EQ Never

etchazz · Dec 24, 2012

Arkk_sl said:
I like it. Free-form character development has always been a favorite of mine, and this pretty much matches my ideal of a perfect system to a T.

I had drawn out a similar but slightly more rigid system more akin to one of the Final Fantasy job systems. Essentially, you have abilities divided up into sets of Active abilities (your "class" abilities - for this example, let's say Necromancy) and a pool of Support abilities (passive character developments, mostly - Run Speed, for instance). Active abilities are determined based on your current job/title, possibly with the addition of less-effective dual-classing to offer a smaller, weaker set of abilities from a different class (which also allows you to create something along the lines of the EQ hybrid classes dynamically - a Warrior class with a Necromancy subset would essentially be an EQ Classic Shadowknight). The Support abilities are equipped to the character from a pool of learned abilities, based on a point value and maximum capacity (Run Speed is 2 points, your character currently has a 10 point allotment).

i know i'll probably get destroyed for saying this, but what i would love to see is a skill tree system for each class (maybe 3 branches each?) but once you pick one tree, there is no going back. for example: you can be a wizard, however there are 3 classes of wizards: white, red and black. each class has its own branch of abilities and spells and different advantages/disadvantages. and even within those branches, you get a certain allotment of points and are able to put them into what you want (dps, buffs, heals, mez, familiars, etc...) so even within each branch you can funnel all your points into dps for instance, but that makes you weaker as a buffer or a healer. or perhaps you want to be a jack of all trades, but you're not super powerful in any one particular area. that way, you could literally have dozens of wizards (one class), but with dozens of different play styles. you could do this with every class in the game and give people a hundred different builds to work on, each one being unique in some way, instead of everyone getting the exact same spells/skills/abilities as every other similar class.
and yes, i know WoW has trees, but you can also just spend a few gold and get all your points back and redo them any way you want. think it would be much more intriguing if the decisions you made with your skill points were final.

Hekotat · Dec 24, 2012

Agonizing the Bait Master_sl said:
Enjoy faggots, thats all you get

you son of a bitch.

Xeldar · Dec 24, 2012

^ raises my point with EQ. In West Commons, I'd hide inside buildings from Hill Giants; thinking I'd out-smarted them. They'd of course aggro and hit me through the building. The point is this, there was mystery in EverQuest. Unfortunately, I do not think the mystery of EverQuest (from roughly '99-'02) can be duplicated. The internet is no longer a new technology.

checkyeah_sl · Dec 24, 2012

Does anyone else want to remove the "no drop" concept? I thought twinking your alts kept the in game economy more exciting. You could find use for random items that never would have mattered.

mkopec · Dec 24, 2012

checkyeah_sl said:
Does anyone else want to remove the "no drop" concept? I thought twinking your alts kept the in game economy more exciting. You could find use for random items that never would have mattered.

Yep, 100% agree.

Zaide · Dec 24, 2012

One of the things I enjoyed quite a bit about early EQ was how a lot of the equipment actually felt like it had some identity. It wasn't just a random item with cut/paste name bullshit. I also liked how poor the itemization was... Like I enjoy my Monk's Gatorscale Leggings from Upper Guk being better than his Plane of Fear Shiverback equivalent. It shouldn't always be like that but I enjoy the idea of there being a broad range of valuable items strewn throughout the world; it wasn't just automatically upgrading from one full set of gear to the next tier of said gear.

Fuck no drop too. Twinking is fun and good for the economy.

Pancreas · Dec 24, 2012

Permanent point allotment works if it does not take THAT much effort to level another character. Otherwise you are actually penalizing players from trying new builds. No one will veer from the tried and true builds as they don't want to waste another character. If it's like diablo II and takes all of a day to get back to level 80+ without much cursing, then sure make those points count. Of course they went back and made it so you could respec there too.

In the system I described, I imagine that skills would have ranges of proficiency, similar to UO. A 1-100 scale works. So that's swords, daggers, light armor, block, parry, woodcutting, pottery, fishing, bribing, intimidation... everything works on a scale. Using a skill successfully will increase the skill incrementally. The higher your skill the more times you need to use it to increase.
Failures, misses, wiffs, fumbles and the like do not increase the skill nearly as much as a success.

However, once you gain a title(class) it will come with a suite of skills you can train up to predetermined levels. There will probably be some cool down on how often you can train, 5 points a day or something, and it might pool up so you can dump a bunch of saved up points at once. But you can keep pumping a skill through training until you hit the cap for that title rank. If you rank up, or switch to a higher title(class) the training cap goes up and new skills can become available to train in.

You will need to train at least a point in a skill before you can start using it. However at only a single point you will probably be failing a lot. So training is going to be your best bet for the early skill levels.

So character development could go like this. Create character, pick a starting area, happen to pass an NPC recruiting players for the city guard, join up, pick between training in spears, polearms, or long swords to start with, get issued some recruit level gear, start completing patrols of dangerous parts of the city and pulling guard duty, get promoted, keep training, eventually get selected for palace guard duty, open up elite training options, better issued gear, better pay, get promoted again and become some official's personal security chief ect. ect.

That system does not allow for respecs, you just keep plugging along adding to your skills. Skills that get used will grow even if you don't train in them. Skills that don't get used will stagnate unless you push them through with training. Training afforded by rank is free, but limited in how often it can be accessed. Other training outside of the title(class) training will cost money but can increase twice as fast.

Eventually a player may decide to completely abandon a certain career path and go back to square one. They can do so and start fresh. However, they will have made allies and enemies by this point so the road my be much longer to switch to their new class than it had be before. There will be no limit to the number of skills a player can learn, but skill use will be limited by title(class). Some skills will require the proper title to use, and for untitled (starting out) characters, the highest skill level they can obtain is 50/100 or even 25/100 for many skills.

I am going to just keep spoilering all of my armchair design crap from now on. Walls of text are no fun to climb over.

Flunklesnarkin_sl · Dec 24, 2012

Pancreas_sl said:
Permanent point allotment works if it does not take THAT much effort to level another character. Otherwise you are actually penalizing players from trying new builds. No one will veer from the tried and true builds as they don't want to waste another character. If it's like diablo II and takes all of a day to get back to level 80+ without much cursing, then sure make those points count. Of course they went back and made it so you could respec there too.

In the system I described, I imagine that skills would have ranges of proficiency, similar to UO. A 1-100 scale works. So that's swords, daggers, light armor, block, parry, woodcutting, pottery, fishing, bribing, intimidation... everything works on a scale. Using a skill successfully will increase the skill incrementally. The higher your skill the more times you need to use it to increase.
Failures, misses, wiffs, fumbles and the like do not increase the skill nearly as much as a success.

However, once you gain a title(class) it will come with a suite of skills you can train up to predetermined levels. There will probably be some cool down on how often you can train, 5 points a day or something, and it might pool up so you can dump a bunch of saved up points at once. But you can keep pumping a skill through training until you hit the cap for that title rank. If you rank up, or switch to a higher title(class) the training cap goes up and new skills can become available to train in.

You will need to train at least a point in a skill before you can start using it. However at only a single point you will probably be failing a lot. So training is going to be your best bet for the early skill levels.

So character development could go like this. Create character, pick a starting area, happen to pass an NPC recruiting players for the city guard, join up, pick between training in spears, polearms, or long swords to start with, get issued some recruit level gear, start completing patrols of dangerous parts of the city and pulling guard duty, get promoted, keep training, eventually get selected for palace guard duty, open up elite training options, better issued gear, better pay, get promoted again and become some official's personal security chief ect. ect.

That system does not allow for respecs, you just keep plugging along adding to your skills. Skills that get used will grow even if you don't train in them. Skills that don't get used will stagnate unless you push them through with training. Training afforded by rank is free, but limited in how often it can be accessed. Other training outside of the title(class) training will cost money but can increase twice as fast.

Eventually a player may decide to completely abandon a certain career path and go back to square one. They can do so and start fresh. However, they will have made allies and enemies by this point so the road my be much longer to switch to their new class than it had be before. There will be no limit to the number of skills a player can learn, but skill use will be limited by title(class). Some skills will require the proper title to use, and for untitled (starting out) characters, the highest skill level they can obtain is 50/100 or even 25/100 for many skills.

I am going to just keep spoilering all of my armchair design crap from now on. Walls of text are no fun to climb over.

FFXI had an interesting concept on skill point allotment. Each character could switch to be any class or combination of two classes (multiclassing). When you switched classes or combinations, you didn't lose your skill or class exp levels however your skill levels were capped at a maximum depending upon your level/class. Ie you couldn't have the blunt skill of a max level warrior on a level 1 caster, it would be capped at the level 1 max. The game would remember your skill level though so as you leveled up and the skills would remain capped at the max for that level until you reached a level where it wasn't capped any more.

Training the skills took a long time so that added the grind to unlocking and playing the classes on top of the normal exp per level people expect in rpg's (you were certain to hit max level without a majority of skills being capped or anywhere close). However, the skill system only pertained to weapon skill abilities. It didn't affect regular abilities which might have added another layer of challenge to the game.

I can't think of any other mmorpg's that let you switch between classes without making a new character.

Mr Creed · Dec 24, 2012

Permanent point allocation also works if the points are unlimited (AA, PS2 certs, GW2 skill points). Of course that goes hand in hand with a limited number of abilities available at once (8 spells in EQ1, 8 skills in GW1, 10 in GW2, etc). That way you can try stuff out and broaden your options, but you wont have a hundred skills to use available just for grinding a year.

Gecko_sl · Dec 24, 2012

Xeldar_sl said:
^ raises my point with EQ. In West Commons, I'd hide inside buildings from Hill Giants; thinking I'd out-smarted them. They'd of course aggro and hit me through the building. The point is this, there was mystery in EverQuest. Unfortunately, I do not think the mystery of EverQuest (from roughly '99-'02) can be duplicated. The internet is no longer a new technology.

EQ was merely a pseudo computer version of AD&D and very popular MUDs, though. I think something new and innovative can capture similar magic, but it'd need to be something altogether different.

I still think utilizing nextgen consoles with full motion kinect style gameplay with a similar AD&D skillset wrapper would make an excellent new paradigm shift, if done right. Then again, I have yet to see a kinect game done halfway decently, so I'm not holding out hope for the immediate future.

Khane · Dec 24, 2012

Gecko_sl said:
EQ was merely a pseudo computer version of AD&D and very popular MUDs, though. I think something new and innovative can capture similar magic, but it'd need to be something altogether different.

I still think utilizing nextgen consoles with full motion kinect style gameplay with a similar AD&D skillset wrapper would make an excellent new paradigm shift, if done right. Then again, I have yet to see a kinect game done halfway decently, so I'm not holding out hope for the immediate future.

Full motion games are cool the first handful of times you play them but they lose their appeal fast. I returned Tiger Woods golf for the Wii after a week because I just wanted to sit on my goddamn couch and use a controller and it didn't even have that capability (who knows why). Making a weird swinging motion with a practically weightless remote in my hand got really old really fast.

Quineloe · Dec 24, 2012

etchazz_sl said:
i think it would be much more intriguing if the decisions you made with your skill points were final.

So we really Need to go over ist again why locked skill trees in a Game with Balance patches and progression are a Bad Idea?

etchazz · Dec 24, 2012

Quineloe_sl said:
So we really Need to go over ist again why locked skill trees in a Game with Balance patches and progression are a Bad Idea?

so don't have balance patches. what does everything in MMO's need to be completely balanced? why does everyone have to be exactly the same?

mkopec · Dec 24, 2012

etchazz_sl said:
so don't have balance patches. what does everything in MMO's need to be completely balanced? why does everyone have to be exactly the same?

Anomalies? Like say, a certain code being fucked up by a decimal point, making a certain spec or certain combination of skills way overpowered? You do know shit like this happens, right?

qwertyqweqwertwqert · Dec 24, 2012

etchazz_sl said:
so don't have balance patches. what does everything in MMO's need to be completely balanced? why does everyone have to be exactly the same?

Because if it's not balanced then there will be one clear winner and that becomes the cookie cutter build everyone uses, like TSW. If you are going to have freedom to spend points in different stuff, it needs to be really well balanced so you can do whatever you think is right and it can work. Otherwise it's best to just stick with rigid classes.

Pancreas · Dec 24, 2012

Flunklesnarkin_sl said:
FFXI had an interesting concept on skill point allotment. Each character could switch to be any class or combination of two classes (multiclassing). When you switched classes or combinations, you didn't lose your skill or class exp levels however your skill levels were capped at a maximum depending upon your level/class. Ie you couldn't have the blunt skill of a max level warrior on a level 1 caster, it would be capped at the level 1 max. The game would remember your skill level though so as you leveled up and the skills would remain capped at the max for that level until you reached a level where it wasn't capped any more.

Training the skills took a long time so that added the grind to unlocking and playing the classes on top of the normal exp per level people expect in rpg's (you were certain to hit max level without a majority of skills being capped or anywhere close). However, the skill system only pertained to weapon skill abilities. It didn't affect regular abilities which might have added another layer of challenge to the game.

I can't think of any other mmorpg's that let you switch between classes without making a new character.

I can understand why they would have a level based cap for skills. It helps keep the player in line for the content at that level. Otherwise you would be running around one shotting everything at level one after changing class. This would undermine the leveling process which is there to teach you about your class.

I think in a system with flexible classes and skills, you could actually forgo levels altogether. Instead, your rank and title reflect how powerful a particular character is (somewhat like UO). As for unlocking abilities, abilities would open up at regular intervals along the skill progression scale, (1-100)

The skill itself can be trained and increased independent of any particular class. It will be much more difficult to increase without access to class trainers but it can be done. However, active abilities can only be learned through training. Each ability has a minimum skill level before it can be learned.

Take daggers for example. This skill itself can be increased all the way to 100 off of combat alone. Killing targets will increase the exp towards the next skill point. The more skillful the opponent the more skill experience the player gets. And there is a limit of 5 skill points from combat per day up to level 80, however combat experience comes pretty slowly, so it would take a good day to get all 5 points.

But such a player, that has trained through combat alone will only be able to auto attack or use generic combat abilities. Dagger specific abilities will need to be learned from a dagger trainer. Not all trainers will be equal, some will only know the basic attacks. To learn the highest level attacks a grandmaster must be sought out.

Basic combat skill progression would go something like this. The first 10 levels of a skill the player is overcoming passive penalties applied to that skill. A 0 skill level would have a negative hit modifier, no chance of crit, damage reduction and slower weapon speed. Level 10 would have no penalties. Then depending on the trainer different abilities would become available. One trainer might have quick jab at level 15, another might have flurry at level 40, one might have all of the assassination type skills like backstab, slit throat, assassinate. It would be up to the player to seek out the abilities they want and do whatever it takes to become a pupil of that trainer.

The skill level itself would determine success rates. If your dagger skill is 20, and a targets defensive skill is 20 then the chance of you hitting them would be like 50%. Ever point advantage you get over your opponent would add another % point. Every 20 skill levels would open up a passive benefit with that weapon. level 20 is a bonus to hit %, level 40 is a better crit %, level 60 is faster weapon speed, Level 80 is a better crit modifier, level 100 is a bonus to base damage.

Each weapon type could have different passive bonuses to reflect the weapon characteristics.

Mentoring and apprenticeship.

In addition to the passive benefits every 20 levels a player would gain a rank title for that skill. Novice (0), Apprentice (20), Adept (40), Skillful (60), Master (80), Grandmaster (100).

Once a Player reaches Master Level they can take on a pupil. The pupil can train at twice the normal rate as with an npc trainer (10 points a day) and the Master gains skill points at a rate of 1:20 based on their pupil's development (so one point every 2 days). A pupil may only train from a master up to level 80 (so 4 points for every pupil the master trains from level 0). A pupil may also learn any of the Master's abilities provided the Master authorizes it. A master level player can earn 1 points every day from successful kills that are at or near the players proficiency in ANY combat skill up to level 90. Combat must be lethal, duels don't count. Between level 90-95 it's 0.5 points per day. So a master with only pupils and no combat would take 30 days to reach level 95, a master with only combat and no pupil would take 20 days, a master with both would take 13 days.

These pupil points can only take a Master up to level 95, the last 5 points must be earned through combat at a much slower rate of gain than previous ranks.

Some of the highest rank abilities would require a sort of quest to acquire.

A player can have as many pupils as they have master level skills.

And the point gains per day are per skill... so each and every skill can increase by those limits everyday. Of course leveling all skills at the same time would be next to impossible.

So I guess you don't really eliminate levels, you just wind up with a lot of mini levels with every skill point.

Gecko_sl · Dec 24, 2012

Khane_sl said:
Full motion games are cool the first handful of times you play them but they lose their appeal fast. I returned Tiger Woods golf for the Wii after a week because I just wanted to sit on my goddamn couch and use a controller and it didn't even have that capability (who knows why). Making a weird swinging motion with a practically weightless remote in my hand got really old really fast.

Yeah, I agree with this. I'm not sure it's possible, but I was thinking some sort of Kinect/Sorcery/Move/Wii hybrid morphed together into a game on a nextgen console for a new MMO experience would at least be something completely different and fun with more potential.

Again, it sounds great on paper, but might be terrible in reality. Sort of like all the current Kinect games.

Caliel · Dec 24, 2012

Xeldar_sl said:
lol I remember in Aduentus we'd start fighting Aerist in Ssraezsha Temple. Usually we had some Dark Defiant WArriors with us. If we started winning, Zephyros would show up. If Zephyros showed up, Ancient Dawn would show up. If Ancient Dawn showed up, they'd kill DDW + Zephyros. If we started winning against Zephyros, Defiant would show up.

Pvp in EQ wasn't really balanced well, but it was fun. It was a great mechanic to avoid rotations on non instanced raid mobs.

P.S. Defiant > *

Quineloe · Dec 24, 2012

etchazz_sl said:
so don't have balance patches. what does everything in MMO's need to be completely balanced? why does everyone have to be exactly the same?

wow, what an amazing straw man argument.

Itzena_sl · Dec 24, 2012

Caliel_sl said:
Pvp in EQ wasn't really balanced well, but it was fun. It was a great mechanic to avoid rotations on non instanced raid mobs.

P.S. Defiant > *

Dirty crossteamer.

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