned!This work took us in a new direction for custom content. It enabled us to create some very interesting, totally new (I don’t think any server has done it before) events and encounters. Without giving too much away, one particular encounter has custom scripting that effectively replicates the behaviour of all 16 classes, to varying degrees. Can you imagine a group encounter where your NPC opponents are a group of 6 NPCs that have a functioning tank, healer and dps setup, where the actions are much closer to what you’d expect from those classes?
Oh and PS, how about friendly NPCs that actually help you in battle instead of standing by and letting you do all the work?
The future plan
We mentioned that this content update wouldn’t be the last and it certainly won’t be, with the current story (and others) pencilled in already to take content into a brand new Tier. What has changed since the last update is we now have Peterigz on board to head up development of ROF2, which is long-awaited to say the least! Our current plans are to complete this current content release but then focus all efforts on getting THF fully ROF2 supported. We feel the benefits of this are huge and well worth focusing on.
Here’s a brief (not exhaustive) update on our progress so far, this includes work on ROF2 and also other general fixes that are awesome:
- ROF2: Guild bank now works
- UF & ROF2: Animation speed fixed with a particular wolf model (can be seen in West Karana and is also one of the beastlord pets).
- UF & ROF2 An agro issue when pulling an npc that yells for help resulting in the adds agroing anyone but the puller has now been fixed
- There are some other summary fixes to UF that’ll be broadcast once they go live.
- ROF2 is working and being tested internally. It’s currently up to the 2015 revision of EQEMU – our intent is to get this working fully first and then release, then look to update towards the current revision over time.
Our long-term "roadmap" looks something like this (not necessarily in a strict chronological order, subject to change, no promises!):
- Complete T9 content and release
- Focus on getting ROF2 fully supported and released
- Plan for next raft of content (potentially starting with the creation of some more Epic 3.0 quests that are long-overdue!)
- At the same time, start updating EQEMU code to current revision.
- Start work on T10
- Existing content overhaul, starting with levels 1 to 70 (including customising some of the spells available for new players, enhancing the story/lore so it's more detailed and interconnecting, improving the new player experience)
We may release one final update before the content hits. In that case, we'll talk about some of the encounters and events/tasks this content will provide (there are a large number, at least 15-20+) and what you can expect.
We’re about 75% completed with the new content and are beginning internal tests as we write this! We’ll keep you updated in the next few weeks with more information about this exciting development!