EQ Never

Tidbit Scaledclaw_sl said:

Is our Art director any good not trolling she is from free realms this really worries me that we will have Super Mario aka Disney models from them?

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This is AlexeiFL, right?

Jais_sl said:

I suppose I'm a traditionalist, I like my trinity and I like my levels. Removing both of those confuses and worries me a bit. But maybe it'll be something so different that'll feel new and exciting as EQ was in 99.

I like the trinity cause I suppose I like structure and without a "tank" I'm afraid combat will either last 3 seconds, everyone will be dps, will be a giant ping pong cluster fuck, or will turn into some shitty kitefest.
To removal of levels is so foreign to me that I don't know what to think. Tiers sound like the new levels, that or the collecting of classes but I don't know enough to say if my assumptions are correct.

The idea of mixing and matching class skills to tailor make my "class" sounds pretty cool. I doubt I'll take it as far as some will and have like 8 different specs across all sort of "roles." I'm more a fan of class identity I suppose. I'll be making my character to be as close to a traditional tank as I can.

If anything it'll be another game to drag 4-12 of my old EQ friends into for a few months.

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You raise an interesting point and one that struck me when I was caught up in the dev tables and all that which was released last week.

As a "tank" character, I knew what my role was, I knew who the best "tank" players were, what their strategies were evolving into, and who my competition was for server status. I really miss that concept; "server status".

I played a monk in Afterlife for a year or so, and really put hustle into being the best monk on the server. Gear dependence aside, I felt like my ability to play the class was seriously second to none - especially in PoP boss battles where FD was a requirement and tagging mobs was an added bonus from a skill perspective.

How do we gage skill now? I don't think we do. I just see a bunch of WoW bubble hopping and shit, nothing impresses me because the character side, the personal side, has been stripped.

Are we replacing character and persona / ability with voxels?

But how do you know how what the devs have described even works in game? How do you know the character/personal side has been stripped? I am simply bewildered by the number of people drawing conclusions from things said that I simply cannot as the devs have described things that we nor they even know will work in a game. We've seen a 1 minute demo with no ai that was just meant to show flashy explosions and particles and thats it and people are extrapolating all this stuff that simply are not there.

Angry Amadeus_sl said:

You raise an interesting point and one that struck me when I was caught up in the dev tables and all that which was released last week.

As a "tank" character, I knew what my role was, I knew who the best "tank" players were, what their strategies were evolving into, and who my competition was for server status. I really miss that concept; "server status".

I played a monk in Afterlife for a year or so, and really put hustle into being the best monk on the server. Gear dependence aside, I felt like my ability to play the class was seriously second to none - especially in PoP boss battles where FD was a requirement and tagging mobs was an added bonus from a skill perspective.

How do we gage skill now? I don't think we do. I just see a bunch of WoW bubble hopping and shit, nothing impresses me because the character side, the personal side, has been stripped.

Are we replacing character and persona / ability with voxels?

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Angry Amadeus_sl said:

You raise an interesting point and one that struck me when I was caught up in the dev tables and all that which was released last week.

As a "tank" character, I knew what my role was, I knew who the best "tank" players were, what their strategies were evolving into, and who my competition was for server status. I really miss that concept; "server status".

I played a monk in Afterlife for a year or so, and really put hustle into being the best monk on the server. Gear dependence aside, I felt like my ability to play the class was seriously second to none - especially in PoP boss battles where FD was a requirement and tagging mobs was an added bonus from a skill perspective.

How do we gage skill now? I don't think we do. I just see a bunch of WoW bubble hopping and shit, nothing impresses me because the character side, the personal side, has been stripped.

Are we replacing character and persona / ability with voxels?

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Players who play well will distinguish themselves from others. Gear will be a factor in advancement. Rare classes will lead to even rarer builds. I like the trinity too, but I don't shun quick action combat. Both can be fun and engaging.

Jarnin_sl said:

Question: If I roll up a wizard, I get 4 starting abilities. Do I gain another 4 abilities when I hit tier 2, so that when I hit T5 I can choose from 20 different wizard-themed abilities?

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There are four abilities tied to each weapon set a class can use, and then four slots for the secondary abilities. I honestly don't know if they've definitively said whether, when it comes to those secondary abilities, there will be more than the four skills you initially get for those slots, or if all customization is supposed to come from multiclassing. My gut says there likely are more skills for each class to find.

As for the second part of your question, we also don't really know how you would get those additional skills; it might be like your example, where you just get more skills as you tier-up, or it might be something more organic, like your wizard finding a spellbook in some elven ruin, and through that they learn Ice Comet. The latter sounds more in keeping with what they've talked about in terms of gaining new classes and tiering them up, so I wouldn't be surprised if that carries over to skill acquisition as well.

Hay guys how do you tell someone is good at Street Fighter 4? All of the Ryu builds are the same

Big Flex_sl said:

You have 4 wizard abilities and 4 weapon-based abilities that are derived from the staff or dagger or spellbook you hold.

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And can gain more abilities, that's just the amount on your hotbat.

Mugaaz_sl said:

I agree with the identity thing as well, that's one of the core tenents for me in an MMO. You want to be known as a good X class/role. However, it didn't really seem to be a problem in UO, did it?

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Well, UO wasn't really that horizontal. You were limited to 7 skills. So you built a template, and it was pretty narrow--but you had the freedom to build anything you wanted. So I could be a Halberd using Mage that could also Bind Wounds--but that class was "sticky" for me, I couldn't just hit a button and be something else, it took a fair bit of work to shift your template around, you had to grind new skills out, and maybe even change your stats (Which took more grinding).

EvE isn't restricted by skill caps, you can have every skill under the sun. However, from what I understand, players tend to derive a kind of persona from the resource intensity of swaps. It's difficult to have everything prepped to be different classes all the time (Because your ship is like your class), so people are tend to flow into one class or role of their choosing--expanding beyond that takes a lot of money and preparation, and while it's done, it still makes the persona you are kind of sticky (Again, I've only heard this). And because gear can be lost, and because there is a restriction on where you can transfer shipsANDbecause of travel times--You won't just see people summon a new class before you. You get the sense that it takes some work to go back, switch ships and become something new. (Again, as far as I understand it.)

They seem to indicate this "multi-class" system is a lot more fungible once it's built up. That looking at a fight and hitting your quick swap button to "become" your best leveled/kitted class for that fight, or some other variation of your class but with new skills and gear to support those skills, was not only easy but it's expected and designed into the game. Now, from what they've said, because of how gear is, and leveling is, it might take a lot of time and effort to get those other classes ready. But once they are, they seem to want it available to you at the press of button, like summoning a Pokemon, or pulling out a magic deck, or counter picking a champion in League.

I've never played TSW, but supposedly it uses a system like this. No idea how well players like that. But I know, from listening to people in D3--people really didn't like the thought of having to look at an encounter and swapping skills to suit the encounter. They wanted to be rewarded for building up a build, for investing in it. Now, the whole "tier"/"gear" system might be enough to cover that here, I don't know. D3 didn't have that because of how generic gear was and because of how easily swappable runes were. So, for example, in D3, if all skills NEEDED gear to even be viable, and you NEEDED to go find runes to make skills work, it might not have felt so cheap to swap skills on the fly, because you did have to do a lot of work to get alternate buildsviable.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Hmerly_sl said:

But how do you know how what the devs have described even works in game? How do you know the character/personal side has been stripped? I am simply bewildered by the number of people drawing conclusions from things said that I simply cannot as the devs have described things that we nor they even know will work in a game. We've seen a 1 minute demo with no ai that was just meant to show flashy explosions and particles and thats it and people are extrapolating all this stuff that simply are not there.

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Well we certainly don't know for sure what this game will look like once it goes live. All we can do for now is get a feel for what the devs are shooting for. I for one took far more away from the several panels than I did from the demos. That being said, they did say that they were doing away with dependence on tanks/healers. For some (inc myself) who enjoy those roles and having that innate direction built into the class it is worrisome. Now we don't know to what degree they mean by doing away with roles but throwing off what in my experince is a key tenet of the genre, is enough to make me concerned. Course it could be some badass shit that I never thought of and will love.

To expand, if removing dependence on tank/heals means a full dps group can "do" the content that a traditional well balanced group can do but less efficiently, that's fine by my standard. In EQ I was in an all melee dps group in Lguk, we could do some shit in Lguk but far less efficiently than a well rounded group.

Hmerly_sl said:

But how do you know how what the devs have described even works in game? How do you know the character/personal side has been stripped? I am simply bewildered by the number of people drawing conclusions from things said that I simply cannot as the devs have described things that we nor they even know will work in a game. We've seen a 1 minute demo with no ai that was just meant to show flashy explosions and particles and thats it and people are extrapolating all this stuff that simply are not there.

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It's no different from assuming/theorycrafting the other way. The main argument against SOE is SOE itself and who is in charge. Reputation/history count for a lot. It's better to plan for the worst and be pleasantly surprised, then think everything is going to be perfect and it will become some new messiah of MMO gaming and be beaten down in disappointment.

It doesn't hep that SOE themselves seem to be unsure of what they are going to do, instead its just continual "this is going to be awesome or cool". Not to mention saying one thing, then say the opposite the next day.

cinge_sl said:

It's no different from assuming/theorycrafting the other way. The main argument against SOE is SOE itself and who is in charge. Reputation/history count for a lot. It's better to plan for the worst and be pleasantly surprised, then think everything is going to be perfect and it will become some new messiah of MMO gaming and be beaten down in disappointment.

It doesn't hep that SOE themselves seem to be unsure of what they are going to do, instead its just continual "this is going to be awesome or cool". Not to mention saying one thing, then say the opposite the next day.

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Nah. Butler knows what he wants and that's what is getting made. Roundtable is smoke and mirrors to get players invested as mulligan said.

Yeah, it is theorycrafting, but I am referring to some here who are declaring things like THIS IS SHIT and ITS GOING TO SUCK and stating things like the game's been out for months already. It just doesn't make sense to me. SoE sucks, I know, and agree, but at least this time they're making something that could potentially be fun and different. We can talk about the probability of success on their part sure, but I just don't understand some people making declarations as if this game is already out and they've found it wanting when none of us have any idea how this game will end up being. Half the stuff the devs are talking about are probably not going to be in the final release or drastically different.

Maybe, but on the flipside you have Tad who said "This is going to be a solid game" on that same information

Tad10 knows. He guessed right a lot of stuff pre-announcement so he is either a dev or he (she?) has access to one.

Those of us who have been through multiple games from beta to release to patches to expansions to eventual (and sometimes sudden) decline can infer and translate devspeak fluently. The only reason things might be drastically different or removed is because we hopped on that shit early by reading "horrible" written in Elder Teir'Dal fine print between the lines.

cinge_sl said:

Maybe, but on the flipside you have Tad who said "This is going to be a solid game" on that same information

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I'm batting .675 how are the other guys doing?

Lithose_sl said:

This is one thing I'm liking, and I said it a lot in the D3 thread--the need to control outcomes, prevents variables, which makes things very boring.

Think of all these variables from just two classes, of similar design.

Rogue: Movement/Offense/Offense/Utility (Weapons Garrote/Dagger) (Armor: Leather)
Assassin: Offense/Offense/Offense/Utility (Weapons Garrote/Dagger) (Armor: Leather)

It seems like a small change, but lets say there is a certain combooffensiveof skills out there, that when used in a three part succession, produces a dramatic result. That combo is closed to the rogue even though everything else is the same (Except the need to change gear to account for the extra strain the triple offense gives.)

but then you can do this.

Ninja: Offense/Offense/Offense/Utility (Dagger/Katana) (Armor: Cloth/Leather)

And lets say, that same triple ability earlier, combined with a specific skill on theKatana, can produce another different set of effects...and lets say cloth armor allows for different mods to be built in, further augmenting things.

So you have very similar classes, with very small variables, that can produce radically different results. And given the time it might take to build up a class to support these combos, it would really be about constantly playing to try new combos and see how further layers of armor can exploit these small shifts: And then when a class becomes dominant, exploring ways to negate it, like say.

Magi-Assasin: Offense/Movement/Movement/Movement (Dagger/Wand) (Armor: Cloth)

This class, because it can chain a certain movement combo can make that single offensive slot as deadly as the triple offensive combo of the ninja class, and therefor, counter the ninja class.


This kind of open ended variable design DOES sound, I admit, very cool. If D3 had been designed more like this, where items had specific interactions with skills, we all said it would be a great game. I really believe the key to a great game is, well, making it difficult to balance, because even the developers shouldn't be able to control all ends, because it's so broad and deep. THAT really makes a game world feel alive, when the players feel in control and the world feels like anything is possible. When even a small shift can create a whole new set of options to build on, because the amount of interaction is so broad.

One of the best parts of EQ was the fact that the programming was so bad that the players could exploit the shit out of it. Having that kind of "millions of variable" complexity does seem, very fucking cool. Lets just home they don't blow it by having their assholes pucker when players invent and exploit the thousands of combos and some precious raid boss gets his shit pushed in laughably easy.

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That's an interesting description, it sounds like what I had envisioned from the info bits we got so far. One unknown for me at this point are the weapons, moreso then the class abilities. I think each class gets two different weapons? I am wondering about the fact that those first 4 skills are determined by weapon (and caster thingie like focus). Does it mean they are all offensive abilities? Are the all damaging abilities? Or is there room for a fairly defensive or mobile class that actually has non-damaging abilities on their weapon skills? if I am to compare to EQ classes, enchanter and shaman actually did have weapons that had slow as an ability (clicky). If EQN allows that it would allow for much more flexible class design (GW2 has non-attacks on weapons too, so it can be made to work).

Also, I am not too familiar with EQ2 but doesnt the game have like 40 classes anyway? They could just distill out their defining abilities to create their core class list, and roll from there with content patches/expansions/DLC.

i have the strongest feeling that one of the three "scrap and restart" scenarios was result of some dev who traveled or attended a conference.. then returned and:

"Hey dave, you ever heard of a voxel?"

and version 2 or 3 was born

You can say yes, this is probably going to be a solid game, or yes, this game probably will suck. however, people here are saying OMG THIS IS POKEMON! I AM NOT PLAYING THIS! and shit like that , just boggles my mind. How do you ascertain with such finality anything about a game like EQN from what little we know and have seen? Its not the game you envisioned or wanted perhaps, but that doesn't mean it's going to be bad. It may end up that way, but just because it is not EQ V3.0 doesn't mean it can't be a great game. I think just about everyone here will probably try the game out, hell its free, and after a month or 2 we can make these declarations, but at this point I think its pointless. Heck, I even agree with Ut in some ways as he is always the one who likes to shit on games, but at least he's shown to have some inner knowledge of some of these games and has a decent track record and makes his statements based on what he thinks logically ( in some ways ). Others here are simply sayings things that just doesn't make any sense for a game we know very little about.

I know EQ has evolved a lot as the years have gone by, but I still enjoy it. I play on Test and am more solo/molo and group oriented than my hardcore raid days of yesteryear. Point is, it's still fun to me and I would say I regularly play it more than any other game.

Planetside 2 blew my mind. I have never had such thrilling battles in ANY game. It's size and scope puts bf3 to shame and watching the battles play out is just awesome. Also, the games visuals are stunning and EQN is in the same vein.

SOE has done right by me and I have high hopes in EQN. Just judging from how their reveal has made our imaginations explode forth onto the forum shows me that something special is coming our way. It might not be what we think we wanted, but we might love it once we give it a try.