Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

a_skeleton_05 · Oct 8, 2020

Nirgon said:
seems like it keeps them getting paid, cant wait till it does for Pantheon

cool! another class's mechanics coming along and being unveiled!

Man, you know, it's really nice to see this sort of thing. It's not everyday that complete amateurs get to showcase their work to the public. I mean, just think, they could have just outsourced the work to Asia on the cheap, but they gave these animation students and model designers a way to get some experience under their belt. I can only imagine what they'll be able to accomplish when they've completed their full community college course.

Neranja · Oct 8, 2020

yerm said:
...and then server after server you CLEARLY notice that a few people are just better than others, and a lot of people are just worse.

Once you are in a (semi-)management position you realize that most of the people are followers, as in "leaders and followers". Conspiracy theorists call them "sheeple" I guess. It's not that they are unskilled or unmotivated (hence they wouldn't play a game they are not forced to play), it's just that they defer leadership to some person because it is easier for them.

In EQ terms: Sure you can fill 5 roles and pull/split entire zones, but as the one doing it is fucking tiring doing it for hours. Because it requires attention while the rest of the group can sit on their ass in camp and watch Youtube/Netflix/Pornhub. You're there for hours, so why do the job requiring you to pay attention?

Compare that with the current WoW M+ meta where everyone in the group is required to both fill their role and pay attention to mob mechanics/spells and do CC/movement. No slackers allowed, and a single fuckup can wipe the whole group.

yerm said:
dominate a whole zone and just crush pussy

I wouldn't necessarily equate someone who is unironically playing EQ in this day and age to "crushing pussy". You'd have a following on Twitch if that was the case.

Neranja · Oct 8, 2020

Nirgon said:
Oh so now there's 20 years of enough money to pay the bills in an EQ game

Clearly you don't understand the difference in the economics of building a game from scratch and selling an already finished product AGAIN AND AGAIN to the Polk High crowd. Even SOE didn't trust in the longevity of EQ, hence they tried to bottle lightning a second ime and spent all the EQ profits on their futile attempts. Look at their graveyard of failed MMOs. Remember Free Realms?

Nirgon said:
Ever occur to you guys they aren't trying to make McDonalds but a really nice neighborhood restaurant? That might not be for the drooling slobs.

Sure you can try to make a nice neighborhood restaurant. But at the same time I wouldn't even think to visit a restaurant where the staff cleary have zero experience in running one, are setting the wrong priorities and are known to scrapping the whole shop and rebuilding it ... multiple times.

Next thing you know they will sell you whole grilled rats with fur and all. That makes it harder to chew, and because of that people who do so are better at eating things, which makes them a superior human being in every possible way.

Nirgon said:
Can you imagine if this WoW dad guild tried to roll up on Green 99 against us lol

Can you imagine if the EQ poopsockers tried to clear a M+15 dungeon in WoW in time against us lol.

Nirgon · Oct 8, 2020

They'll build a game similar to the one that has been sold time and time again.

"You think you want it but you really don't" : part 2.

Neranja · Oct 8, 2020

Nirgon said:
They'll build a game [...] time and time again.

Fixed

wormie · Oct 8, 2020

Soloing shit was peak skill in EQ.

Grizzlebeard · Oct 8, 2020

wormie said:
Soloing shit was peak skill in EQ.

Mostly down to whether you picked one of the few classes who could do it efficiently.

FFXI was a similar story but you had way more tools and could macro gear swaps during combat which made a huge difference.

Nirgon · Oct 8, 2020

Then there's some chars that group better than the same solo classes, or are essential for raids. But the tards can't handle all that. They require intense homogenization.

Rezz · Oct 8, 2020

No. That lead to boxing. Putting required abilities on otherwise very non-interactive classes (warriors with defensive, clerics with CH, etc) meant you just boxed them and did other things. You may not remember Live during the vanilla > Luclin era, but having an out of group cleric that the warrior or wizard was running was pretty standard. Because they were required so instead of waiting for someone to want to play that incredibly boring class (up until that point) people just leveled them on another account so that their 15 a month wasn't spending several hours each week doing -nothing- because clerics were required to raid.

Bad game design. And the fact that you -could- bot a cleric effectively in a raid/group setting tells you exactly how badly designed that class/those encounters were. Any game that is box friendly to that point is clearly not a game requiring anything resembling "skill."

Further; during that time-frame it wasn't uncommon to have clerics/buffers/warriors pass around their info in the guild, because they were always sort of required to do shit and if someone wanted a night off, they would feel bad if they couldn't play a lot of times. And with the limited nature of server interactions (you could transfer characters after a time, but at first it was like... just level a new one) and the limited pool of people who wanted to play "needed" but boring classes, and you ended up with a tremendous amount of account sharing in the high end guilds. And if each class was as intricate as Nirgon seems to think, then it would be borderline impossible to play those classes you didn't normally to any level of ability required to actually do the "difficult" content in the game. Except, boxing boring classes for raid content was uh, you know, the thing to do. Dunno how prevalent it is on the EMU (I know they say they don't want you boxing but Verant also said not to use macroquest; nerds gonna nerd) but I know on the TLPs that stuff is typically also rampant.

If you can box a class at almost the same efficiency as someone playing it seriously, that's terrible class/game design.

Tide27 · Oct 8, 2020

My mage had the highest possible APM if any of the classes I played.

Went something like this if I remember right..

Wait a few.sec for tank to get aggro. Hit 1 for /assist

Hit 2 for /petattack

Wait another sec...hit 3 for Firebolt of Talon or whatever it was. Hit 3 about once every 6 to 7 secs.

...

See ole Jabober or whatever start heading off in a direction he shouldn't...hammer the 4 key as fast as humanly possible for / pet back off lol

zinc_turtle · Oct 8, 2020

Rezz said:
No. That lead to boxing.

...

Rezz said:
Dunno how prevalent it is on the EMU (I know they say they don't want you boxing but Verant also said not to use macroquest; nerds gonna nerd) but I know on the TLPs that stuff is typically also rampant.

If you can box a class at almost the same efficiency as someone playing it seriously, that's terrible class/game design.

It's endemic, and an absolute plague of terrible within EQ1, in any form, today. I've seen entire guilds destroyed because of boxing and all the consequences of leveling, progressing, and raiding with them. ( Uhm, can my box char loot that, if no-one bids on it? It has DKP... yeah. Not joking even a little bit. )

Nothing Pantheon has shown to date gives any indication the boxing plague won't continue there, too. Hell, their prime Community Service dude has already said he'll probably box one or two characters. It's pretty easy to fix, but they have indicated no desire or concrete plans to do so, up to this point.

Grizzlebeard · Oct 8, 2020

Tide27 said:
My mage had the highest possible APM if any of the classes I played.

Went something like this if I remember right..

Wait a few.sec for tank to get aggro. Hit 1 for /assist

Hit 2 for /petattack

Wait another sec...hit 3 for Firebolt of Talon or whatever it was. Hit 3 about once every 6 to 7 secs.

...

See ole Jabober or whatever start heading off in a direction he shouldn't...hammer the 4 key as fast as humanly possible for / pet back off lol

I think the only class that was remotely complex (read as awful to play) early on was Bard with all the twisting.

Neranja · Oct 8, 2020

Rezz said:
Putting required abilities on otherwise very non-interactive classes

Every class was "non-interactive" back in the day, because the game design was lifted directly from the Sojourn DikuMUD (which Brad played). And you needed the time between stuff happening to read and write chat. No one used voice comms back in the day.

The only class that remotely was interactive were bards. They had to twist songs every 3 seconds if they wanted to stack effects. That was regarded as the class with the highest skill ceiling back in the day.

Rezz · Oct 8, 2020

I'd say any of the classes that regularly pulled were substantially more interactive than most. SKs, Bards, Rangers, Monks for the most part. At least until they got back into the group (if they even stayed to fight vs. going out and pulling more; depended heavily on the situation and how packed an area/dungeon was).
The bard in the group (and typically the ranger or monk) wouldn't be the one tanking when they got back, while that was a legit job role for SKs in many groups (especially in more uncontested areas).

I played from real close after release (I think April 17th? 1999) up until near the end of Luclin; quite familiar with the gameplay loop and no voice-chat hah. The classes that rarely typed shit in chat were the ones doing things, and typically it was pullers. Your chatty classes/players were the ones who sat and did nothing most of the time. EQ was a glorified chat client for like 80% of the playerbase.

Excidium · Oct 8, 2020

I played a monk until I quit when OoW came out but it really happened around GoD. I was the pace of our raids because the faster I could break and pull zones, the faster we got through it. Thank god I could rely on myself to dictate the pace and not rely on others since they mostly chatted. I never got to chat along with my bard buddy for clears. I actually missed 95% of the clearing and social interaction. Everybody else was face rolling loot. Even pulling takes no skill once you get the experience in the pathing first every zone. That’s knowledge not skill.

Brikker · Oct 8, 2020

yerm said:
People always talk about how eq doesn't take skill eq is easy eq is a noob game anyone can be good at eq... etc etc etc...

...and then server after server you CLEARLY notice that a few people are just better than others, and a lot of people are just worse. You see the people who can pull and split or do 5 roles at once or dominate a whole zone and just crush pussy and the people who are mediocre and the half of the server that suck cock.

Sorry, but while it's really hard to pinpoint WHAT the skills are or give ideal examples of skill, if you just play everquest it's impossible not to notice the disparities and realize a small set of people are downright better than most. It can't be knowledge. It has to be skill.

I don't think autism is a skill