EQ Never

Regarding TOR's resource model, I have to disagree. It's just another gimmick to try and put interaction back into the game that was lost with out of combat resource regen. What these gimmicks do is make your next action a response to the user interface instead of your opponent's actions. Furthermore, there is very little real decision-making in the TOR system; you just put delays between your fireballs, and you make the single decision of how long a delay that is contingent on the size of the pull.

It just doesn't solve any of the problems I listed beyond turning autocast into 'select one of two autocast speeds'. Buffs still must be weak. It still removes most of the efficiency metagame. etc.

Torrid_sl said:

Regarding TOR's resource model, I have to disagree. It's just another gimmick to try and put interaction back into the game that was lost with out of combat resource regen. What these gimmicks do is make your next action a response to the user interface instead of your opponent's actions. Furthermore, there is very little real decision-making in the TOR system; you just put delays between your fireballs, and you make the single decision of how long a delay that is contingent on the size of the pull.

It just doesn't solve any of the problems I listed beyond turning autocast into 'select one of two autocast speeds'. Buffs still must be weak. It still removes most of the efficiency metagame. etc.

Click to expand...

That's actually a great point. A lot of the modern MMO gimmicks are actually objectively worse mechanics because they rely on yet more interaction with the UI compared to EverQuest.

Bellringer_sl said:

Itzena. What actual decisions are you speaking of?

Click to expand...

No clue what these people were remembering about eq combat. Most melee consisted of face mob and hit A. Maybe get behind them if you were a rogue and possibly snare if you were a hybrid and the mob needed it.

Outside of enchanters and bards there really wasnt too much to it. Even bards playstyle was closer to ddr that they say was amazing in eq but hate in modern games. Just another example of the cognitive dissonance of some of the eq fanboys

Bellringer_sl said:

Itzena. What actual decisions are you speaking of?

Click to expand...

The first decision any halfway-competent player makes when needed: "Can I stick with my normal rotation, or do I need to do something else?" which then branches out accordingly, depending on what the "something else" is ('Do Ineedto interrupt this spell or should I save it for the big hitter which the mobmightcast before my cooldown is up", for a random example). That's about as complex as EQ got for pure melee, while it's the baseline for WoW. More options leads to more complexity, which in turn allows for greater individual player skill.

Well, moremeaningfuloptions. If the abilities are "Do damage", "do slightly more damage on a longer cooldown", and "do shit-tonnes of damage on a very long cooldown" that's not really adding much actual depth at all.

Itzena_sl said:

The first decision any halfway-competent player makes when needed: "Can I stick with my normal rotation, or do I need to do something else?" which then branches out accordingly, depending on what the "something else" is ('Do Ineedto interrupt this spell or should I save it for the big hitter which the mobmightcast before my cooldown is up", for a random example). That's about as complex as EQ got for pure melee, while it's the baseline for WoW. More options leads to more complexity, which in turn allows for greater individual player skill.

Well, moremeaningfuloptions. If the abilities are "Do damage", "do slightly more damage on a longer cooldown", and "do shit-tonnes of damage on a very long cooldown" that's not really adding much actual depth at all.

Click to expand...

I guess I was not a halfway competent player. My first decisions were, how many mobs could/should I pull with my current group comp? Is this group suitable for this area? Which mobs should I pull first and how should I break spawns to make this area the most efficient?

Rotations are just rotations (in games such as wow) and any decisions you make are so insignificant that it doesn't matter. The entire skill/combo system thought process is currently boring as fuck and requires little to no decision making, so if that is the only "actual" decision making you are talking about... then you may need to do a better job convincing me.

Really I don't care about skills. These aren't RTS games eh?

Itzena_sl said:

That's about as complex as EQ got for pure melee, while it's the baseline for WoW. More options leads to more complexity, which in turn allows for greater individual player skill.

Click to expand...

This is where the genre jumped the tracks and went headlong into the ditch. MMORPG aren't RPGs anymore, and you could say that died with the popularity of World of Warcraft. The incessant need to homogenize the genre into more jumping, more skills, more action, more complexity... has gotten ridiculous. I'm sure there are gamers that love it, but it's not everyone. I loved EQ because it was the closest thing I ever got to an online Dungeons and Dragons game from a social perspective. Parties were the norm, not the exception. Mobs were tougher, not like today's cannon fodder. I was never spamming abilities while simultaneously playing Dance, Dance, Revolution, jumping on one leg, chewing bubblegum. The "skill" some would argue was the logistic/people/social management that came with fielding a party/raid to take down a named/raid target while navigating the server community. The success of EVE would suggest that this type of emergent gameplay is popular and could be expanded into PvE focused game, at least, from a niche perspective.

While "More options leads to more complexity, which in turn allows for greater individual player skill" triggers a "No duh, that's common sense" response it doesn't necessarily equal fun. It also doesn't mean it belongs in every MMORPG because World of Warcraft is/was popular. I think the genre has become more unattractive to a segment of older MMO gamers today because it has evolved to become more lopsided toward the individual rather than the community. The result is a bunch of really bad single player games with an online component being marketed as MMOs resulting in none of them being tremendously successful nor engaging. When I look back on playing pen and paper D&D, I don't remember the combat being that complex and it was still fun as hell.

MMO players and devs are fixated on combat to the point where the entire genre has turned to shit and all they have to show for it are generic, terrible 3rd party action games with no features or qualities that are worthy of "MMO" or "RPG"

That and the pvp battleground shit has done nothing but kill the genre. Trying to turn your MMO into the equivalent of a public server for your typical multiplayer game is the most counter-intuitive shit ever

Convo_sl said:

Hah this guy is the Internet gangster of the EQ stuff.

Lets not pretend that modern games are some amazing combat driven MMOs. I've leveled max characters in EQ, AoC, WoW, WaR and rift and none of them were rocket science. I actually found my wizard in EQ being more diverse. The only difference is I could solo to max level much easier in the others. They all had redeemable qualities to them but basically there really isn't much to any of them. Just more skills tossed into the equation.

Click to expand...

Modern MMOs are complex to a fault. You pretty much need to read the forums regularly to keep on top with viable builds and macros. Being able to solo is without a doubt much easier, and classes who were able to do things the devs never intended in order to be effective is one of the awesome things to hold up after all these years.

But to pretend EQ had complex combat is insane. And while Bellringer was going through that ridiculous flowchart of needless bs a good puller would have just pulled the room and been done with it

kudos_sl said:

Jesus Christ, you must have the patience of a thousand monks. How the fuck could you level a max character in AoC? That game was absolute shit.

Click to expand...

Launch was pretty bad. The game got better as it matured. The endgame raiding was pretty fun with a good group of people.

Convo_sl said:

Lets not pretend that modern games are some amazing combat driven MMOs. I've leveled max characters in EQ, AoC, WoW, WaR and rift and none of them were rocket science. I actually found my wizard in EQ being more diverse. .

Click to expand...

Wait what? With a wizard(I did one from 99 to 2006) it was Nuke 90% of the time. You might root on occasion or snare(normally someone else did the snaring) and the occasional port/evac. Oh and you might try to stun when it was up. That's it. How the fuck is that more diverse? If anything its about equal to what a nuke based caster dps does in modern games, if not less(aka compare to a WoW mage, which also has root, snare, ports but also has hard CC). EQs shine was through classes with a lot of utility abilities, which seem to have gone by the wayside(debuffs/buffs, CC,pulling skills etc).

I would love to see more role specfic classes with a lot more unique and diverse abilities but I won't hold my breathe. PVP ruins a lot of those chances and the masses cry because "class has x ability and I don't" or "class does more y then me, its unfair" so we get homogenization.

Mr Creed_sl said:

There's a middle ground where you are forced to make reactive, quick decisions on what to do right now as well as tactical ones about resource management, positioning and respawns.

Click to expand...

Oh yea, a middle ground is what I always dreamt of since like 2001 or whatever. And that's the problem for me, there is nothing like that. On one side you have newer games where you log in for 5 minutes and you do a few warfronts, a few dungeons, and 20 quests and you make 15 levels and get 90 new upgrades. And the other side is EQ where you log in for 14 hours and you basically do fuck all and only make one millimetre of exp.

the industry has been crying out for a middle ground and we still never had one!

I think the biggest difference is lack of fluff and how scripted your experiences are.

In EQ you were powerful. There were powerful things that most of the classes brought to the table. Things that don't translate well in todays Mc MMO world mostly because of the Mc PvP. Some were pretty useless as well depending on era. Especially for a traditional xp group. Raids didn't really matter because, well you could bring whatever you wanted. If the gimped class showed up it wasn't a big deal because he wasn't filling a spot that your top DPS takes. You could do it with 15, you could also bring 25 if they happened to answer the all call or more even.

Everything today is very scripted. Developers can predict just about every single step you will take with a fair degree of certainty and that is where today's games fail. Combat is also been brought to the lowest common denominator by nearly all abilities being + dmg with a longer CD. So you end up with hot bars filled with shit you spam because its not on CD but really doesn't do anything different.

Kedwyn_sl said:

If the gimped class showed up it wasn't a big deal because he wasn't filling a spot that your top DPS takes. You could do it with 15, you could also bring 25 if they happened to answer the all call or more even.

Click to expand...

Absolutely loved this in EQ; it added to the continuity of the world. It was especially great because I played on PvP servers. Nothing was more fun than two guilds trying to take down the same raid mob. Instances are a deal breaker for me with EQN.