Play as your Character comes to Dungeon Maker
First mentioned by SmokeJumper shortly after the Age of Discovery expansion was released, SOE has now introduced the ability to Play as Yourself in player-made Dungeon Maker dungeons. The secret is an advanced auto-mentoring system which allows for Level Agnostic play. That functionality will also roll out this month with a revamp to Battlegrounds that brings players of different tiers together.
We have commented in the past on the extreme limitations of designing Dungeon Maker content, which rarely rises above placing enemies strategically and hoping for the best, but being able to play as your own character instead of driving avatars is a huge step in the right direction. Play as your Character also nicely dovetails into last week’s announcement of the winners of the Dungeon Maker contest.
Posted by new EQ2 Community Manager Colette “Dexella” Murphy on the EQ2 Forums:
Attention, residents of Norrath! We are pleased to reveal a great many changes that are coming to Dungeon Maker this week.
Now you – and we do mean you – can explore the creations of your fellow players in Dungeon Maker! Beginning today, you will be able to play as your own character in the Dungeon Maker dungeons. For those who prefer the original method of selecting an adventurer, fear not! That ability will still be available. When you bring up the Dungeon Maker start screen, you will be able to select from two options, either “Play as Self” or “Play as Avatar.”
We have also added two new features that will enhance the storytelling capabilities present in Dungeon Maker. First, there are new objects that can turn characters into actors. When you place these objects next to a specific character, it will turn it into an NPC like you see throughout Norrath. This character will not attack the players, nor will players be able to kill it. Second, you now have the ability to customize the on screen pop-ups. When designing your dungeons, you will be able to select from nine different colors for the pop-ups and add these pop-up windows to objects, so they will present text to players as they run through your dungeon.
Finally, new charms and headgear will also be available later this week. The new gear is accessible every ten levels, from 20-90. There have also been updates to bring the quality up to level 92 as well.
We’d love to see your new dungeon creations using these new updates and features! Post your screenshots in the forum!
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Comments (18)
Charn
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I’d still like the ability to shift or ctrl+click on an enhancer (like a fire pit or weapon rack) and choose exactly which mobs gets which buff instead of having to rely on proximity and being forced to have every mob in the area get every buff.
For that matter, I’d like to be able to click ctrl or shift+click a bunch of mobs (at least up to 8) and make them ONE encounter, instead of having every mob be a solo encounter. Would allow me to better tailor what aggros from where and would be nice for players with a lot of green AoEs to be able to use them effectively.
Also, the ability to set the aggro range of mobs would be nice and be able to see a visual representation of where they’ll aggro (like a targeting ring for aggro range).
Timers would be nice. Ex.: Every 10 seconds fighting Boss X spawns a set of adds. Triggers: if mob Y dies before mob Z, mob Z gets buff A (more hps and rampage for example and says, “You killed Kenny! You BASTARDS!”). Trip line triggers: Pass point M and action L happens . . .
That’s just a few ideas. There’s so much that COULD be done to actually make the Dungeon Maker feature worthwhile. Hell, if they did it well enough, they might not have to actually come up with content themselves . . . or at the very least use it to scout talent that CAN come up with a clever, fun, and unique dungeons, stories, and encounters.
Or they can just do the job we’re paying them for . . .
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Charn
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BAH! The above smiley face is supposed to be the number eight . . . why it’s a smiley face I’ll never know.
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Brigh.Guk
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I just /ragequit out of one in frustration using my own toon. Granted, I don’t have raider gear, but my pet was getting creamed by the adds.
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skippydippy
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Its dead Jim,dead..
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Jrel
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Still no point at doing these past level 50 for the xp unless it is for the fun factor.
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Malade
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What a waste of dev time.
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Anaogi
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Ran this with several toons last night, including a reasonably well-Skyshrine geared ‘zerker, a troubie in a mix of quest reward and old-Velious gear (including x2 raid pieces), a questionably geared 20 SK, and a level 70 Frogmonk with cloud quest armor and dubious accessories. The destination was my server’s AoE playground of choice. Results were uniform: Mass slaughter, many tokens, and actually a nice, fun letting off of steam post-raid.
Not too sure about those ‘No-Trade’ headpieces from the Jewelled reward chests, though…
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Landiin
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What are you going to do with all them tokens? Maybe they have added more things since the last time I looked but I couldn’t really see anything worth getting past the one or two items that most already have now.
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Twyxx
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They added some decent charms to the jeweled mystery boxes. Using my sk I can get 400 tokens in less than five mins now depending on lag. Shouldn’t take too many crates to get the charm. They’re on par with the covenant trash drop charms, maybe a lil better.
We actually had a little fun last night running thru a few of these and popping crates. But yeah, after an hour of this you’ll have more tokens than you know what to do with so there’s still no point to keep running these.
The only rewards to go after would be the 5 cb temp adorns from the crates, similar to running the solo ss zones. The no-trade helms at least sell for 2pp.
Hopefully they’re done now putting effort into dungeon maker.
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Anaogi
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What are you going to do with all them tokens?
The guildie that created the AoE playground I mentioned earlier did so as a place to get tokens to complete his collection of elements to build the dungeons he really wanted to build.
As of last night, he has roughly 17k marks, just from other people running his dungeon.
Make what you will of that fact.
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McVet81
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Actually the 25 and 50 token crates drop lvl 91 and lvl 92 gear respectively and its actually not bad gear tbh. It may not compare to raid items, but they are good enough to equip on alts. With that said though, the lvl 92 charms are actually REALLY good, there stats are equal to HM SS zones, just minus and procs. I like what they did with dungeon maker and I hope they add more desirable rewards to it….
I just worry that peeps will “complain” about the rewards, which in my opinion would be ridiculous, but there’s always got to be one person who cries to ruin it for the rest. /shrug
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uncle
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one thing im using my token for is free ammo to run pug with andsave my better ammo for raids
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Taka
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Also, do they still have exception repair kits? And potions of debt forgiveness and the mount?
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McVet81
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@TAKA,
Yes they do 🙂
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Anaogi
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Some of that stuff, useful. I’m meh on the mount, it’s cool on the toon I have it on, but any toon I start–thanks to vet and preorder stuff–has its choice of ground and flying mounts, free housing, and a smattering of house and other items to start with, so the bar has to raise a bit to get my blood flowing on rewards… 😉
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Dethdlr
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@Name (Required): You’re probably using a custom UI. The new button is in the default UI. If you go into your custom UI folder and delete or rename the ones called eq2ui_playerhousing_(restOfFilename).xml it should revert those windows back to the default and let you do it. I’m sure updates will start rolling out for the custom UIs soon if they haven’t already.
I tried doing a run last night with one of my characters. I’ve got to say that I liked it a lot more than running it with the avatars. One of the BIG things still missing though in my opinion is being able to make multiple mobs a single encounter. Green AoEs are pretty much single target since every mob in Dungeon Maker is a single, not group encounter, regardless of whether they aggro together or not.
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Anaogi
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Still need to run my warlock through there. That might get ugly.
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karofin
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What armour is that ?
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