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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Haha sure guy... I'm going to buy you a personality from the cash shop. You seem to want to be "that guy" and fail at it over and over again lol!
Cantatus
Lord Nagafen Raider
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I do tend to wonder if that day is ending. To begin with, I think the biggest reason most of these mediocre MMOs made a profit was because they were based off a big franchise that had a built-in fanbase. I mean, let's face it, people were going to check out a Star Trek or DC MMO regardless of what it looked like. And, since almost all of these have failed to get even remotely close to WoW's numbers, I'd imagine investors have begun to realize that just taking a successful name and slapping it on an MMO isn't necessarily the recipe for a successful MMO like they might've hoped. (It is sort of ironic that Rift is one of the only MMOs I can think of in recent years that hasn't gone completely F2P, despite also being one of few that was an original world.)
Secondly, with almost all recent MMOs going F2P, I think the type of competition in the genre has changed to the point where you no longer just have to prove yourself against other subscription based MMOs, but also prove that the $15 a month fee is worth it compared to the huge selection of F2P games. Perhaps GW2 has already proven there is another model available, but I think it's just become that much harder to launch a subscription based MMO, particularly since so many people have developed the mindset of just waiting for the inevitable point where the MMO becomes F2P.
The shaman one button macro was the most boring class/spec setup I ever played in an MMO. It was literally run up a mob, mash the one key like Micheal J Fox on a sugar rush, and collect your loot. In Rift's defense though, tanking was some the most fun I've ever had in an MMO before they decided to make it a simcity micro management game with the expansion. Skill bloat made tanking fun since you had to decide which ones to place in a macro and which ones to not.
Royal
Connoisseur of Exotic Pictures
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I'm hoping you're not amongst the MMO designer new blood that some people are waiting on to take over.
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
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The only redeeming quality for EQ2 at release was that quest items didn't take up inventory space.
Let me rephrase then. Rift has a huge amount of skill bloat which is a given, but that skill bloat gave tanks a skill for nearly every occasion that could happen while tanking. Sure you could place ever skill in a macro and just tank with three buttons. That setup is not only boring but it turns you into a shit tank. Or you could do what I did... have 13 hot keys, know when is the perfect time to use them, and have people lined up to suck your dick in hopes that you be their tank. I even mention one sentence back that the expansion made tanking more towards tedium with having to watch cooldowns and buff durations. It is one reason why I stopped playing not long after the expansion.
When playing as a dps, having all those skills were redundant. It became more about keeping up with the cooldowns and less about situational awareness. It's almost like the devs added skills just to add a skill even though they are basically the same as the others but with a different cooldown. This is what caused the shaman one button macro spam. All they had to do was give dps skills that either negated damage or open up group skills based on whatever the mob was about to do. Only tank and healer had those skills, albeit in a obscure kind of way.
Sabbat
Trakanon Raider
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This is the skill bloat that players hate.
A skill for a DPS class called "Stab", does 100% damage from in front of the target, 125% damage to the flank of a target, and 200% damage from behind the target. You've now rolled 3 buttons into one. In the above example, those buttons would need to be seperate, this is the precursor to skill bloat. Having a weapon strike that deals 120% damage and another weapon strike that deals 125% damage, while a further skill that does 140% damage is what EQ2 did. Because all of those weapon strikes had 9 second cooldowns, you had to run up and down your keyboard to do reasonable damage.
Christoper Lee sounded cool, too. Other than that, I'm hard pressed to find anything else. The betrayal system was a neat idea, but like so many things in EQ2 implemented terribly.
Whoever designed their combat system should be drubbed out of the MMO industry. Sadly, he's probably one of the leads on EQN.
In that very same post I mention how bad it was for dps so I'm not disagreeing with you. In order to do a key role like tanking you want skills for any situation. I'm not asking for truck loads of skills that have minor differences. I'm asking for the right amount of skills that have huge impacts for the class that you play. Going into skill design with the ideal "less is more" will make for boring classes. Not all classes need to have the same exact number of skills which I think Rift tried to do. What is considered the right amount of skills for tanking is considered skill bloat to dps.
Agraza
Registered Hutt
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less is more
My preferred role is tanking, and I concur with Sabbat's POV on rolling multiple tools into one. If anything I'd prefer to have more LoL class design, with some Rift/FF Tactics swapping tossed in. I want more purpose-suited classes. I want fewer buttons. Having to spend time figuring out how to map my keys for the 3 new abilities each expansion is some tired BS. I had too many abilities when the game released, I don't need X many more every so often. If you want to add features to a class, you need to streamline the class so my button layout fits into the same form factor.
Macros that tie multiple abilities together are generally either inferior to playing "manually" or the realm of the incredibly small minority of macro enthusiasts and their copycats or both. It's a solution that isn't a solution for most people. They're some technical nerdy wizardry out of reach or interest of the masses that play the game.
Warriors in WoW probably had the most tools compared to other tanks. There were good things about that, but there were still many that were barely useful but completely necessary to play, like having 3 charges and stance dancing to use them. I've heard they've slimmed it down some which I approve of, but on the flipside the druid tank had insufficient tools. I think my druid had like 9 abilities I could apply, and the warrior had like 25. More of the warrior tools should have been multi-fuction to get rid of wasted hotbar/keybinding space, and the druids needed more functionality in the role as a bear to address 5 man group situations that warriors could destroy.
My preferred role is tanking, and I concur with Sabbat's POV on rolling multiple tools into one. If anything I'd prefer to have more LoL class design, with some Rift/FF Tactics swapping tossed in. I want more purpose-suited classes. I want fewer buttons. Having to spend time figuring out how to map my keys for the 3 new abilities each expansion is some tired BS. I had too many abilities when the game released, I don't need X many more every so often. If you want to add features to a class, you need to streamline the class so my button layout fits into the same form factor.
Macros that tie multiple abilities together are generally either inferior to playing "manually" or the realm of the incredibly small minority of macro enthusiasts and their copycats or both. It's a solution that isn't a solution for most people. They're some technical nerdy wizardry out of reach or interest of the masses that play the game.
Warriors in WoW probably had the most tools compared to other tanks. There were good things about that, but there were still many that were barely useful but completely necessary to play, like having 3 charges and stance dancing to use them. I've heard they've slimmed it down some which I approve of, but on the flipside the druid tank had insufficient tools. I think my druid had like 9 abilities I could apply, and the warrior had like 25. More of the warrior tools should have been multi-fuction to get rid of wasted hotbar/keybinding space, and the druids needed more functionality in the role as a bear to address 5 man group situations that warriors could destroy.
Kuriin
Just a Nurse
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Yeah, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I started playing EQ2 when EoF2 came out because I wanted the nostalgic feeling from EQ. Did I get it? Hell fucking yeah. I was also surprised that there were so many playing that game when all I heard were bad things.
I don't know about your experience in EQ2, but, end game raiding in EQ2 was some of the most fun I've ever had.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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I didn't play at release, but later on when I did play I ended up with bags of quest crap. Bags and bags of quest crap.
Was this later in WoW? I mostly played early on, and I remember Wars being tailored more to raid tanking and single targets, and group tanking/multipulls were a PITA because demo shout at the time was almost no agro and I'd have to run dungeons and juggle multiple mobs with sunder/revenge/bash etc. I do remember ferals complaining as well, but then I also remember when bears had the swipe change that made them almost OP to the point that Pally and Druids were preferred over Warriors. Again, I haven't played WoW in several years and Blizzard upset the applecart on a regular basis but /shrug.
It depends on what game and how many skills. WoW, overall wasn't bad, and I felt that my main agro abilities were ~4 or 5 skills, and I could throw any additional "more dps" skills in once agro was solid. EQ2, it was atrocious. You could macro and I tried a few times, but there were so many different skills that even grouping a few here and there wouldn't help much, and it was easy to group together too much and then have an effect in there that could fuck you. Even just SK AEs for example, I think I had like 6 or 7 when I quit? Some with short duration/refresh, some with longer, some you could cast while moving and others not, most with dots but one lifetap AE, different ranges, and to top it all off the biggest DPS AE was Grave Sac that had an inherent taunt (with taunt on each tick as well) not to mention chaos cloud and chaos march (so sucks if you aren't MT lol). They seriously could have stopped at 3 AEs if they wanted (DPS dot, DPS no dot/nuke/lifetap, and AE taunt) or less if you wanted, but no - they just had to have fucktons of AEs. And all the abilities were much along those lines. Like, there were a ton of DD+drain abilities, DD+disease DOT, DD+stun, DD+debuffs, DD+drains, I mean FFS. So much completely pointless shit that was just useless ability clutter. And then you'd get an expac, with MOAR abilities. Or you would need to get debuffs from one zone so you could do progression raiding that required those debuffs...just fucking ridiculous.
TL;DR, I don't get the need for more tank abilities than what DPS classes would have. What all do you really need that would necessitate a shitload of keys for tanks? I'm all for KISS: give me ST and AE taunts/snaps, and some filler DPS/agro generators and maybe some SS/shielding stuff. If you need to have 15+ skills on a tank, I mean, that's just getting redundant and bloated imho. Hell, if a Dev really feels the need to spice things up, do it from the character sheet and have it affect existing abilities. Too many fucknut Devs feel some sort of need to keep adding shit that's just slightly different.
Agraza
Registered Hutt
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It wasn't that druids weren't generally effective. It was that their one good tool, swipe, was applied to every situation and all it did was damage and threat. I could and did literally go through heroic dungeons on my druid pressing only swipe and charge. There were situations where I was thinking. "If only I had X, I would Y." I never thought that on my warrior until DKs happened and then I wanted death grip. Who didn't?
Warriors had 5 shouts to druids 2, a non-gay interrupt, a fear break (both had temporary immunity though), 3 charges to bears 1, AE slow, a ranged silence, could drink potions, the block mechanic, spell reflect, a counter-attack CD, etc. at different points in the game. Druids had damage and threat in a couple of flavors and a few things warriors already had. Some of this was addressed over time.
Of course Blizzard's reasoning was/is probably that bears can shift into cats and/or elves and do a bunch of shit warriors can't. But someone tanking a boss doesn't shift out of tank mode very often, so this possibility was generally irrelevant.
Warriors had all the right tools and then some, split into too many separate buttons. Druids had insufficient tools by comparison, but made up the deficit in raw numbers (AC/HP advantage).
Warriors had 5 shouts to druids 2, a non-gay interrupt, a fear break (both had temporary immunity though), 3 charges to bears 1, AE slow, a ranged silence, could drink potions, the block mechanic, spell reflect, a counter-attack CD, etc. at different points in the game. Druids had damage and threat in a couple of flavors and a few things warriors already had. Some of this was addressed over time.
Of course Blizzard's reasoning was/is probably that bears can shift into cats and/or elves and do a bunch of shit warriors can't. But someone tanking a boss doesn't shift out of tank mode very often, so this possibility was generally irrelevant.
Warriors had all the right tools and then some, split into too many separate buttons. Druids had insufficient tools by comparison, but made up the deficit in raw numbers (AC/HP advantage).
Curt just sold his sock for $90 grand. Is he really hurting that bad for cash?
State of RI intervention in 3...2...1...
State of RI intervention in 3...2...1...
Tmac
Adventurer
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WarCraft 3 had a custom game called "WoW Arena" that was pretty much what you're talking about. It was 10x more fun than WoW's own arena and used DoTA classes as the combat template.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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As far as anyone know the money he invested as all liquid assets in the first place. Not really sure why he would have needed more.
And any money the company owes he is not personally liable for. not even close. Especially in a company like that. Even a small privately owned business with 1 owner. its separate.
Possible hes raising cash to donate to the employees? dunno.
And any money the company owes he is not personally liable for. not even close. Especially in a company like that. Even a small privately owned business with 1 owner. its separate.
Possible hes raising cash to donate to the employees? dunno.