EQ Never

The way they described the class stuff made sense at the panels. Basically your class really shows in the armor type you are using and the two wepons/weapon sets tied to that class. Many classes can use a two handed sword but if you look at the warrior and the storm guy their weapon powers/looks/animations were completly different. The multi classing is your second set of abilities. If you play guildwars think your 6-10 utility/self heal type powers. Those are what you can customize with the multi classing stuff to add a bit of extra look/feel to your hero.

Their example was a rogue who wanted to be a dark teleporty assasin type rogue so they wound up taking a shadow based teleport from another class and a couple other shadow type powers to round out their rogue weapon skills and so while still obviously a rogue has a distinctive style compared to a rogue who has not grabbed other options from other classes.

Class has inherent personality via weapon skills and armor? This guy is clueless.

Why are designers in this industry so.fucking.bad?

Big Flex_sl said:

ref. Georgeson's "lol why r alts a good thing?

" tweet

Doc coming?

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So, if class == personality, and class is limited (has inherent) armor/2 weapons, and the only thing you get to mix/match from other classes are abilities, then if you want to swing that staff on your warrior tfb, you'll have to swap to monk (and find new armor) or find some crazy shaolin-warrior class in the world where you can wield a staff + wear heavy armor?

Dumar_sl said:

Class has inherent personality via weapon skills and armor? This guy is clueless.

Why are designers in this industry so.fucking.bad?

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I don't get the emphasis on roleplaying value, yes I understand that these are RPGs, but the emphasis on "class personality" and SOEmote, etc boggles the mind.

Dumar_sl said:

Class has inherent personality via weapon skills and armor? This guy is clueless.

Why are designers in this industry so.fucking.bad?

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Well guildwars 2 works pretty much the same way and seems to have plenty of personality between the characters.

There's some thematic value to classes. However, I'm not going to criticize the classes until I see the final product.

Also, I really hope that art is just depicting the type of loot available in the game. Digging and discovering an executioner's axe would be lame as hell.

Muligan_sl said:

Did anyone catch what the tweet implied?? Essentially it is more important to have unique, personalized animations for those two sets of weapons than to be concerned with gameplay.

Yes I know he said he would "focus on gameplay" but didn't it sound to you guys that the bulk of the development time would go towards the animation portion? Gameplay seemed secondary.

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The more I hear about EQN's combat/class system, the more it reminds me of FF Tactics Advance, and I'm okay with that. Some classes in FFTA can only use one weapon type at all, but there's still a lot of variety in the abilities of each class.

Even with just the 8 races and 40 classes they claim they'll have ready for release, the EQN team has an assload of animations to create. I think restricting the number of weapon types available for each class will make it even easier for them to focus on gameplay. Instead of wasting time designing and animating Rogue skills for a 2h staff (and all ~30 other weapons rogues should never even consider using), they'll be able to spend comparatively less time to make a few higher quality dagger and rapier animations, and still have time left over to make a bunch of different rapier and dagger models to attach a variety of skills to.

I mean, that's my theory anyway. Have I mentioned that I don't actually expect SOE to implement things very well lately?

arallu_sl said:

So, if class == personality, and class is limited (has inherent) armor/2 weapons, and the only thing you get to mix/match from other classes are abilities, then if you want to swing that staff on your warrior tfb, you'll have to swap to monk (and find new armor) or find some crazy shaolin-warrior class in the world where you can wield a staff + wear heavy armor?

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That would be correct from what they were describing. Each class would have two "weapons" that class focuses on and by weapons that could be a single one handed weapon/two one handed weapons/one two handed weapons/ or weapon shield. So say you want a dual wield character you don't have to worry that a sword in both hands counts for both your weapon sets. But yes if you are a warrior who at this time has two handed sword and mace/shield options and want to wield a staff then you would need to find a class that allows you to use a staff weapon. If you found a good shaolin monk type class option you could load all the adjustable slots up with warrior abilities if you wanted to have a stronger warrior flavor to that class.

I just hope they don't let the animations determine the attack timing. Big mistake that is oft repeated these days.

Dahkoht_sl said:

I'm neutral on the one starting area thing as long as we can spread out immediately and not be funneled (which doesn't seem to be a concern here for EQN ) , but it made me think of my old habits in original EQ at launch.

I started with a human in Freeport and then later had Dark Elf , and Halfling eventually too , but I got so used to the East/West commons I just always ended up picking to start there. I loved going and exploring all over ,but I never shook the feeling in all the years of playing that Qeynos was almost a completely different world/area and always felt like a "foreign city" when I went there.

Not a bad thing at all either , just another one of those side effects (a positive one I think ) , that came from world travel actually taking so long.

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That among other reasons is why I want several distinct cities. If the world is large enough like they claim it wouldnt lead to newbie zone next to newbie zone, but the experience is much more different then being a good or evil elf but both from qeynos.

Melvin_sl said:

The more I hear about EQN's combat/class system, the more it reminds me of FF Tactics Advance, and I'm okay with that. Some classes in FFTA can only use one weapon type at all, but there's still a lot of variety in the abilities of each class.

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1:30

Dumar_sl said:

Why are designers in this industry so.fucking.bad?

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Because they design for themselves and for all the other players as opposed than for just themselves.

While it is still a long ways off and all subject to change for the moment really from everything I saw and heard talking to the devs at/after all the panels I think the classes seem pretty close to the Guildwars2 model with a bit more configurability.

The biggest difference is eqnext has many more classes but each class has less weapon set options.

In GW2 you have what 8 or 9 classes each with like 6 or so weapon set configurations. EQ2 is starting with 40+ classes but each has 2 weapon set configurations. So even if that is all it is and I expect there is probably more depth given some of the hints they have said that is still pretty darn good. Hell I know with my elementalist in GW2 I have a ton of different weapon options but in the end I am pretty much dagger/dagger or staff so two weapon sets pre class if done well would not dismay me.

How awesome would it be if you could be a shadowknight-bard hybrid?

supertouch_sl said:

How awesome would it be if you could be a shadowknight-bard hybrid?

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And he shall be named Nathan Explosion

supertouch_sl said:

How awesome would it be if you could be a shadowknight-bard hybrid?

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The point is that the combinatorial explosion + constraints of how many slots you have free makes it extremely interesting to play with. Especially if you consider that adding a new class for an expansion increases the available pool and affects everyone. I really like it.

Mughal_sl said:

The point is that the combinatorial explosion + constraints of how many slots you have free makes it extremely interesting to play with. Especially if you consider that adding a new class for an expansion increases the available pool and affects everyone. I really like it.

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Yup and in theory given how much content the engine itself should be spitting out without the devs having to spend a ton of time doing it they should be freed up to add new classes pretty easily and probably even new races.

Big Flex_sl said:

1:30

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I don't have the slightest idea what you're trying to imply. How exactly is that video related to FFTA classes?