Agreed, And while they will have classes 90% of players will be running a mishmash of multiclass abilities and will be a specific class in name only.
EQ Never
- Thread starter Convo
- Start date
Daidraco
Avatar of War Slayer
- 10,705
- 11,368
The only downside to that is what to expect from people when you group. You queue up to do an instance (or w/e direction they go), and join a group with Johnny Derp. Johnny Derp is your Tank, but everything he has is tuned towards being a DPS. In fact, you as a Healer, have more HP than this supposed Tank.
If Im playing a DPS and have a 20-30 minute queue, this is the last thing I want happening. If I leave the group right away, the abandon debuff is applied for 15 minutes and then you have to wait an additional 20 minutes to join another group. An hour wasted, just because Johnny Derp. God forbid if you join another group and that tank, or healer, present you with the same problem.
Ie. Classes with specific abilities, tuned to specific gear is much more friendly. If every player was as experienced as the average forum goer - then this wouldnt be a problem. But its not like that, and you have to think of the worst shit you might have to deal with when theory crafting.
If Im playing a DPS and have a 20-30 minute queue, this is the last thing I want happening. If I leave the group right away, the abandon debuff is applied for 15 minutes and then you have to wait an additional 20 minutes to join another group. An hour wasted, just because Johnny Derp. God forbid if you join another group and that tank, or healer, present you with the same problem.
Ie. Classes with specific abilities, tuned to specific gear is much more friendly. If every player was as experienced as the average forum goer - then this wouldnt be a problem. But its not like that, and you have to think of the worst shit you might have to deal with when theory crafting.
Mr Creed
Too old for this shit
- 2,395
- 289
Last year's napkin scribbles sounded like they dont want to go heavy on instancing, maybe the game design simply doesnt have you 'queue up' to play with random derps. Rallying calls and such made it sound more like a variation of GW2 and less like WoW.
Having a big storyline in an mmo is stupid and devs should stop doing it. Instead they should be telling local stories that you can either observe or take part in. wow kind of did this with shit like deadlines but it was all mini quest hub shit. Gotta think more organic.
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
- 5,808
- 30
Organic to me means player interaction and evironmental impact. Like building your own town and creating quests for other players to complete. Setting up an NPC to have players collect rat pelts and give them minor rewards, then later on offer rat pelt bandoliers as a quest reward for defending the player made town.
Or a PVP town with kill x players from x guild quest that offers bounty rewards or pvp consumables. Give me the tools to make this stuff and I'll be hooked.
With tools like this you could set up all kinds of player driven events. Like Fishing Contests, Restaraunts that sell high quality consumables, a Dueling Arena with a betting system.
Stream lining this community interaction would go a long ways for me as long as it wasn't easily abusable.
Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
- 12,878
- 12,268
Regional / zone storylines make sense in a quest hub game and for a game designed like SWTOR having class stories made sense as well. But I agree the overarching plot hyping a single ultra boss dude and not the massive armies and monsters at their command (you know, the real part of the threat) does fly in the face of "massive multi-player". Oh you're in your own separate instanced world with 10 people against this one dude and maybe token adds. But trash designs are usually retarded, drop cloth caps, and have gimmicks more than challenges making you wish you could beat the devs upside the head with their own keyboards.
Except Johnny Derp is the warrior class so he is locked into having 2 Defensive slots 1 Offensive Slot and 1 Movement slot. Classes in EQN are still limited to a role by the slot system so it's impossible for a warrior to slot 4 offensive abilities because HAS to have 2 defensive abilities on his bar.
Johnny also has a sword and shield equipped and he is automatically granted 4 sword and shield specific abilities that most likely will be tank specific. If you see johnny has a two-hander equipped you ask him to switch and if he does not then that's the same as having a terrible tank in any other MMO and you leave.
With 40 classes you can narrow down the role you want to a very specific class, You can never have a DPS "warrior" because the DPS warrior will be call the "Ravager" or something and they will have like 3 offense 1 movement slots and I bet we will see a class that has 4 defensive slots called a "Vanguard"
I hate even calling them classes I think they are more like "40 Ability slot combinations" Of course they will all have unique abilities but once you unlock most of them by playing you will choose your class by the socket type of abilities.
Edit:
This looks like the baseline "melee class" this is one of the 8 starter classes everyone gets. Note how he has one of each ability that a melee can have. I would assume this class would be a fine leveling class but garbage in high end pve/pvp.
Big Flex
Fitness Fascist
- 4,314
- 3,166
O.G. red panda pirate blade master reporting in.
Circa 08-06-2013 with pretentious sand art still in our collective horror.
I have a feeling that the weapons in Next are going to be your biggest source of spammable damage and your abilities are going to be ultra specialized for how you want to play. I don't think we will see many abilities that are generic "Do X damage" or "heal X HP" or "Prevent X HP" those will be built into your stave or sword or cleric mace.
It will be attacks with debuffs or spell reflection or group heals or selos. Things that you don't spam constantly but make your play style unique and valued for specific encounters.
I think a DPS class can still do serviceable damage across the board by using his weapon abilities while specializing in a specific type of combat (anti magic combat etc).
Excuse my double post but I'm bored at work and really itching for a new MMO.
From what I've heard from talking to Poneytail is that different types of weapons will grant different attacks even if they are in the same weapon style. They will be your bread and butter abilities that you will spam in groups. Your class abilities are going to be custom to how you want to make them and you can pick from what ever you like that your class can use/slotted for.
For example a Wizard who has: Two movement ability slots,One offensive ability slot,One defensive ability slot will have one huge cooldown nuke "Manaburn", 1 defensive cool down "Manaskin" and 2 movement abilities "Evacuation and Yonder" while having 4 nukes on his staff.
The cool thing is that this wizard can have his Fire staff equipped and have 4 fire nukes available but in his inventory he can have an ice and an arcane staff as well depending on what element he needs. He could also have a Fire AE staff or a Fire DoT staff or different levels of fire staves depending how deep that want to go with it.
This really makes itemization much more than stats, now you have to look at move sets as well, A high level sword that only does AE attacks may be awful in a situation where crowd control is needed so switching to another sword would be preferable.
No longer do you get your lvl 60 raid sword and cross that off your list of BIS for the xpac you're gonna have multiclass your weapons as well as your classes.
From what I've heard from talking to Poneytail is that different types of weapons will grant different attacks even if they are in the same weapon style. They will be your bread and butter abilities that you will spam in groups. Your class abilities are going to be custom to how you want to make them and you can pick from what ever you like that your class can use/slotted for.
For example a Wizard who has: Two movement ability slots,One offensive ability slot,One defensive ability slot will have one huge cooldown nuke "Manaburn", 1 defensive cool down "Manaskin" and 2 movement abilities "Evacuation and Yonder" while having 4 nukes on his staff.
The cool thing is that this wizard can have his Fire staff equipped and have 4 fire nukes available but in his inventory he can have an ice and an arcane staff as well depending on what element he needs. He could also have a Fire AE staff or a Fire DoT staff or different levels of fire staves depending how deep that want to go with it.
This really makes itemization much more than stats, now you have to look at move sets as well, A high level sword that only does AE attacks may be awful in a situation where crowd control is needed so switching to another sword would be preferable.
No longer do you get your lvl 60 raid sword and cross that off your list of BIS for the xpac you're gonna have multiclass your weapons as well as your classes.
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
- 5,808
- 30
Seems pretty standard fare considering ESO and GW2 both have done this. Praised for their class customization at first and then scorned for their balance issues and subsequent pidgeon holing. DK's had to bring banner and talons to be viable as an example.
Balancing is a nightmare once a meta gets established with this system.
I can't think of a way to make it work other than the way Path of Exile does it, where everyone can use every ability as long as they have that particular skill gem, then you can modify the skill by connecting other support skills to it.
Give everyone the opportunity to use every skill and modify it with universal passives or there's going to be pidgeon holes and anti-fun limitations.
Balancing is a nightmare once a meta gets established with this system.
I can't think of a way to make it work other than the way Path of Exile does it, where everyone can use every ability as long as they have that particular skill gem, then you can modify the skill by connecting other support skills to it.
Give everyone the opportunity to use every skill and modify it with universal passives or there's going to be pidgeon holes and anti-fun limitations.
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
- 1,411
- 188
You have 8 skills total at a time. 4 come from your weapon and 4 come from your entire pool of class abilities you have collected so far. So you have 4 skills from 4 different classes combined with 4 skills from the weapon you pick.
8 Skills is too few, imo. I could be wrong, but such a limited amount of skills does not sound promising.
I feel like it's a pretty solid number compared to pages and pages of at your fingertip ability bloat we have in MMOs now. 8 abilties with the ability to change them when not in combat seems fine with me.
Quaid
Trump's Staff
- 11,859
- 8,265