EQ2: Dungeonmaker to allow us to use our own characters.

Like quite a lot of MMO players, I’m currently in SWTOR-mode, but I could not help cheer this fine bit of news from Everquest 2:

Starting in the next day or two (on Test server only) you’ll be able to play any of your characters in a player-created Dungeon Maker instance.

This doesn’t invalidate playing as an Adventurer, but you can also play as your regular characters, regardless of level. (Well, okay, you still have to be at least level 20 to play a DM instance, but you can play any characters from 20-90.)

We have still code to create, but we’re excited enough about getting this to work that we’re putting it on Test over the holidays so that we can get your feedback on this cool new addition to Dungeon Maker.

Please play a bit on Test over the holidays, if you’re so inclined. We’re eager to get your feedback when we come back for 2012 so we can tear into it and make it great for you! This is going to be awesome. The creativity of this community is unparalleled, and if you can play your own characters in those dungeons, then the sky’s the limit!

Here’s a few bits of info about the feature as it is on Test:

You still have to be level 20 to play in a Dungeon Maker dungeon, but any character that’s level 20+ can be used.
You can *also* still play as an Adventurer if desired.
For this test, player parties have to be composed entirely of either all Adventurers, or all regular player characters. Mixing of Adventurers and real characters is not currently allowed in this version.
Dungeon Mark rewards are turned off while on Test. (Until we balance the feature further, we can’t reward Dungeon Marks.)
This feature is not finalized. It’s on Test because we want your feedback on it so that we can then tune it to a finalized state after the New Year.

Enjoy! This will be coming to Live servers as soon as we can finish it up after the New Year!

The avatars we were stuck with up til now were terrible. They had 4 powers, but mostly you just used auto-attack, as they lacked the mana to use their abilities much. They were simply not fun, and I still have no idea how anyone ever thought they would be. It would have been possible to make fun and interesting avatars, but these were not them.

So it is fantastic that we’re going to be able to play as our own characters. They are, after all, the characters that we’re playing the game to be. It had previously been said that it would be too difficult to balance dungeons for normal characters, but I suspect after seeing how randomly balanced player-made dungeons are anyway, that that stopped being such an issue. I also imagine that a large drop in people using your game’s flagship new feature has the power to focus the mind, and lend a sense of urgency to the search for a solution.

Anyhows, I’m glad. I’d feared that Dungeonmaker was going to be another misjudged EQ2 feature which would be quickly abandoned when it failed to catch on, rather than taking the necessary steps to improve it. It does have the potential to be amazing, but it’s going to take a lot of dev attention to get there. If we continue to see additions and improvements, then there is hope for the long term.

Update: Today’s coming hotfix has some more jolly Dungeonmaking improvements!

DUNGEON / PLAYER HOUSING RATINGS

• The house and dungeon leaderboards have now been converted from the previous 5-star rating system to a new “Like” system.
• When visiting a house or completing a dungeon maker zone you now have the option to “Like” the zone in either of the two categories.
• The leaderboards are now based on the accumulation of likes.
• Awards continue to work as before and are given to the players at the top of the leaderboard.

DUNGEON MAKER

• The amount of power that Dungeon Maker Avatars have has been significantly increased.
• Players may now publish a base of 3 Dungeon Maker zones. More publish slots are earned as players unlock more templates.

So that’s even more of the issues that annoyed me in my last post dealt with. Huzzah!!

It’s not going to fix the core issues with the rating system and its UI, but it’s a big improvement on what we have right now.

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