Everquest 2 Instance Zones & Groupings

Welcome again the first topic I want to talk about Everquest 2 instances and groups. Now for those that don't know what an instance is, it is basically a dungeon just for your group of up to 6 players. Now normally these can be done with any type of group, however lately the instances are now require more specialty classes to complete.

First a little background a group normally consists of 6 players. The two main requirements are a Tank, normally a fighter type that can take lots of damage, and the healer. The rest of the party can consist of a variety of other classes, scouts, mages, etc.

However lately the instances are now requiring you to have certain classes, such as an extra healer, a mezzer, mana regen, etc.

Now the problem arises when you can not find these classes you may be sitting around for hours on end hoping that one of these needed classes will log on, meanwhile there may be any number of players looking to join a group but are not the required classes.

SOE really needs to address this problem, making instances require certain classes to complete the zone is a huge waste of time for players, and makes the other classes that are not the required classes feel unwanted, and makes the wonder if they should role a new alt or betray to a class they may be more important to a group.

One of the ways that SOE could fix this would be to make a smart dungeon, one that would look at the makeup of the party and create a dungeon that while challenging for the party the party will still be able to finish it. The dungeon could also be set to either look at the levels or let the group going in select the level, so a group that consists of 70-80 level players can chose a level 70-79 dungeon, or they could choose a level 80 dungeon if they wanted more of a challenge, where a group consisting of all level 80's could only select the level 80 dungeon. Also the players could select the level of difficulty for the dungeon like they do with Poet's Palace you have the option to choose normal, hard, very hard.

This would also give the players a unique experience all the time, since they never know what monsters lurk in the dungeon and what loot would drop. For SOE this would give them a unique advantage in the world of MMO's.

Just my 2 cents

RGX