Did a search and couldn't find a post on this. This game is built on the same engine as Planetside 2 and received numerous awards during E3 (even though it wasn't publically shown). The E3 award givers saw the game backstage and decided to award it best of shows, best MMO, etc. based only on that preview. These awards include Best of Show E3 2013 from TenTonHammer and Best of Show from MMORPG.com.
Class Info
Upon character creation you select one of 8 classes. During gameplay you can unlock up to 40 other classes. These classes can be equipped and unequipped to match a situation.
You'll equip a base class, which consists of 4 weapon skills (based on which weapons you have equipped) and 4 class skills. The 4 class skills are categorized as a offensive, defensive, utility, or movement skill. The class skills can be swapped to equip another class' skill of the same category. So a melee fighter with 2 offensive slots can exchange his bash and cleave abilities for 2 nukes from a casting class.
Very interested in this as they appear to have the right ideas (but then again most devs do during development). I'm somewhat concerned about the instanced player created content they've been talking about.
I recently downloaded EQ and had a go in the 1999 server. Oh the nostalgia, it was a terrible, but it made me remember why it was the best of it's time, and what MMO's are missing today.
I really hope they can bring some of the old EQ into Next, but....I know they won't.
One game studio has a chance to regain everything. Capture fame and glory long squandered. When given one last opportunity, can they come through? Can they earn back everyone's trust? Or will they fail, crushing everyone's hope and dreams. Doomed to be the biggest let down, ever? Causing thousands of hopefuls to kill themselves? Find out tomorrow!
Livestream has started. I'll try to update the OP as quickly as I can while still watching this. Be ready for some surprises. I bet they'll show a trailer to produce hype before the big reveal tomorrow.
EDIT: Not much of anything. Some cringe inducing bits, some genuinely funny stuff.
I didn't even play very much EQ and I'm looking forward to this. Finally, a big company with the balls to make something big that goes against the grain.
On August 03 2013 04:23 LagLovah wrote: I feel bad for this poor artist, way to put him in a spot where people will never appreciate his work
Like i said ive seen better, the only art i deem impressive is the human faces, which he's drawn exactly 2 of in the 10 minutes ive been here lol Edit: Ooo i like the rocks bottom right lol
this is abstract art and not alot of people have seen it, but he isnt exactly good at it either
On August 03 2013 04:24 SinTio wrote: Worst thing is, that there is only 720p ~~ and twitch lags of course.
Really? Im usually restricted to 240p on my shitty net but it works fine tonight for some reason lol
I don't get why they did it like this. First hype a game so everyone comes watching your stream, then have a crappy sand artist performing so everybody leaves
This sounds like a revolutionary game. Mix of MMO, Minecraft, Terarria, Dwarf Fortress. All on the beautiful and powerful Forgelight engine used in PlanetSide 2.
Im still sceptic. Everything sounds absolutely great on paper, but I can see a lot of problems bringing all of that into practice. Like, what happens when everyone digged holes everywhere? What happens when everyone is claiming land everywhere? Stuff like that.
On August 03 2013 05:13 Roggay wrote: Im still sceptic. Everything sounds absolutely great on paper, but I can see a lot of problems bringing all of that into practice. Like, what happens when everyone digged holes everywhere? What happens when everyone is claiming land everywhere? Stuff like that.
They already said, that the damage done to the world won't be permanent (unless it's part of a rallying call i guess). And land claiming isn't part of EQ Next but EQ next landmark.
On August 03 2013 05:13 Roggay wrote: Im still sceptic. Everything sounds absolutely great on paper, but I can see a lot of problems bringing all of that into practice. Like, what happens when everyone digged holes everywhere? What happens when everyone is claiming land everywhere? Stuff like that.
They already said, that the damage done to the world won't be permanent (unless it's part of a rallying call i guess). And land claiming isn't part of EQ Next but EQ next landmark.
Ok true, still leaves a lot of questions open tho.
hmm, not sure what to think. looks interesting at least, but i wont get too hyped yet. need to see all the stuff in action. theory is always great and awesome
On August 03 2013 05:58 Ighox wrote: I think EQ:Landmark will be better than EQ:Next
Releasing 2 different games is just a bad idea
Make it seperate modes on seperate servers, not 2 different games T.T
The whole point of EQ:Landmark is to create content for EQ:Next and won't really be a game except for building stuff.
From what I understood the EQ:Landmark world will be a huge persistant world with regions similar to EQ:Next (some snowy places, lava etc), players stake a claim on their piece of land and designs it. People then vote over the best creations and the winners gets placed in a fitting region in EQ:Next.
I don't know how I feel right now. The tech is amazing. Destructible environments, rallying calls, the graphic ability; all top notch.
But I feel like this game is going in the wrong direction. Action based combat that doesn't seem to encourage teamwork. Fancy looking acrobatic moves that take away any form of grittiness.
I can deal with the art style. I can deal with the typical looking WoW like weapons. However, I can't deal with their class structure. Swappable classes with only a few skills. Skills based on your equipped weapons? Where is my long term fidelity? My choices should matter in regards to my character even more than the world. I only have 100% control of my character, but now I only have 8 choices? I've since recanted the above statement; I got the wrong impression from the stream.
On August 03 2013 06:41 Cleomenes wrote: I can deal with the art style. I can deal with the typical looking WoW like weapons. However, I can't deal with their class structure. Swappable classes with only a few skills. Skills based on your equipped weapons? Where is my long term fidelity? My choices should matter in regards to my character even more than the world. I only have 100% control of my character, but now I only have 8 choices?
Did you miss the part where he said there's 8 classes to start with and 40 discoverable classes out in the world? And you can mix abilities? So if you want to be a shieldbashing rogue with fireballs you can.
Class system sounded great.
And pretty sure the weapon abilities were just SOME abilities and not all your skills like GW2. Like the polearm grants you whirlwind but you still have all the other class abilities, while greatsword grants you a disarm ability.
Yeah, it was a knee jerk reaction for sure. The video left me with some misconceptions that this article corrected: Article
Now I'm very cautiously optimistic. As long as the gameplay is teamwork based (and the PCs were obviously invincible so the gameplay we saw wasn't a good example) and I can make long lasting, important decisions for my character I'll feel better about this game.
Tying abilities to your equipped weapons sounds odd to me. I hope they are the basic abilies (melee strike, bash, kick,etc.) while the class specific kind of abilities in EQ1 (Harm Touch, Lay on Hands, Backstab, etc.) are class based.
And in fairness some abilities in EQ1 were weapon-specific. Backstab only worked with 1- or 2HP weapons. Bash only worked with a shield (unless you had AAs). Many of the AAs and disciplines were specific to certain weapon types. So I'm ok with that I guess.
So, has there been any indication about what the core gameplay is going to be like? They've talked about a bunch of great sounding peripheral features (modular class system, destructible world, etc.), but if the minute-to-minute gameplay is just another trinity-based, auto-targeting cooldown manager, I am still just not that interested.
I'm hopeful, though: EverQuest brought that system to the MMO genre and it would be nice if they were the ones who finally put it to rest.
On August 03 2013 07:33 M.R. McThundercrotch wrote: I'm hopeful, though: EverQuest brought that system to the MMO genre and it would be nice if they were the ones who finally put it to rest.
Pretty sure Guild Wars 2 already beat them to the punch on getting rid of the holy trinity system.
Figured I'd chime in and give my thoughts. I was pretty excited for this until I saw the gameplay video at the end of the presentation. I hope to god this isn't another GW2 where you can just hack/slash through just about everything.. I was expecting a lot more 'RPG' and less dungeoncrawler for an Everquest game.
1. The Minecraft/EQ hybrid is a pretty cool concept, and although I won't play it, it does look interesting.
2. Scrapping the standard "class" system and adding in a multiclass system is awful. Homogenizing the game/classes so that anyone can fill any role at any time is a stupid system.
3. The whole 'ability' changing depending upon which weapon you use is also stupid. See GW2.
Overall I'm sad to see they're not really sticking to the standard classical RPG/Fantasy format. Also I would have liked to have some more details regarding the free-to-play system and what the actual item/cash stores will hold. I'll hold my full judgement until more details are about, but I'd say my overall impression of the game is fairly average (zzz) now.
This actually hypes the fuck outta me. Gotta watch everything to see what they are actually doing tho.
Edit - If i can troll newbs at the bank with a ventroliquism'ed pet i will be the happiest panda again. That's the kind of useless pure fun stuff games are missing :p
Watching the reveal now. Thoughts so far (read the bolded words to skip the TLDR):
- Enviroment graphics. Good. It's artistic enough to not be uncanny-valley pseudorealism, and it's also subtle enough to not be cartoony. That said, if there's too much focus on "mindblowing views" or whatever he called 'em, then that can very easilly be too overwhelming. Subtlety is what it needs. Also, what's with the floating rocks in Oasis? Not sure I approve.
- Character art. So-so. The human female looks somewhat like Elizabeth from Bioshock Inf. Not a bad thing, I suppose. I don't like the cat dude, though. Far too exhaggerated snout, as well as too exhaggerated armor. I'd definately prefer more subtle armor designs than what current MMORPGs go for.
- Class / Ability system. Interesting. Sounds kinda like the guild wars system in how you pick abilities. The class collection system sounds cool, but i'll have to see get more info to make up a proper opinion.
- "Parkour" enviroment system. Meh. Doesn't take any buttons? Silly. I don't like things happening automatically. If this system is just my character making a fancy animation passing difficult obstacles, that's annoying, as I feel it takes control away from me, and dumbs down what could have been a fun puzzle / platformer exercise into nothingness.
- Enviroment breakage. Potential. Meh, I don't really care. The whirlwind ability shows uses I really don't give two tosses about - random breakage - but the wizard had some interesting enviroment uses. This one really depends on how creative they'll be with it, and how seamless it'll merge with the general gameplay. If it ends up just being a gimmick mechanic for gimmick abilities, then that's a lot of wasted development. With procedurally created underworld and such however, that might lead to some interesting situations for exploration, which could be cool mixed with the emergent AI.
- Emergent AI. Awesome. This thing sounds amazing! Then again, it really depends on how it works, and how players learn to exploit it. Also, how much the work of one person has to say, and how easilly the work of one person can be undone. Overall though, it sounds very good, and should help make the world feel less static. That said, he did say "change world locally" - sounds mobs will be limited within regions, so no orcs wandering from crushbone to everfrost simply because it's empty. This does weaken my hopes somewhat.
- Rallying calls. Interesting. Sounds like a more natural way of having players feel invested in their quests and area, although how dynamic and different it'll be, we'll have to see. Also - it seems the rallying call quests go through points of development. What when it's finished - will it be reset? Can it be undone? Depending on how much post-production attention the game gets, this might develop really well, or really terribly.
- EQN Landmark. Sounds great. Mostly a way to outsource a lot of level design to the community to save money, but for people like me who love editors, this should be pretty fun. With the potential of having that stuff in the actual game, that should be a good incentive to build cool shit.
- Player studio / Cash shop. Meh. I've never been a fan of the real-money connection in games, so I don't care at all about this.
Overall, sounds like a mix between Guild Wars and Minecraft (kek). I'll definately be keeping an eye on it, as this is far more interesting than other MMORPGs that's been released the last half decade.
I would be suprised if it turned into a facerolling dungeon crawler game, this is everquest/sony we are talking about, every mmo type game they have ever made has forced group formation to do even the most basic of tasks.
Since the style they are going for leads me to believe the stupid crap other mmo's put in to make the game more casual 'world wide Q's, cross server cross faction etc' won't exist here, I imagine that a forced grouping and social aspect will be present in the game.
While they didn't say anything about the holy trinity, the idea of multi-classing and 48 different class's with tons of skill combos, I don't really see where you would end up with that setup, while you might end up having tank healer dps, it probably would not result in the same problems as single class gameplay presented( shortness of certain class types).
Generally speaking from the MMO games I have played, when the trinity is gone, it does turn into kind of a random unorganized orgy of stupidity. I am not sure which I would dislike more, forced tank/dps/healer or the idea that everyone is a tank and a healer and a dps and we all focus our own targets and never die and or take damage.
Character art. So-so. The human female looks somewhat like Elizabeth from Bioshock Inf. Not a bad thing, I suppose. I don't like the cat dude, though. Far too exhaggerated snout, as well as too exhaggerated armor. I'd definately prefer more subtle armor designs than what current MMORPGs go for.
While I won't comment on character style, because I thought the cat was terrible as well, they did say the armor would be customizable entirely in the way it looks, so you won't be forced into wearing WoW style armor(what the cat reminded me of immediately) The models they showed past that were much better if you ask me, and if crafters can design what the armor would look like, it would be more amazing.
My biggest problem with the cat man was just how damn unimaginative he looks. If you are going to make a race of beastmen, make them something more than an exact anthropomorphic version of a real animal. Maybe character creation gives more creative options for their feline race and this specific one was just a little basic, though,
On August 03 2013 07:33 M.R. McThundercrotch wrote: I'm hopeful, though: EverQuest brought that system to the MMO genre and it would be nice if they were the ones who finally put it to rest.
Pretty sure Guild Wars 2 already beat them to the punch on getting rid of the holy trinity system.
"Getting rid of" is a bit of a stretch. Really, they just slightly modified it. The same lame system of aggro and healing and damage is still there - it is just dressed up a little differently. I think fighting a tank in Left4Dead is a better example (not that I think an exact port of that system would work, I just think it is an improvement: tanks are terrifying in a way that no MMO monster has ever really has been),
I think people might not be excited about this game because they imagine themselves playing it in the same way they play/ed WoW (or they can't imagine playing an MMO any other way?). The game is not designed to be played the same way though.
I haven't seen a single game where the holy trinity truly dissappears. What i had seen is games with open choices/trees/classes allows for creativity when it comes to building up classes for some roles (which ussually are the holy trinity anyways, even tho, EQ holy trinity was healer/tank/crowd controller, not DPS ;P). So instead of just getting a warrior and using the protection tree, you get X class stack certain stats and get abilities/passives from other class trees.
There will be cookie cutters, but the personalization level can be quite awesome (and daunting for others).
The most important part for me is as they are trying to do a live world sandbox, how important grouping will be, which i find to be a key component on the social aspects of a realm/community.
Character art. So-so. The human female looks somewhat like Elizabeth from Bioshock Inf. Not a bad thing, I suppose. I don't like the cat dude, though. Far too exhaggerated snout, as well as too exhaggerated armor. I'd definately prefer more subtle armor designs than what current MMORPGs go for.
While I won't comment on character style, because I thought the cat was terrible as well, they did say the armor would be customizable entirely in the way it looks, so you won't be forced into wearing WoW style armor(what the cat reminded me of immediately) The models they showed past that were much better if you ask me, and if crafters can design what the armor would look like, it would be more amazing.
I realise you can customize yourself, but I'm more concerned about what's happening around me. If the overall world / adventurer look is massively oversized aka. WoW, then meh. Also, if it's free-for-all on customizability, then there'll be a lot of visual clash, which will really suck for the immersion part of the game experience.
On August 03 2013 08:57 Godwrath wrote: I haven't seen a single game where the holy trinity truly dissappears. What i had seen is games with open choices/trees/classes allows for creativity when it comes to building up classes for some roles (which ussually are the holy trinity anyways, even tho, EQ holy trinity was healer/tank/crowd controller, not DPS ;P). So instead of just getting a warrior and using the protection tree, you get X class stack certain stats and get abilities/passives from other class trees.
There will be cookie cutters, but the personalization level can be quite awesome (and daunting for others).
The most important part for me is as they are trying to do a live world sandbox, how important grouping will be, which i find to be a key component on the social aspects of a realm/community.
For what it's worth I actually loved the EQ trinity and how it was expected to work. It broke down a lot in raid environments, of course, and at the very high end of group content, but at its best group content was actually really, really fun. No other MMO that I've experienced has had a CC system as deep as EQ1's.
"We will announce plans for optional in-game purchases via the EverQuest Next Marketplace and Station Cash in the future."
"Station Cash is Sony Online Entertainment's virtual currency. It's simple and easy to use. All of your Station Cash is stored in a digital wallet. Once your wallet has been funded, you can use Station Cash to make purchases through the in-game Marketplace. The in-game Marketplace is an integrated store where you can purchase an assortment of premium in-game items, services, content and features to enhance your gameplay experience."
This could break it.
If this game is successful, it will, in my opinion, be very much an MMORPG.
Did they explain how Character Progression works in EQN? Some people told me there's not going to be any levels at all. That really bothers me and I hope it isn't true.
On August 03 2013 09:44 NapkinBox wrote: Did they explain how Character Progression works in EQN? Some people told me there's not going to be any levels at all. That really bothers me and I hope it isn't true.
Why would that bother you? That is one the best selling points, for me, and I still can't figure out how Ultima Online got it right and then every single AAA MMO since has done such a horrible job.
I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I always loved EQ1 for its harshness, I was in HS then so I could get away with the time involvement more then than now obviously. But everything had a risk and reward factor to it, it didn't hold your hand and it would kick you while you were down. That sort of philosophy made people really push the envelope to become better and to figure out exactly how you tackle some problems that seem impossible. I liked that you could only have 8 or 9 spells memorized at any given time so you had to pick and choose what you would need for a given fight, you could try and switch out mid fight but you might also just get 1 shotted for doing that too. I'm hoping this 8 skill system is like that more than like GW2. GW2s system was fine for what it was but I expect there to be some need for foresight in EQ.
I'll probably try out EQN unless it ends up looking like a total abortion but I'm a little uneasy. I hope it has some of the challenge that people expect from a EQ game. I hope they don't do like they did in EQ2, the game started out like shit, they reworked it got it better, then they decided over time to just start steering it closer and closer to being a awful WoW knockoff instead of doing their own thing. I also hope they don't do the same old SOE bullshit where they say its F2P and they have all the fluff items to buy, but they also make you pay $15 a month if you don't want the game to be a pile of ass. You can TECHNICALLY play EQ2 for free, but its missing everything you actually want unless you pay them a sub. SOE likes to have these sort of quasi-F2P double dipping deals and all it does is irritate people.
I understand a lot of people being skeptic at the concept, but it's not some sort of magic bean or holy unicorn. It has been done in the past, and it works. And yes, it adds flexibility to customization your own character if you desire to, saying it does the oppossite is just flat out wrong. Mostly, because any choice is not streamlined for you, you make the decissions, you play whatever you want (and i doubt there is no way to respec one character, since this systems normally are pretty dynamic on that regard). I am speaking about this type of systems, not about this game ofc, because i know next to nothing about it to say it's fine, but so you can get a grasp about it.
I also hope it keeps the harsh/group orientation that tightens up a community.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I still don't see how people won't be effectively "maxed" out which makes the system quite pointless at the end of the day.
The best ways to keep the community tight are not instancing things and making the game harsh to play. Both of which are, we'll say, frowned upon now days. People tend to not be complete dicks if their character took a ton of time and effort to level up and gear out and making the dungeons not instance forces people to interact with each other for better or for worse. People make reputations for themselves, everyone on the server knows everyone else. XXXXX is a awesome guy, great healer! YYYYYY is a complete asshole, he ninja looted some item! Welcome to being blacklisted to the entire server forever, it polices itself lol. I don't really see that stuff happening in this day and age now but it made for some amazingly tight communities, good friends, and awesome times.
Also making "leveling" or whatever you want to call it take time it would slow down the maxing out thing obviously but it's still going to happen.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
What do you mean by maxing exactly ? The disciplines they talked about sound more like the SWG character development system (think of everyone starting the same but having 40 skill trees to choose from with a total cap) than the UO to be honest (UO had the skill lose when you died or decay aswell to work on this).
There was definitly a holy trinity, some classes couldn't really solo/duo efficiently if they weren't on a group. I was a necro tho. Oh Veksar... why did i love you so much.
The holy trinity thing was blown way out of proportion. The whole concept of we can't do anything without a tank, a healer, and a dps class. If you knew how to play well and think outside the box you could do all sorts of crazy crap and make it work. Maybe you couldn't solo a rogue or quad kite with a cleric but it was mostly a crutch or stale way of thinking IMO. If you have this thought in your head that "we don't have X class, oh well, looks like I'm doing nothing" then you'll never actually accomplish anything. Especially when you consider the buff system of EQ1 which I always loved and helped contribute to a better community. People would throw out buffs to help other people and certain buffs could take a mundane class and make them pretty insane. Granted it wasn't permanent but the buffs on the whole lasted so long in EQ1 that you could get some shit done in that time. I dunno, instead of the "we can't do this" mindset that the holy trinity mindset brought on it should have made more people think "how can we make this work?" Though I understand the harshness with level loss and corpse runs may have made the average player not want to take risks, but that's how you push the envelope and discover the true potential of players and classes.
By maxing I mean the fact that theres no classes, you can mix and match skills and theres no "level cap" so if you wanted to, in theory you could acquire every single skill in the game effectively maxing out your character. There's nothing else for you to get even though your character doesn't have a level per se.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
This is true for later content, mostly. And for raids, which are an entirely different animal. And yeah, some of the classes didn't need to exist. The Beastlord is a perfect example. High-end Shamans mattered because they had relevant slows, stat buffs that went over the cap, and Haste that went over the cap. Monks mattered because they did non-trivial DPS and could pull (the tankiness went completely out the window immediately after you left. Unless you were hugely overgeared and facing trivial content, Monks and Rangers stopped being able to tank for balls). Beastmasters did shit for damage, couldn't pull and had one relevant buff, which was a medium duration mana regen buff that stacked with the Clarity lines. Whoo. Hoo. They became a MGB-bot because they didn't fill a useful niche. Meanwhile, Berserkers were actually one of the more in-demand classes when I quit after HoT, because they were interchangable with Rogues and Rangers as the best sustained DPS classes in the high end raid/group game, a bit behind, but competitive and with a lot of useful group buffs. Realistically, most of the EQ class problems had to do with pet AI and raid interactions. It's not a coincidence that Necros, Beastlords and Mages weren't as good in those settings. When a third of the class is tied up in an unusable feature... well... Druids were the other class that really got the ouch, but they had useful buffs and could backup-heal in a pinch. Their problem is that they didn't do anything well. They didn't heal like a Cleric (or Shaman, really), couldn't slow, had no CC and had subpar nukes. It's a cool concept, but at some point they needed to get something that mattered. The jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none schtick doesn't work in the game EQ1 became.
I too am highly sceptical of this approach to classes. It can be done correctly, but... I don't know. Maybe everyone's an Adventurer at level 1 and can take any skill. At level 10 you become an Archetype - Fighter, Specialist, Spellcaster - and have access to more specialized skills, with all the points you spent on skills outside that archetype being refunded (or maybe they just no longer progress). So if I spend 5 points learning two-handed slashing and 5 learning Alteration, when I decide to become a Spellcaster, I get my 5 points on 2HS back to spend on stuff in my discipline. At level 15 you become a Class - Warrior, Ranger, Rogue etc etc etc - where you have a highly specific skill tree including unique skills. That way it's an organic process and people have time to figure out what they want and what they like. Include a retraining option all the way back to Archetype, keeping in mind that regearing a character is hard, expensive and a super pain in the hole.
Damnit it's scary how much I still love this game.
On August 03 2013 11:34 OuchyDathurts wrote: By maxing I mean the fact that theres no classes, you can mix and match skills and theres no "level cap" so if you wanted to, in theory you could acquire every single skill in the game effectively maxing out your character. There's nothing else for you to get even though your character doesn't have a level per se.
That's just a bad system, and i don't know any example of this. Maybe darkfall ? Dunno, i didn't really played that game, but others i had played with no class system always had caps or mechanichs to stop you from maxing out. Caps is the easier imho, and as i said before, the disciplines sounded way more as the SWG system, which was cap restricted (as i said before, like if everybody had the same 40 skill trees for example and a bunch of points to spents with a cap, which they learned using the proficiencies required by the proffessions, like pistoleer you had to be killing with a pistol, etc).
If you can be everything there is no personalization, i can agree with that. But it's not like that's an actual problem if you handle it correctly, which is fairly easy to do and intuitive enough to figure it out by yourself.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
This is true for later content, mostly. And for raids, which are an entirely different animal. And yeah, some of the classes didn't need to exist. The Beastlord is a perfect example. High-end Shamans mattered because they had relevant slows, stat buffs that went over the cap, and Haste that went over the cap. Monks mattered because they did non-trivial DPS and could pull (the tankiness went completely out the window immediately after you left. Unless you were hugely overgeared and facing trivial content, Monks and Rangers stopped being able to tank for balls). Beastmasters did shit for damage, couldn't pull and had one relevant buff, which was a medium duration mana regen buff that stacked with the Clarity lines. Whoo. Hoo. They became a MGB-bot because they didn't fill a useful niche. Meanwhile, Berserkers were actually one of the more in-demand classes when I quit after HoT, because they were interchangable with Rogues and Rangers as the best sustained DPS classes in the high end raid/group game, a bit behind, but competitive and with a lot of useful group buffs. Realistically, most of the EQ class problems had to do with pet AI and raid interactions. It's not a coincidence that Necros, Beastlords and Mages weren't as good in those settings. When a third of the class is tied up in an unusable feature... well... Druids were the other class that really got the ouch, but they had useful buffs and could backup-heal in a pinch. Their problem is that they didn't do anything well. They didn't heal like a Cleric (or Shaman, really), couldn't slow, had no CC and had subpar nukes. It's a cool concept, but at some point they needed to get something that mattered. The jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none schtick doesn't work in the game EQ1 became.
I too am highly sceptical of this approach to classes. It can be done correctly, but... I don't know. Maybe everyone's an Adventurer at level 1 and can take any skill. At level 10 you become an Archetype - Fighter, Specialist, Spellcaster - and have access to more specialized skills, with all the points you spent on skills outside that archetype being refunded (or maybe they just no longer progress). So if I spend 5 points learning two-handed slashing and 5 learning Alteration, when I decide to become a Spellcaster, I get my 5 points on 2HS back to spend on stuff in my discipline. At level 15 you become a Class - Warrior, Ranger, Rogue etc etc etc - where you have a highly specific skill tree including unique skills. That way it's an organic process and people have time to figure out what they want and what they like. Include a retraining option all the way back to Archetype, keeping in mind that regearing a character is hard, expensive and a super pain in the hole.
Damnit it's scary how much I still love this game.
I miss the game but I know I'm looking back like 14 years with some rose colored glasses. EQ1 was lightning in a bottle for me, tbh I've been chasing it ever since. While I still have all the memories of the awesome shit I was part of, the people I spent time with, the awful wipes or training I don't think I'll ever have that again unfortunately. Someone I know has an emulated server I tried like 6 months ago but I just couldn't do it lol. Too much time, too much chasing the dragon, and it looks like Doom for christ sake lol.
We were duoing when rangers were the joke of EQ, part half assed druid part super half assed warrior? Ranger down! But they really weren't as bad as people thought. Yeah it helped once we got end game geared out but this was when people didn't think these classes were very good. Turns out they were all wrong, but if people don't try to work around the holy trinity they'll never know anything.
Pet classes have always been a double edged sword. Their pets are either a complete liability and worthless, or the devs make their pets absolutely fucking nuts to compensate. Generally they're great solo but lose their viability in groups, which IMO is good design. The same thing was the case in DAoC, necromancers complete PvE beasts, could solo the world very easily and they sucked ass in RvR. Infiltrators, a complete nightmare to solo PvE but they exploded people in RvR so you sort of had to pick your poison. Want a necro to solo? You'll be amazing at soloing, but you're going to pay the price in group usefulness. Personally I've never been huge on entrusting a large portion of my class viability to an AI controlled pet though, too sketchy.
That class system you lay out sounds interesting, but it also sort of takes away the freeform character thing if you narrow things. Unless it just gives you suggestions, you seem to be making a cleric like class, these skills are what you might want to look at. But it never puts you in a box.
On August 03 2013 11:34 OuchyDathurts wrote: By maxing I mean the fact that theres no classes, you can mix and match skills and theres no "level cap" so if you wanted to, in theory you could acquire every single skill in the game effectively maxing out your character. There's nothing else for you to get even though your character doesn't have a level per se.
That's just a bad system, and i don't know any example of this. Maybe darkfall ? Dunno, i didn't really played that game, but others i had played with no class system always had caps or mechanichs to stop you from maxing out. Caps is the easier imho, and as i said before, the disciplines sounded way more as the SWG system, which was cap restricted.
If you can be everything there is no personalization, i can agree with that. But it's not like that's an actual problem if you handle it correctly, which is fairly easy to do and intuitive enough to figure it out by yourself.
Like I said, we'll see how it all pans out. But this open ended sounding system sounds to me like there would be the ability to grab everything provided you put in enough time and effort. SWG was so long ago I remember almost nothing of it, other than I was in beta and it was probably the worst beta I've ever been in lol. If they're saying I can play for years and then my buddy starts playing and I'll want to play with him because we can do the same content and I can get skills I may have skipped over. I don't see how its possible I skipped over any skills that matter at all to me unless I can have everything. If it mattered I'd have done the content to get the skill already, the only other option is I can have everything and these skills are pretty much garbage to me but I may as well get them since my friend wants to play.
They said open ended that you could be a backstabbing warrior, or a mix of a rogue caster. They didn't say a backstabbing rogue caster healer necromancer mesmerizer. Of course we are drawing conclussions with little information, but i don't find hard to figure out how that kind of system can (and has) work. You could be right, and they just go braindead about it, but since it is not something new i doubt (and hope also) they will.
What do you exactly mean by geting skills you skipped over ? Why wouldn't they matter ? I believe you are thinking too much on everyone being the same, which is not how it works.
Let's make up an example. Let's say each discipline has 3 skills (this could be passives, abilities etc) on 2 skill trees each one (skill trees normally for what they represent, like weapon, armor type, whatever) and a final one that you can buy if you complete both skill trees. Each skill costs 1 point, except the final skill which costs 3. The maximum amount of points you can ever achieve is 15 (cap).
For example i want to build a plate armor backstabbing character. I look up the daggers tree, and i decide to spend the 12 points on it, maxing it out. I want to make him a bit tanky so i look up the discipline plate armor and i spend the rest of the points there to be more effective while using it.
How you acquire those points, on those kinds of games were normally receiving experience by using those. For example, to get the plate armor proficiency (which would make you more efficient at using plate, like reducing weight debuffs, evasion, speed, or even giving buffs, etc) you would have to wear while doing the killing, and same for the daggers.
If we go back to your example, and you already are a capped character, there is absolutely no point on training skills, except if you are planning to reroll because now you want to be a 2handed plate armor dude. So you start grinding with your friend using a 2handed weapon, that you are not proficient at all with, while removing dagger skills as you gather enough experience to buy the 2handed skills to replace them.
Edit - Oh, i found this, which i think will do it more understandable. A preCU SWG character calculator. You first choose a starting proffession, which would unlock at certain skills other advanced proffessions.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
This is true for later content, mostly. And for raids, which are an entirely different animal. And yeah, some of the classes didn't need to exist. The Beastlord is a perfect example. High-end Shamans mattered because they had relevant slows, stat buffs that went over the cap, and Haste that went over the cap. Monks mattered because they did non-trivial DPS and could pull (the tankiness went completely out the window immediately after you left. Unless you were hugely overgeared and facing trivial content, Monks and Rangers stopped being able to tank for balls). Beastmasters did shit for damage, couldn't pull and had one relevant buff, which was a medium duration mana regen buff that stacked with the Clarity lines. Whoo. Hoo. They became a MGB-bot because they didn't fill a useful niche. Meanwhile, Berserkers were actually one of the more in-demand classes when I quit after HoT, because they were interchangable with Rogues and Rangers as the best sustained DPS classes in the high end raid/group game, a bit behind, but competitive and with a lot of useful group buffs. Realistically, most of the EQ class problems had to do with pet AI and raid interactions. It's not a coincidence that Necros, Beastlords and Mages weren't as good in those settings. When a third of the class is tied up in an unusable feature... well... Druids were the other class that really got the ouch, but they had useful buffs and could backup-heal in a pinch. Their problem is that they didn't do anything well. They didn't heal like a Cleric (or Shaman, really), couldn't slow, had no CC and had subpar nukes. It's a cool concept, but at some point they needed to get something that mattered. The jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none schtick doesn't work in the game EQ1 became.
I too am highly sceptical of this approach to classes. It can be done correctly, but... I don't know. Maybe everyone's an Adventurer at level 1 and can take any skill. At level 10 you become an Archetype - Fighter, Specialist, Spellcaster - and have access to more specialized skills, with all the points you spent on skills outside that archetype being refunded (or maybe they just no longer progress). So if I spend 5 points learning two-handed slashing and 5 learning Alteration, when I decide to become a Spellcaster, I get my 5 points on 2HS back to spend on stuff in my discipline. At level 15 you become a Class - Warrior, Ranger, Rogue etc etc etc - where you have a highly specific skill tree including unique skills. That way it's an organic process and people have time to figure out what they want and what they like. Include a retraining option all the way back to Archetype, keeping in mind that regearing a character is hard, expensive and a super pain in the hole.
Damnit it's scary how much I still love this game.
We were duoing when rangers were the joke of EQ, part half assed druid part super half assed warrior? Ranger down! But they really weren't as bad as people thought. Yeah it helped once we got end game geared out but this was when people didn't think these classes were very good. Turns out they were all wrong, but if people don't try to work around the holy trinity they'll never know anything.
Just specifically about this point, Rangers were complete ass for a long time. It basically took the introduction of AAs to make the class not worthless. Once EQ and AM were picked up, Rangers actually did almost entirely risk-free DPS in group and raid settings that was well in excess of anyone else's. It's a shame it stagnated afterwards.
I don't know. I don't really want entirely free-form characters, because I want high-end content that's intended for optimized characters, parties and raids. If that exists, then someone's going to end up pissed off that their backstabbing platemail-wearing caster isn't as good as a focused tank or focused healer or focused DPS class. Better to keep things pure, IMO.
That depends on the stance of the devs in regards to high end more than the system to be honest. Either the make it easier to accomodate casuals, work on infinite balance patches (stupid) or say well fuck off, which kinda was EQ stance on class balance aswell for raids.
If they make it easier to accommodate casuals, they're shooting themselves in the foot w/r/t their existing player base, many of whom play only for the high-end raids. The EQ1 team relies on them pretty extensively for testing and tuning. And class balance isn't bad, really. There are four classes that are in poor states, and three of them it's because of mechanics. Generally balance is bad immediately after an expansion, then things get tuned more and brought back into line.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
This is true for later content, mostly. And for raids, which are an entirely different animal. And yeah, some of the classes didn't need to exist. The Beastlord is a perfect example. High-end Shamans mattered because they had relevant slows, stat buffs that went over the cap, and Haste that went over the cap. Monks mattered because they did non-trivial DPS and could pull (the tankiness went completely out the window immediately after you left. Unless you were hugely overgeared and facing trivial content, Monks and Rangers stopped being able to tank for balls). Beastmasters did shit for damage, couldn't pull and had one relevant buff, which was a medium duration mana regen buff that stacked with the Clarity lines. Whoo. Hoo. They became a MGB-bot because they didn't fill a useful niche. Meanwhile, Berserkers were actually one of the more in-demand classes when I quit after HoT, because they were interchangable with Rogues and Rangers as the best sustained DPS classes in the high end raid/group game, a bit behind, but competitive and with a lot of useful group buffs. Realistically, most of the EQ class problems had to do with pet AI and raid interactions. It's not a coincidence that Necros, Beastlords and Mages weren't as good in those settings. When a third of the class is tied up in an unusable feature... well... Druids were the other class that really got the ouch, but they had useful buffs and could backup-heal in a pinch. Their problem is that they didn't do anything well. They didn't heal like a Cleric (or Shaman, really), couldn't slow, had no CC and had subpar nukes. It's a cool concept, but at some point they needed to get something that mattered. The jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none schtick doesn't work in the game EQ1 became.
I too am highly sceptical of this approach to classes. It can be done correctly, but... I don't know. Maybe everyone's an Adventurer at level 1 and can take any skill. At level 10 you become an Archetype - Fighter, Specialist, Spellcaster - and have access to more specialized skills, with all the points you spent on skills outside that archetype being refunded (or maybe they just no longer progress). So if I spend 5 points learning two-handed slashing and 5 learning Alteration, when I decide to become a Spellcaster, I get my 5 points on 2HS back to spend on stuff in my discipline. At level 15 you become a Class - Warrior, Ranger, Rogue etc etc etc - where you have a highly specific skill tree including unique skills. That way it's an organic process and people have time to figure out what they want and what they like. Include a retraining option all the way back to Archetype, keeping in mind that regearing a character is hard, expensive and a super pain in the hole.
Damnit it's scary how much I still love this game.
We were duoing when rangers were the joke of EQ, part half assed druid part super half assed warrior? Ranger down! But they really weren't as bad as people thought. Yeah it helped once we got end game geared out but this was when people didn't think these classes were very good. Turns out they were all wrong, but if people don't try to work around the holy trinity they'll never know anything.
Just specifically about this point, Rangers were complete ass for a long time. It basically took the introduction of AAs to make the class not worthless. Once EQ and AM were picked up, Rangers actually did almost entirely risk-free DPS in group and raid settings that was well in excess of anyone else's. It's a shame it stagnated afterwards.
I don't know. I don't really want entirely free-form characters, because I want high-end content that's intended for optimized characters, parties and raids. If that exists, then someone's going to end up pissed off that their backstabbing platemail-wearing caster isn't as good as a focused tank or focused healer or focused DPS class. Better to keep things pure, IMO.
I can't think of a MMORPG that with a no-class system that made anyone as versatile and redundant as that, but let's say that happens: what if that person wants to go into high level raids? Simple, he gets equipment and skills that makes him viable: an actual tank, a healer, or some DPS class, because the system let's him, assuming he has done enough training in his skills and whatnot, otherwise people just won't invite him. What if he wants to travel around the world, going on quests and adventures, fighting evil as a magical swordsman assassin? Well, go ahead! It's a MMORPG!
So I'm just gonna list my own thoughts about the details of the game so far. Music I can't imagine that they can remotely mess this up. EQ2 score was pretty great and if they aren't sparing the costs for the score they'll get high quality stuff. Character Design The people in twitch chat were calling it disney, I think you do need the high contrast larger than life kind of character design both when it comes to faces and when it comes to clothing. These are tiny figures on your screen, like 6" at most. Movement I really like that the character animation is dependent on how you move in the terrain. Hopefully they'll dare to make it slower to walk uphill than down hill. And if you're running straight into a wall your character doesn't have the animation for running at full speed while moving slower than a snail. This is lazy game design and I don't know why we've all let the companies doing AAA titles to get away with it for so long. Combat The fighting seemed to be very action oriented, but that could be because there was no UI to show us how much or how little they had to do. Speaking of which. I really hope they let people mod the UIs for EQN they can't make one interface that will be the best kind of interface for any kind of player and playstyle. World Design World design looks good. Or well the 3 terrain types they showed at least. Destructibility I love that this game is built out of voxels! It's something I've been wanting since long before minecraft came around. I just hope the auto world repair is done in a fun way as much as possible rather than it just coming back to life. (why not have a quest for aspiring carpenters to go and repair the ruins that some adventurers had some fun in?) And this still means that in some respects the world will not grow organically. Paths will not be formed in woods where people walk often. These wont turn into roads if very well travelled and villages won't appear close to the crossings of them. Woods won't grow if no one cuts them down, and woods won't disappear if too many of the trees are cut down without replanting. This is something I would really like to see. Cause it would be awesome. AI mobs/procedurally generated quests This to me is one of the bigger things I've always wanted in an MMO. A non static world and NPCs that aren't just always going to give you the same quest over and over and over again. And having both friends and foes remember who you are will help more with the immersion of the game. If they take this to the extreme then it could mean you'll have bards singing songs about you in taverns across the land if you've done something really awesome. Class system So little was talked about when it comes to the characters and classes etc, but I imagine that this will be an interesting thing for late game, to level up the complimentary classes so you can create a very customized character which suits your needs. I can of course see the downsides with this too, but it's mostly a wait and see (and try it out) kind of thing. Rallying Calls I guess these are too important to be completely procedurally created, it's a shame that this will kinda still mean that the servers won't look that different after a while. Would be even more awesome if the different shards started to have very different worlds. Still they sound awesome. Too bad they don't seem to go with a faction system where you can try and undermine the other factions rallying call quests. Landmark This is something I'll probably play a lot. It's like a good version of minecraft. Will be fun to build epic palaces and towns with my friends.
I'm hoping they'll stream some more content from the different panels they mentioned, not that I've seen any schedule for the event but oh well.
On August 03 2013 10:10 OuchyDathurts wrote: I skimmed over some stuff, nothing really jumped out at me and made me wish this game was out immediately because I can't wait. I played EQ1 at launch, first MMO, loved the shit out of it best PvE experience by miles, the people who played were a different breed than your MMO players now, it was a total blast.
The sandbox game I couldn't possibly care less about, I won't touch it, not my bag but it sounds like a cute idea on paper for some people.
As far as EQN is concerned I don't understand the no classes system. I mean in theory "yay anyone can do anything!" but in practice I see it being a clusterfuck. Systems like this always end up in cookie cutter builds at the end of the day anyway. Your ability to make your character completely worthless with some unwise decisions is going to annoy people. You either tough it out with your trash character until you get enough skill points to get them back on track or you reroll and hope you don't screw up again. Then at the end of the day with unlimited skill points or whatever you want to call them characters in the end are going to be homogeneous. Everyone has every skill, everyone is the same, these are the best builds run them or you're an idiot. Add that with the fact they said there's like 40 classes worth of disciplines and you've got a recipe for disaster. You think you're adding flexibility but you're really not. If EQ2 should have taught them anything it should have been that having 24 classes is COMPLETELY impossible to ever balance in your wildest dreams. You literally can never make 24 classes all relevant and viable in a game without watering things down or stepping on toes. Especially in a genre like MMO where people are going to be min/maxing, "yeah, these 6 classes are sick, the rest are shit, we don't want you, reroll" lol.
I honestly think that, more than anything else, this is a function of the game getting completely beyond their concept in the last eight years. In any old-world group content, you can pretty much throw six characters together, and as long as you've got some sort of healer, some sort of CC and some sort of plate tank plus some DPS, you can get shit done. The most smoothly-functioning groups I ever had had Rangers and Necros handling CC, because they were good at it. The must-have-Warrior-Shaman-Cleric-Ench-Rog-Monk stuff didn't come until much later in the game, when content became BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_1 and then later BIG PILE OF NUMBERS!_2. Up through, say, LDoN, nearly anything worked assuming people could play.
As for classes more generally... Let's assume you streamlined the EQ1 classes to Priest, Mage, Tank and... I dunno, Stabby Guy. What'll happen is that by the time the endgame gets discovered, 44% of Priests will have become EQ1 Clerics, 44% will have become EQ1 Shamans, and 2% will be EQ1 Druids, because they're idiots. Tanks will be basically EQ1 Warriors with maybe some Shadow Knight stuff. Mages will almost certainly be split between Wizards and Enchanters because pets are more trouble than they're worth. There'll be some Necros for people who want to solo, I guess, and to act as mana batteries on raids. The Stabby Guys will be split between Rogues, Rangers and Monks because all three of those classes are relevant during high-end content. There'll be one Beastmaster per guild to cast some class-specific buffs. I guess there'll be some Berserkers and Bards too. But by its very design, a game like Everquest lends itself to minmaxing to an extreme degree. There are scads of content that isn't reachable otherwise.
I quit right before PoP since the game was getting too casual for my liking. To me the holy trinity never existed though, I mean I'd obviously get the cleric and chanter buffs but I was a shaman which was broke as hell but people didn't realize it, and my neighbor IRL was a ranger which together made a pretty disgusting duo so we'd just duo everything. Things we "weren't supposed" to be able to do without a full group.
Monk + Shaman was the dumbest duo possible, it was so sick, two strongest classes in the game and then SOE decided hmm, lets take the 2 strongest classes and put them together with a pet and make a beastmaster! lol. The only thing you missed out on was snare but if you had the spear from Veeshan's Peak on the shaman you could just proc it. And yeah the classes without mez were generally the best CCers because they've spent their whole life in game having to ghetto mez with root or fear without breaking it so you get really good at being on your toes lol.
Even with only the classes EQ1 had there were still classes that really didn't need to exist outside of having a buff you might want. You had a few tanks because every boss had a million adds, but 3 should be more than enough for most situations, clerics obviously made the world go round with CH rotations, 1 or 2 shamans max, 1 to 3 monks for pulling, 1 ranger for weaponshield pulls and snaring, 1-3 enchanters maybe for CC but odds are the CC was pointless so just give my clarity bitch, druids no one needed really, you might have 1 mage and 1 necro for mana rods but it wasn't necessary at all, then just bring the deeps. Even with the fairly limited classes of EQ1 compared to EQ2 you had some stuff that just wasn't necessary at all, assuming you weren't running a zerg guild full of idiots where you just needed warm bodies to hurl themselves at a boss.
We'll see how this all pans out but I'm super fucking skeptical this won't be a train wreck that turns into characters being useless because they took a wrong turn in a skill build or the same cookie cutter crap that every game is.
This is true for later content, mostly. And for raids, which are an entirely different animal. And yeah, some of the classes didn't need to exist. The Beastlord is a perfect example. High-end Shamans mattered because they had relevant slows, stat buffs that went over the cap, and Haste that went over the cap. Monks mattered because they did non-trivial DPS and could pull (the tankiness went completely out the window immediately after you left. Unless you were hugely overgeared and facing trivial content, Monks and Rangers stopped being able to tank for balls). Beastmasters did shit for damage, couldn't pull and had one relevant buff, which was a medium duration mana regen buff that stacked with the Clarity lines. Whoo. Hoo. They became a MGB-bot because they didn't fill a useful niche. Meanwhile, Berserkers were actually one of the more in-demand classes when I quit after HoT, because they were interchangable with Rogues and Rangers as the best sustained DPS classes in the high end raid/group game, a bit behind, but competitive and with a lot of useful group buffs. Realistically, most of the EQ class problems had to do with pet AI and raid interactions. It's not a coincidence that Necros, Beastlords and Mages weren't as good in those settings. When a third of the class is tied up in an unusable feature... well... Druids were the other class that really got the ouch, but they had useful buffs and could backup-heal in a pinch. Their problem is that they didn't do anything well. They didn't heal like a Cleric (or Shaman, really), couldn't slow, had no CC and had subpar nukes. It's a cool concept, but at some point they needed to get something that mattered. The jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none schtick doesn't work in the game EQ1 became.
I too am highly sceptical of this approach to classes. It can be done correctly, but... I don't know. Maybe everyone's an Adventurer at level 1 and can take any skill. At level 10 you become an Archetype - Fighter, Specialist, Spellcaster - and have access to more specialized skills, with all the points you spent on skills outside that archetype being refunded (or maybe they just no longer progress). So if I spend 5 points learning two-handed slashing and 5 learning Alteration, when I decide to become a Spellcaster, I get my 5 points on 2HS back to spend on stuff in my discipline. At level 15 you become a Class - Warrior, Ranger, Rogue etc etc etc - where you have a highly specific skill tree including unique skills. That way it's an organic process and people have time to figure out what they want and what they like. Include a retraining option all the way back to Archetype, keeping in mind that regearing a character is hard, expensive and a super pain in the hole.
Damnit it's scary how much I still love this game.
We were duoing when rangers were the joke of EQ, part half assed druid part super half assed warrior? Ranger down! But they really weren't as bad as people thought. Yeah it helped once we got end game geared out but this was when people didn't think these classes were very good. Turns out they were all wrong, but if people don't try to work around the holy trinity they'll never know anything.
Just specifically about this point, Rangers were complete ass for a long time. It basically took the introduction of AAs to make the class not worthless. Once EQ and AM were picked up, Rangers actually did almost entirely risk-free DPS in group and raid settings that was well in excess of anyone else's. It's a shame it stagnated afterwards.
I don't know. I don't really want entirely free-form characters, because I want high-end content that's intended for optimized characters, parties and raids. If that exists, then someone's going to end up pissed off that their backstabbing platemail-wearing caster isn't as good as a focused tank or focused healer or focused DPS class. Better to keep things pure, IMO.
I can't think of a MMORPG that with a no-class system that made anyone as versatile and redundant as that, but let's say that happens: what if that person wants to go into high level raids? Simple, he gets equipment and skills that makes him viable: an actual tank, a healer, or some DPS class, because the system let's him, assuming he has done enough training in his skills and whatnot, otherwise people just won't invite him. What if he wants to travel around the world, going on quests and adventures, fighting evil as a magical swordsman assassin? Well, go ahead! It's a MMORPG!
Yeah I agree I don't think the issue will ever be that people can't join raids with any kind of multiclass, that is a given. Or let me rephrase that, there are a lot of stupid people that will complain about this specific thing. I mean players with crappy gear that hasn't read a class guide with item list have been around for all the years I've played. However that doesn't mean they should make the game based on the lowest common denominator. There are other games that caters to the lesser of us. And I as a player am completely fine with that. But also you will most likely get to make it so you can have a solo build, a group build, and a raid build. At least I hope they keep that from EQ2. That will make it so you can get people who do play in more novel ways to actually think about how to best help the raid as a whole.
I think it's a bit wrong to talk about a holy trinity in the EQ games. it's more like 6 roles, and some classes fill multiple. There's Tanking, Healing /Warding, Buffing, Debuffing, Controlling, and DPS. The multiclass system's breaking point is if they make the game so that characters will be more efficient at doing a task in a raid if they concentrate heavily on one of them. Or if they'll try to make it so that the best DPS group is one where everyone can buff/debuff, do some healing/warding and of course dps. This rather than the EQ2 optimal DPS group consisting of 3 dps (of the same type, melee or magic), 2 buffers and 1 healer/warder to optimize the group output of DPS.
The game itself doesn't matter anymore as long as they keep destroying any incentive to play with pay to win cash shops and such bs, and this is especially relevant for SOE.
On August 03 2013 16:02 Aggnog wrote: The game itself doesn't matter anymore as long as they keep destroying any incentive to play with pay to win cash shops and such bs, and this is especially relevant for SOE.
Relevant for SOE? Cash shops, microtransactions, 'pay2win'; all apply to nearly every MMO out there.
It's become the industry standard, SOE are not the only ones guilty of this; don't pretend otherwise.
Having said that, I loved the original EQ and this game looks like it has A LOT of potential. My concern is that there is so many new things that they individually don't get the polish they deserve. Also, i'm apprehensive (a word I learned as a kid playing the first EQ lol) about some of the mechanics working in a MMO environment. Specifically the emergent AI and destructibility.
Rallying calls were the weakest part to me. First off, 2-3 months estimated time to complete means they'll be done in the first week. Second, it seems really pointless to call it permanent change when it's inevitable and without choice. If it's going to happen anyways, even if it takes my server a little longer to complete, it seems more like just another planned event rather than something game changing. He didn't mention this, but I really hope you can FAIL these rallying calls if you don't complete them after X amount of time, otherwise meh. Also, I'm apprehensive (there it is again) about hyping up 1 time events as positive for players joining later. If I join the game late and I ask my friend who joined at launch what happened and he explains all this cool shit like in the press conference I think i'd be pissed more than anything knowing I don't get to experience any of that, unless they start recycling things at which point it isn't very permanent.
I can see myself playing this game and will follow it very closely.
On August 03 2013 19:08 On_Slaught wrote: Very awkward press conference.
Having said that, I loved the original EQ and this game looks like it has A LOT of potential. My concern is that there is so many new things that they individually don't get the polish they deserve. Also, i'm apprehensive (a word I learned as a kid playing the first EQ lol) about some of the mechanics working in a MMO environment. Specifically the emergent AI and destructibility.
Rallying calls were the weakest part to me. First off, 2-3 months estimated time to complete means they'll be done in the first week. Second, it seems really pointless to call it permanent change when it's inevitable and without choice. If it's going to happen anyways, even if it takes my server a little longer to complete, it seems more like just another planned event rather than something game changing. He didn't mention this, but I really hope you can FAIL these rallying calls if you don't complete them after X amount of time, otherwise meh. Also, I'm apprehensive (there it is again) about hyping up 1 time events as positive for players joining later. If I join the game late and I ask my friend who joined at launch what happened and he explains all this cool shit like in the press conference I think i'd be pissed more than anything knowing I don't get to experience any of that, unless they start recycling things at which point it isn't very permanent.
I can see myself playing this game and will follow it very closely.
Yeah that was also my biggest concern when he was talking about it. Because I don't really see any point in me helping if it's un-failable since it gets done anyways.
I'm hoping that they will allow guilds to build their own city's/castles in an instance based mode that other guilds can raid. Since PvP is a major deal breaker for me in any MMO. Would work out great with EverQuest Next: Landmark.
I've never played EverQuest so I don't really know what to expect. I had the game as a kid but the store clerk failed to tell my parents it required internet which we didn't have at the time.
Never played EQ, but ive been looking out for the next 'big mmo' for awhile now. A lot of mmo's have good elements, but they are always missing something, you know? I really like this mix of an mmo + minecraft, or a lego-mmo I like to call it. I'm sure many people used to play with legos when they were young, and I always wondered how an mmo would look when you had that 'you can build everything' element in them. I feel like this could be something that defines the next generation of mmo's. Just look at how much succes minecraft has.
Some of the problems I see with it is that the expected graphics quality is too high. For people who have been playing video games for awhile now, im sure you all know what I mean. Remember the days when people were happy with just a few pixels on the screen? I even remember some of my friends refusing to play BW, just because the graphics sucked. In a game such as minecraft, and a game attempting to adopt the lego-way, I feel like they will need to cut down on graphics a little bit, to allow for that freedom. In the showcase, there was a lot of dust effects, probably to hide the fact that rocks being broken down isnt all that 'pretty'. But I feel, to make the next big game, you dont need 'pretty', you need a good core gameplay, that allows for freedom. Graphical improvement will come over the years. If you want a lot of people to play your game for a long time, you dont need to make everything look as beautiful as possible, because they'll only see it once and then move on. Instead, make your game something people enjoy playing instead of enjoy looking at.
As far as classes go, won't there always be some kind of 'optimal' way to play things? For me, it's not so much the class that I play that matters, but the mechanics behind it. As long as it 'feels' fun, I dont mind playing whatever. It was one of the things that really attracted me to WoW. I had a lot of fun healing with mouseover macros, and that was basically what hooked me for a long time.
In the end, you can only know when you actually play it. GW2 had a lot of innovative ideas aswell, but I didnt like the game at all. Really curious how EQN will turn out. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this.
On August 03 2013 19:08 On_Slaught wrote: Very awkward press conference.
Having said that, I loved the original EQ and this game looks like it has A LOT of potential. My concern is that there is so many new things that they individually don't get the polish they deserve. Also, i'm apprehensive (a word I learned as a kid playing the first EQ lol) about some of the mechanics working in a MMO environment. Specifically the emergent AI and destructibility.
Rallying calls were the weakest part to me. First off, 2-3 months estimated time to complete means they'll be done in the first week. Second, it seems really pointless to call it permanent change when it's inevitable and without choice. If it's going to happen anyways, even if it takes my server a little longer to complete, it seems more like just another planned event rather than something game changing. He didn't mention this, but I really hope you can FAIL these rallying calls if you don't complete them after X amount of time, otherwise meh. Also, I'm apprehensive (there it is again) about hyping up 1 time events as positive for players joining later. If I join the game late and I ask my friend who joined at launch what happened and he explains all this cool shit like in the press conference I think i'd be pissed more than anything knowing I don't get to experience any of that, unless they start recycling things at which point it isn't very permanent.
I can see myself playing this game and will follow it very closely.
Runescape 3 is currently having a large 'world changing' event that probably similar to what the Rallying calls are (atleast, I kinda hope). How Jagex is handling it is cutting these event into 'pieces'. For example, right now everyone is just gathering resources of magical energy for the god that they are following (only two, so far) and after awhile Jagex will continue on with the event and what happens next is determined on how the players performed. It's only the beginning, so it's just starting out very simple, but it's the players deciding how the game will be in the future.
So, I don't think you're going to outright fail the Rallying calls, but you're deciding the outcome with your decisions and actions. I guess it's still counts as a whole planned event, but it still feels like you're actions mean something, making history.
Kind of surprised none of the new information from today or last nights panel's made it into this thread. Most of the questions and concerns raised here were explained in more detail in them, I'm not really sure how much TL police's linking to other websites, so hopefully no one gets mad at me.
http://www.eqnexus.com/ has some summary's posted up from the panels, they are pretty brief, but explain some things.
This game looked amazingly impressive to me, I loved the art style as well as the ideas they pitched. It's an MMO and it's early days so I won't be holding my breath.
On August 04 2013 10:13 LagLovah wrote: Kind of surprised none of the new information from today or last nights panel's made it into this thread. Most of the questions and concerns raised here were explained in more detail in them, I'm not really sure how much TL police's linking to other websites, so hopefully no one gets mad at me.
http://www.eqnexus.com/ has some summary's posted up from the panels, they are pretty brief, but explain some things.
Do you think it's safe to say that they're completely eschewing the raiding game as we know it? I wonder how they're going to push the skill ceiling in PvE; typically large-scale open-world stuff is pretty limiting in design, as the more people you factor in, the lower the lowest common denominator goes.
I've never played everquest, and i thought i've grown too old already for another mmo, but man, this looks truely sandbox and unique. Looking forward to this, i think i'm wating more for Landmark, to see what people are able to create.
On August 04 2013 10:13 LagLovah wrote: Kind of surprised none of the new information from today or last nights panel's made it into this thread. Most of the questions and concerns raised here were explained in more detail in them, I'm not really sure how much TL police's linking to other websites, so hopefully no one gets mad at me.
http://www.eqnexus.com/ has some summary's posted up from the panels, they are pretty brief, but explain some things.
Thanks. To be fair, it is weekend and it's summer. Beach time even for the nerds ;-D
I think one of the reasons why AAA titles are going for more cartoony art styles is because it lends itself to a more expressive attire for characters and higher degree of recognizability over bigger distances. I mean you'll be playing with things that are pretty much action hero figure sized and so if they were completely realistic it'd be more difficult to show emotions/expressions in character faces and they'd look very much alike unless you looked very carefully.
On August 05 2013 12:49 salle wrote: I think one of the reasons why AAA titles are going for more cartoony art styles is because it lends itself to a more expressive attire for characters and higher degree of recognizability over bigger distances. I mean you'll be playing with things that are pretty much action hero figure sized and so if they were completely realistic it'd be more difficult to show emotions/expressions in character faces and they'd look very much alike unless you looked very carefully.
In an MMO having a cohesive art style where nothing seems glaringly out of place, whether it swings cartoony or realistic, seems more important to me anyway.
I also think it is easier to make cartoony look better on weaker machines. I'd prefer more realistic style, as well, but cartoony is something I can still be perfectly happy with.
So how long until the whole world looks like a swiss cheese?
That's really my main concern. Destructibility is cool and all, but the world will just look shit after a week. Or have they talked about some kind of system to prevent that?
On August 05 2013 12:49 salle wrote: I think one of the reasons why AAA titles are going for more cartoony art styles is because it lends itself to a more expressive attire for characters and higher degree of recognizability over bigger distances. I mean you'll be playing with things that are pretty much action hero figure sized and so if they were completely realistic it'd be more difficult to show emotions/expressions in character faces and they'd look very much alike unless you looked very carefully.
In an MMO having a cohesive art style where nothing seems glaringly out of place, whether it swings cartoony or realistic, seems more important to me anyway.
Truth is, some people like cartoony, some dont. Some people like anime-ish characters, others dont. You cant please both, and even if you try go for a mix of both, there will always be people who think its not cartoony or not realistic enough. The only real solution to this problem would be to offer both, but they arent going to do that for obvious reasons. In the end they will have to pick one of the styles. Despite what people may like / dislike, the game can still be a lot of fun in other areas, so I dont think we should be too focussed on wether its 'disney-ish' or not, because there are many other things that can make or break a game. We have had games that were supercartoony be succesful, and games that were really realistic be succesful, so it seems a non-issue to me.
On August 05 2013 12:49 salle wrote: I think one of the reasons why AAA titles are going for more cartoony art styles is because it lends itself to a more expressive attire for characters and higher degree of recognizability over bigger distances. I mean you'll be playing with things that are pretty much action hero figure sized and so if they were completely realistic it'd be more difficult to show emotions/expressions in character faces and they'd look very much alike unless you looked very carefully.
There are many reasons but I think one of the more significant is that it's cheaper and more interesting.
'Realism' is something we can easily pick apart, you can spend a tonne of money and dev time working on seriously gorgeous 'realistic' character design and environments which will all be ruined when some of your animations look a little stiff and you catapult yourself into the uncanny valley, our minds don't over process more cartoony styles so we are more forgiving of unavoidable problems.
More stylized art styles have the advantage of not requiring huge poly counts to look good but also as you said you can then use the art direction as more of an indicator gameplay wise, unique silhouettes identify certain classes, environments can be more varied as you don't have to constantly reuse assets. Characters can emote easier, sure a game like The Last of Us blew people away with realistic looking emotive characters but at the same time characters in The Wind Waker were also hugely expressive with just a little cartoon face.
MMO's are massive and to create a hugely realistic looking one to the graphical standards expected of today is just too much really. So really when given a choice between standing out, spending less, keeping artists happy and creative as well as being able to push art direction to suit the game rather than changing the game to suit a realistic art direction there really aren't many good reasons.
You can argue for a grittier, darker art style that isn't realistic but I still think that would rely too heavily on a robust lighting engine and a bunch of other fairly demanding things which MMO's just aren't really capable of right now, especially when you consider that you need to have relatively low requirements to ensure a varied player base.
So in short I think these kinds of art styles are chosen for budgeting and engine reasons primarily but also because they offer a bunch of other advantages with the only real downside being some fans would prefer a 'gritty' look.
In EQ2 they had two options for character models. You could choose the old models or the SOGA models. The models in Next are so drastically different that I doubt this it would be feasible for players to choose between cartoony and realistic.
The thing is, the environments don't look all that cartoony to me. They are pushing this ultra realistic world...destructable terrain, meaningful choices, characters shaping the world...and it's peopled by Disney characters?
I don't buy the hardware argument either. EQ2 did just fine with their art style and performance on a broad range of machines.
Well, EQ2 on release wasn't quite stable, specially raids where you had to tone down all the graphics (i have a few screenshots with others people characters all black). Other example is Age of Conan.
To be honest, while i disliked at first WoW cartoonish graphics when it was released, compared to EQ2, at the end the graphics were good enough, the engine was solid and you could see the difference between classes due to their look, something harder to achieve with realistic graphics.
Was wondering if I would be able to find that lol. I get that some people really like the art direction. That's fine. In the end we are both gonna be in game...you will just be a little happier than I am. I just need to bitch about it some.
The EQ games have always been my favorite for pve (it's a shame EQ2 got screwed by multi-core processors). But this obviously isn't a traditional EQ name, just an MMO they want to build piggybacking off of the EQ name. The graphics, sound, and player development are all great. But to be honest, I'm dissapointed with the combat direction. I like MMO's for the traditional raids and dungeon crawling, targeted combat, and all of that because it just works. This combat leads me to believe that this game is being developed for PS4 as well. It seems wild and out of control, and definitely will not deliver the immersive EQ dungeon crawling experience.
Just get that feeling that this will be a very casual game, opposite what the series is known for.
On August 05 2013 23:07 Godwrath wrote: Well, EQ2 on release wasn't quite stable, specially raids where you had to tone down all the graphics (i have a few screenshots with others people characters all black). Other example is Age of Conan.
To be honest, while i disliked at first WoW cartoonish graphics when it was released, compared to EQ2, at the end the graphics were good enough, the engine was solid and you could see the difference between classes due to their look, something harder to achieve with realistic graphics.
The EQ2 engine was designed to run on a single core processor, because that's how the industry was moving at the time. I'm pretty sure the engine was heavily CPU bound that was banking on the industry continuing to push more power into a single core. I think to this day EQ2 doesn't have proper multi-core optimization.
EQ next looks like it's running on the same engine as Planetside 2? That renders tons of realistic characters on the screen at the same time with a good frame rate, so the technology isn't that much of an issue anymore. The cartoony graphics style just seems to attract more attention for some reason.
Why does the idea of moving to fight instead of standing still face tanking dmg because you have resistance gear, while pressing the same 1-2 buttons for a damage rotation immediately make peiple think 'casual'. Or is it the art dirextion that makes you all say that.
Really think about what your asking for, eq raids in classic were 50 people stabding ina corner of fear hate air, single pulling mobs maybe 1 every 5-10 minutes. What kind of modern mmo player would stand for that.
We had our hardcore mmo releases. Vanguard and eq2 both released around the same time as wow, and both failed miserably in comparison. What about full open world exploration style with no set quests or linear path, no outside resource to cheat your way through content makes you think casual. No maps, too casual. Honestly read aome of what they have planned before you complain about the direction the game is taking. Nothing i have read has made me think they aim is to make a simple ezmode game.
On August 06 2013 00:19 LagLovah wrote: Why does the idea of moving to fight instead of standing still face tanking dmg because you have resistance gear, while pressing the same 1-2 buttons for a damage rotation immediately make peiple think 'casual'. Or is it the art dirextion that makes you all say that.
Really think about what your asking for, eq raids in classic were 50 people stabding ina corner of fear hate air, single pulling mobs maybe 1 every 5-10 minutes. What kind of modern mmo player would stand for that.
We had our hardcore mmo releases. Vanguard and eq2 both released around the same time as wow, and both failed miserably in comparison. What about full open world exploration style with no set quests or linear path, no outside resource to cheat your way through content makes you think casual. No maps, too casual. Honestly read aome of what they have planned before you complain about the direction the game is taking. Nothing i have read has made me think they aim is to make a simple ezmode game.
"What kind of difficulty can we be expecting here? There's a lot of commentary about how MMOs feel a little too easy. Where does Everquest Next sit on the scale?"
"Well, risk and reward is what MMOs are all about. I would not call this game a hardcore MMO. We want something that is accessible to a larger number of people but we want to make sure it's balanced with good gameplay and interesting things that will keep people interested."
I am pretty sure this game is going to be a casual funtime minecraft abomination, and it's going to get a thorough dose of the Planetside 2 treatment, which is to say they will ruin what's left of the franchise
Oh lord it's free to play? I guess I missed that detail. That kills it for me. As lame as it sounds, I try to be immersed in the game that I'm playing, and that's what Everquest 1 and 2 did the best. Nothing kills that more than F2P / Micro transaction stuff. I don't want to see any dollar signs, or be reminded of what I could be doing if I pay this, etc.
The game can still be decent, but now I'm a little offended that they named it Everquest.
"Will power be sold in EQ? What can players purchase?"
"We're not going into details about what our micro-transactions will be but it's going to be a free-to-play game."
".. 'kay."
Awkward silence - where was the indignant huff at the very notion that power could be brokered in his game? - unfolds for a moment before it's broken by the next question.
Urgghh... i'm soooooo skeptical. SOE is capable of producing magic, but I don't think that's their priority. I'll let things process in my head for a while. : /
F2p? Oh god. My expectations just took a nosedive. Considering SOE's take on f2p, I can't foresee this ending well. No matter the good ideas for how the game will play and the enviroment / AI will work, the business model will wreck it.
F2P is no thanks on my part as well, I tried out Rift very briefly and it was annoying to say the least to notice all the micro transactions shortcuts ou gameplay limitations that you have to pay for.
The permanent change and terrain destruction is probably a bad idea as well... Giant carved penis all over...
On August 06 2013 00:52 s0Lstice wrote: floor exercise...did you play Planetside 2 at all?
I played it in beta, I thought it was really impressive visually, especially at night, but the gameplay was just incredibly bad. I played PS1 as well but not regularly, and I had plenty of fun with it, but PS2 is probably one of the least enjoyable FPS games I've played. Not Brink bad but it was just a bland experience.
Maybe EQN will be good, but as of now I'm not very optimistic given SOE's track record dating back to Vanguard. Right now I envision a game like DCUO with awkward building, and an overall lacking experience. Time will certainly tell though
It had lots of different and original classes, no global cooldown crap, very very good special effects for its time, huge important questchains, open world dungeons where multiple groups had to live together, challenging bosses without performing dance choeographies every fight and the really cool healing system where 3 types of healers did different things and helped each other out instead of healers fighting over heals per second.
But then the game got mismanaged and made into a WoW clone and people just left, making it ultimately a F2P game on lifesupport. They saw WoW and got greedy and removed all the fun things from the game and instanced everything "for the casual gamer". But the casual gamer apparently didnt play their bills and now the hardcore does neither.
I have no faith that eqnext will be a good game. They did not learn anything.
On August 06 2013 04:40 LaNague wrote: EQ2 was my favourite mmo in its prime.
It had lots of different and original classes, no global cooldown crap, very very good special effects for its time, huge important questchains, open world dungeons where multiple groups had to live together, challenging bosses without performing dance choeographies every fight and the really cool healing system where 3 types of healers did different things and helped each other out instead of healers fighting over heals per second.
But then the game got mismanaged and made into a WoW clone and people just left, making it ultimately a F2P game on lifesupport. They saw WoW and got greedy and removed all the fun things from the game and instanced everything "for the casual gamer". But the casual gamer apparently didnt play their bills and now the hardcore does neither.
I have no faith that eqnext will be a good game. They did not learn anything.
I doubt it's that simple. They probably revamped EQ2 to resemble WoW not for straight up greed, but to survive. If you remember WoW used to dominate online gaming. Regardless, EQ Next not only looks visually stunning, but they're incorporating some borderline revolutionary ideas that could make for a unique MMO experience if pulled off well.
On August 06 2013 00:52 s0Lstice wrote: floor exercise...did you play Planetside 2 at all?
I played it in beta, I thought it was really impressive visually, especially at night, but the gameplay was just incredibly bad. I played PS1 as well but not regularly, and I had plenty of fun with it, but PS2 is probably one of the least enjoyable FPS games I've played. Not Brink bad but it was just a bland experience.
Maybe EQN will be good, but as of now I'm not very optimistic given SOE's track record dating back to Vanguard. Right now I envision a game like DCUO with awkward building, and an overall lacking experience. Time will certainly tell though
I played beta as well, and I left with much the same impressions you did. I know SOE can drop some turds which is why I'm terrified...EQ is one of my fav franchises of all time. I probably liked EQ2 more than most (happily played and raided for years), and the same goes for EQ. You remind me though that its probably best to temper expectations given their track record. This could so easily go the route of PS2 : /
As far as WoW being a dominant force...I always contest this. Yes, in terms of subscribers it blew everyone else out of the water. I will never agree though that it was because they were releasing a superior product. The amount of feed they got from Blizzard fans was astronomical...there are plenty of people who would play anything Blizzard released. Can the same be said for most of MMO makers? I'm not saying WoW was a bad game by any means, just that there were TONS of people already predisposed to picking it up based on their time spent in BW, Diablo, WC and the like. They get free subs from the non-MMO inclined crowd. Once it gets to a certain point, the success becomes self-sustaining. Now you are drawing subs from non-gamers even, because it has become too big to go unnoticed.
Right company, right time, good game...but WoW wasn't popular because it was, in terms of quality, loads better than it's competition imo.
I agree with that it was a wrong choice from SOE to try to revamp EQ2 to be more like WOW, because you have to find your place on the industry at the right times. They tried to go against WoW, and they failed because it was already stablished and very ahead, they should had continued building their game with and for the customers they already gained from EQ and expand from there.
About quality, It depends on what you were expecting out of the game. As an EQ1 player, EQ2 was alright (quite buggy tho and i hated how the freaking limited my ability to kite if i fucking wanted to, their pack system really killed part of the magic that EQ had with the creativity on killing mobs). And i tried WoW with very low expectations (very very low, specially if you played EQ that watching WoW it was like oh look a game for kiddies) and then i ended up playing it 2 years straight like with the same passion that when i started playing 4 years before.
What WoW accomplished was to make it right at the right moment. Vanilla was a good mix of a decent pvp and pve experience on a world that outside dungeons, it felt like more like a world (unlike EQ and EQ2 which were heavily instanced or "zone based"). Not to speak that when you speak about quality... you can't forget that no MMORPG has been released to the date with a combat as responsive as WoW, most mmo's have a disgustingly clunky combat system, with animations not matching damage/combat log, irresponsiveness, etc. You can dislike the combat mechanichs, but you have to give it to them when it comes of how polished it felt. And i feel that's about it, the game was solid, was polished and the bug count was really low.
The only things that really saved face from EQ2 against WoW at release were the open dungeons in my opinion, and that's where they should had expanded.
And yes, many people tried it out because of being a blizzard game. But subscriptions didn't really skyrocketted until way later on (it started with only 1,5 million active accounts the first Quarter, , it was a lot at the time if we take into account the maximum amount of subscribers EQ had, but nothing compared with what it achieved two years later for example, closing 2007 with already 10 million active accounts).
The Class Q&A was the worst Q&A I've ever seen. They literally dodge like 30% of the questions and they seem to know how YOU want to play their game (when people even say that don't want to do 'x'). The more and more I read/watch regarding this game makes me dislike it even more.
The Class Q&A was the worst Q&A I've ever seen. They literally dodge like 30% of the questions and they seem to know how YOU want to play their game (when people even say that don't want to do 'x'). The more and more I read/watch regarding this game makes me dislike it even more.
Yeah, after watching it i am quite cynical towards the game. It feels like they want to do a LoL MMORPG.
No healer class.... Why are they doing GW2, I like GW2 However I LOVE healing, so i dont play it because of that reason. GDI i had so much hope for this game now it looks like i can forget it unless they changes some things.
Everything they claim to want to and are going to be doing feels just, so out of reach. I'd really like to get beta access and see how this stuff actually works and what it will evolve into for release before speculating that they are terrible people on the small snippets of information we have been given.
Nobody said there wouldn't be healers. They said they aren't moving entirely away from roles, just that they want their content to be solvable by group permutations that lie outside of the holy trinity
The Class Q&A was the worst Q&A I've ever seen. They literally dodge like 30% of the questions and they seem to know how YOU want to play their game (when people even say that don't want to do 'x'). The more and more I read/watch regarding this game makes me dislike it even more.
Eh, they're probably just not entirely sure on the direction they want to go in. It sounds like they have a general plan laid out with the whole cross class design, but the details they probably just aren't ready to explain yet.
The Class Q&A was the worst Q&A I've ever seen. They literally dodge like 30% of the questions and they seem to know how YOU want to play their game (when people even say that don't want to do 'x'). The more and more I read/watch regarding this game makes me dislike it even more.
Eh, they're probably just not entirely sure on the direction they want to go in. It sounds like they have a general plan laid out with the whole cross class design, but the details they probably just aren't ready to explain yet.
The whole EQ:Next debut stuff was to please the stockholders anyway, this was very very early to show things.
Unless they wanted to get EQ:N Landmark going so they don't have to do all the creative terrain work later.
So, is the game really going to be called EverQuest: Next? Although, it was only the reveal, it seems like they have solidified the name with the game and Landmark.
On August 06 2013 13:24 Madder wrote: So, is the game really going to be called EverQuest: Next? Although, it was only the reveal, it seems like they have solidified the name with the game and Landmark.
If the game turns out to not be like EverQuest at all in the slightest ("but it's reimagined!"), it shouldn't deserve the label.
Think the main reason they didnt pick EQ3 was to make sure everyone know it is not a sequel to EQ and EQ2. From the info of the Lore panel, I wouldnt be suprise of Venril Sathir isn't evil anymore (well not as evil lol).
On August 06 2013 13:24 Madder wrote: So, is the game really going to be called EverQuest: Next? Although, it was only the reveal, it seems like they have solidified the name with the game and Landmark.
If the game turns out to not be like EverQuest at all in the slightest ("but it's reimagined!"), it shouldn't deserve the label.
Just because they're attempting at changing the direction of the series, it doesn't mean it doesn't 'deserve' the EQ name. I really didn't get your point there.
On August 06 2013 13:24 Madder wrote: So, is the game really going to be called EverQuest: Next? Although, it was only the reveal, it seems like they have solidified the name with the game and Landmark.
I wonder how many of the people calling for eq classic with HD really understand what they are asking for, some classes literally had 2 abilities at level cap(monk/warrior), the extremely long downtimes(does no one remember the 'buffing' break, where you had to wait probably 10-12 minutes after buffs just to mana up), the class hatred, I mean back then if you were a druid you could still find a group naive enough to take you, if you tried that now, every group would be the same: Warrior shaman rogue enc/bard cleric.
Remember trying to do dungeons at 50 in classic? it was /who all cleric 46 50 and systematically trying to bribe barter convince one of them to come with you, if you couldn't find one you literally sat in whatever area you were until one joined, because you could not solo any content(druids/necros could, but found derision and hate in groups), you couldn't duo trio quad or anything without a primary healing class. A tricked out warrior with the best gear could kill maybe 1 mob that was 14 levels below him at a time, if that mob was a running type he would die trying to chase it 100% of the time.
The min maxing elitism of players these days would make everything else obsolete. Go watch some twitch streams of project1999 if you doubt it.
The IP has more to do with the lore and the world than the gameplay style anyways, it is clearly an everquest game, same gods same cities same world, races, classes.
The Class Q&A was the worst Q&A I've ever seen. They literally dodge like 30% of the questions and they seem to know how YOU want to play their game (when people even say that don't want to do 'x'). The more and more I read/watch regarding this game makes me dislike it even more.
Which is the same thing blizzard did with D3 (You don't know what is fun, WE KNOW), and well, that turned out all right..
On August 06 2013 22:35 marcjpb wrote: Think the main reason they didnt pick EQ3 was to make sure everyone know it is not a sequel to EQ and EQ2. From the info of the Lore panel, I wouldnt be suprise of Venril Sathir isn't evil anymore (well not as evil lol).
That's true enough! The re-imagined setting gives leeway to any changes/retcons to the lore.
On August 06 2013 23:15 cozzE wrote: Just because they're attempting at changing the direction of the series, it doesn't mean it doesn't 'deserve' the EQ name. I really didn't get your point there.
Honestly, this new direction could very well hold it's own without the 'EQ' label to guarantee success.
On August 06 2013 23:50 Noocta wrote: They own the IP, they can call it whatever they want. Do you really believe people making games care about the legacy of a name ?
Im in the middle on this one, I am a big victim of taking the MMO bait with games like Warhammer/SWTOR/GW2
Its starting to feel like the MMO job now a days is "how can we say were going to do a bunch of shit that we can make it look like were going to develop so people will buy on release. Then once the game is out the feature really is just half-assed.
A great example of this is GW2, they really were hell-bent on the idea of "Everything you do will change the game and have major consequences!" When the trolls burn the house down.... They burn the house down! I loved that and I instantly bought the game for that idea of an MMO only to end up that my consequences were not game breaking at all and usually respawned next time I came back on the game, there really wasnt anything dynamic about it the company totally overplayed an idea like that to market the game.
Thats where I begin to fear this game, the second they brought up the "Oh well the orcs are going to go where they like and yada yada, That sounds really good on paper, but when it comes down to playing it I just know this is not going to work in an MMO game, it will still feel like just killing another spawn of said monster.
Same thing with the rally call, All of these public quests just dont feel right to me, it always feels overplayed and cheesy and not real because the devs are forcing a situation on you rather than something happening naturally.
The destructibilty thing/parkour thing is a huge YES, that is some good development there IMO. These are minor hings that will add way more realism to the game and make the MMO feel more vibrant, I was pretty blown away by those things.
Did anyone else get really excited when he said the first holy grail, I thought he had some ridiclous idea that would somehow blow my mind, and then he killed it instantly going, You can be more than one class! ............... Theres so many games that have done that now, not a holy grail.
All in all, I have the same worry about these games now a days and this one I am just as skeptical. They promise these huge things that is going to make the MMO be a true living world!!! And then 2 weeks in, you realize your playing WoW with a differant name.....
I think the problem with all these MMO's that are coming out is that there is to much restriction in these games. You get all these companys trying really hard to make a living world where your choices matter, but end up with games that are way to Your char will experience A>>>>>>>B. Devs need to make games that stop babysitting the players and instead let the players create there own experience.
I didnt play EQ, but instead played Asheron's Call at the time of EQ's prime. Asheron's Call really drove home the idea of an MMO as there was so much freedom in the game, a true sandbox MMO. But it went past that, there were no factions, so you know what happened? People began forming there own factions/guilds. There were no cheeesy quests like "kill 10 rabbits," you popped into the world and you had to discover everything and meet people and change. When I died in Asheron's Call in PvP, I could lose that amazing piece of armor I found the other day. Death hurt in that game. To the point where the factions in the game were actually man made because the trolls/bad guys formed guilds that would loot on kill everytime, so I became part of the guilds that made a pact to never loot. So we were always in constant struggle. And better yet it wasnt in some damn Keep that the devs thought "oh hai they could have a cool battle in a castle, so lets have 100 guys zerg a door down. No, these battles were all over the world, we began to hunt these guilds and find them in the world an eradicate them from places. It was an online culture created battle, that blew any "dynamic" MMO out of the water simply because the devs of AC realized the players can create all the reality and drama a MMO could ever need.
Thats what MMO's are missing now a days, that sense of wonder has been killed by "kill ten rabbits, but hey! now that you killed the ten rabbits the grass is going to grow really high!!! See what we did there ???!!? YOUR IN A REAL WORLD now(until you log off and the rabbits are back). Theres to much of okay you go to this zone, then this zone, then this zone blah blah blah. Level this class up! Oh we dont want you to drop loot when you die in PvP because then dieing would actually have a consequence.
On August 07 2013 16:52 XXXSmOke wrote: Im in the middle on this one, I am a big victim of taking the MMO bait with games like Warhammer/SWTOR/GW2
Its starting to feel like the MMO job now a days is "how can we say were going to do a bunch of shit that we can make it look like were going to develop so people will buy on release. Then once the game is out the feature really is just half-assed.
A great example of this is GW2, they really were hell-bent on the idea of "Everything you do will change the game and have major consequences!" When the trolls burn the house down.... They burn the house down! I loved that and I instantly bought the game for that idea of an MMO only to end up that my consequences were not game breaking at all and usually respawned next time I came back on the game, there really wasnt anything dynamic about it the company totally overplayed an idea like that to market the game.
Thats where I begin to fear this game, the second they brought up the "Oh well the orcs are going to go where they like and yada yada, That sounds really good on paper, but when it comes down to playing it I just know this is not going to work in an MMO game, it will still feel like just killing another spawn of said monster.
Same thing with the rally call, All of these public quests just dont feel right to me, it always feels overplayed and cheesy and not real because the devs are forcing a situation on you rather than something happening naturally.
The destructibilty thing/parkour thing is a huge YES, that is some good development there IMO. These are minor hings that will add way more realism to the game and make the MMO feel more vibrant, I was pretty blown away by those things.
Did anyone else get really excited when he said the first holy grail, I thought he had some ridiclous idea that would somehow blow my mind, and then he killed it instantly going, You can be more than one class! ............... Theres so many games that have done that now, not a holy grail.
All in all, I have the same worry about these games now a days and this one I am just as skeptical. They promise these huge things that is going to make the MMO be a true living world!!! And then 2 weeks in, you realize your playing WoW with a differant name.....
I think the problem with all these MMO's that are coming out is that there is to much restriction in these games. You get all these companys trying really hard to make a living world where your choices matter, but end up with games that are way to Your char will experience A>>>>>>>B. Devs need to make games that stop babysitting the players and instead let the players create there own experience.
I didnt play EQ, but instead played Asheron's Call at the time of EQ's prime. Asheron's Call really drove home the idea of an MMO as there was so much freedom in the game, a true sandbox MMO. But it went past that, there were no factions, so you know what happened? People began forming there own factions/guilds. There were no cheeesy quests like "kill 10 rabbits," you popped into the world and you had to discover everything and meet people and change. When I died in Asheron's Call in PvP, I could lose that amazing piece of armor I found the other day. Death hurt in that game. To the point where the factions in the game were actually man made because the trolls/bad guys formed guilds that would loot on kill everytime, so I became part of the guilds that made a pact to never loot. So we were always in constant struggle. And better yet it wasnt in some damn Keep that the devs thought "oh hai they could have a cool battle in a castle, so lets have 100 guys zerg a door down. No, these battles were all over the world, we began to hunt these guilds and find them in the world an eradicate them from places. It was an online culture created battle, that blew any "dynamic" MMO out of the water simply because the devs of AC realized the players can create all the reality and drama a MMO could ever need.
Thats what MMO's are missing now a days, that sense of wonder has been killed by "kill ten rabbits, but hey! now that you killed the ten rabbits the grass is going to grow really high!!! See what we did there ???!!? YOUR IN A REAL WORLD now(until you log off and the rabbits are back). Theres to much of okay you go to this zone, then this zone, then this zone blah blah blah. Level this class up! Oh we dont want you to drop loot when you die in PvP because then dieing would actually have a consequence.
I really like how you worded some of this stuff, and I share some of your sentiments. Every time a new MMO promising big things comes out, I hope they can pull it off, but so far, I've only been disappointed. So, EQnext, forgive our scepticism.
When I hear about EQ: next it's always "Hey check out this future great MMO!" but after looking at videos, panels and presentation I'm really not buying the hype. Yes it looks goods compared to MMO now availablethat was being made 4-5years ago but it's really not that impressive compared to other game being designed right now on Cry engine 3 or Unreal engine 4 like destiny, Star Citizen, Archeage but in the end graphics are not the most important afterall. Dynamic event/public quest are nice but they really need to stop overhyping it like it's the discovery of electricity. It was well done in Guild Wars 2, but it should be completed with story/class/race specific campaign or it just feels like not enough or atleast not diversified enough.
The multiclass is not a bad thing and having choices and possibiliites in character customization is always good and has already been done succefully in Runes of Magic or The secret world for example. What killed GW2 in the end I feel is the simplified skill/class system that restrict how you play mainly by your weapons choice and their rejection of the trinity roles in traditionnal MMORPG for PvE group play that just made everything weird and probably complicated their design process of balancing anything PvE wise.
The environment destruction possibility is the lamest most hyped feature for new generation games. I mean it's been some times that game engines allow destruction of superficial layers of building/texture and I don't see how good it'll be in the end after the "oh this is funny" feeling fades.
I'm played too much, seen too much, read too much feature presentation, pure hype build and then see that the final product just fall short as a whole to be optimistic for this.
global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
The skills system is a mix of GW and TSW. 8 skills slots, 4 weapons slots that will depend on the class and weapon equipped like GW2 you then have 4 character skills slots that will depend on the class equipped(example 2 movement, 1 offensive 1 utility or 1movement, 1utility 1 defensive 1 offensive etc). You can choose to put in the character skill slots any character skill you learned previously that match the slot type.
On August 08 2013 00:21 FFGenerations wrote: global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
No news for PvP yet afaik. Although I'm with you. I really want another MMO where you can world PvP. Wildstar seems to have it apparently. I know world pvp is often ganking on poor PvE players doing their stuff, making them whine and thus the feature is not popular, but I had my best times pre flying mount in WoW because of that.
World PvP in WoW before battlegrounds was a golden era for MMO's. Some of my best memories are the huge battles that took place in between crossroads and ashenvale and Tarren Mill. Once PvP was instanced it sucked the life out of it. To this day I can't get over the fact that there's capture the flag or other stupid objectives in every game.
I personally think the standard trinity for dungeon crawling is the best way to go. A lot of games tried to copy the success of WoW and failed but it wasn't because of the features. The problem in my eyes with MMO's these days is how well they're made. Half of the games I've tried I can't even run straight without me thinking it looks horrible. Companies that don't have tip-top talent shouldn't be developing MMO's, because the most popular games just feel right. Seriously, if I were directing game development I would fund smoothness and polish as top priority over anything else.
I loved raiding in WoW but it just got boring. Not the design and features of the game, though. FPS games are still going strong with the same basic features. Personally, all I want is the next great EQ/WoW raiding game with fresh classes, graphics, talent trees, items, etc.
On August 08 2013 00:21 FFGenerations wrote: global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
No news for PvP yet afaik. Although I'm with you. I really want another MMO where you can world PvP. Wildstar seems to have it apparently. I know world pvp is often ganking on poor PvE players doing their stuff, making them whine and thus the feature is not popular, but I had my best times pre flying mount in WoW because of that.
I think Lineage 2 has by far the best world pvp design. Open world pvp needs to have real consequences and risks so that it doesn't just turn into mindless griefing, which definitely happened from time to time in WoW and other similar games. I don't know who honestly enjoyed one shotting people half their level, but that mechanic only promoted annoyance. Luckily that sort of shit died down a lot after instanced pvp became a normal thing.
On August 08 2013 01:48 Gentso wrote: World PvP in WoW before battlegrounds was a golden era for MMO's. Some of my best memories are the huge battles that took place in between crossroads and ashenvale and Tarren Mill. Once PvP was instanced it sucked the life out of it. To this day I can't get over the fact that there's capture the flag or other stupid objectives in every game.
I personally think the standard trinity for dungeon crawling is the best way to go. A lot of games tried to copy the success of WoW and failed but it wasn't because of the features. The problem in my eyes with MMO's these days is how well they're made. Half of the games I've tried I can't even run straight without me thinking it looks horrible. Companies that don't have tip-top talent shouldn't be developing MMO's, because the most popular games just feel right. Seriously, if I were directing game development I would fund smoothness and polish as top priority over anything else.
I loved raiding in WoW but it just got boring. Not the design and features of the game, though. FPS games are still going strong with the same basic features. Personally, all I want is the next great EQ/WoW raiding game with fresh classes, graphics, talent trees, items, etc.
You think graphics is the thing that makes or breaks the game? I will have to disagree with you here. I think there are more important things that are giving these new MMO's trouble. GW2, WoW, etc their weak points aren't graphics. No matter how good you make the graphics, if you don't have some damn good gameplay, or something that keeps the game interesting to your brain, the game is going to get boring. There are plenty of good-looking games out there, but if they don't have any good content in them, you are going to get bored of them one day. Just like women. Jk.
Graphics work like sex-appeal. It's great to attract people, but it doesn't make people stick around. It's the contents that does.
On August 08 2013 01:48 Gentso wrote: World PvP in WoW before battlegrounds was a golden era for MMO's. Some of my best memories are the huge battles that took place in between crossroads and ashenvale and Tarren Mill. Once PvP was instanced it sucked the life out of it. To this day I can't get over the fact that there's capture the flag or other stupid objectives in every game.
I personally think the standard trinity for dungeon crawling is the best way to go. A lot of games tried to copy the success of WoW and failed but it wasn't because of the features. The problem in my eyes with MMO's these days is how well they're made. Half of the games I've tried I can't even run straight without me thinking it looks horrible. Companies that don't have tip-top talent shouldn't be developing MMO's, because the most popular games just feel right. Seriously, if I were directing game development I would fund smoothness and polish as top priority over anything else.
I loved raiding in WoW but it just got boring. Not the design and features of the game, though. FPS games are still going strong with the same basic features. Personally, all I want is the next great EQ/WoW raiding game with fresh classes, graphics, talent trees, items, etc.
You think graphics is the thing that makes or breaks the game? I will have to disagree with you here. I think there are more important things that are giving these new MMO's trouble. GW2, WoW, etc their weak points aren't graphics. No matter how good you make the graphics, if you don't have some damn good gameplay, or something that keeps the game interesting to your brain, the game is going to get boring. There are plenty of good-looking games out there, but if they don't have any good content in them, you are going to get bored of them one day. Just like women. Jk.
Graphics work like sex-appeal. It's great to attract people, but it doesn't make people stick around. It's the contents that does.
..........no. Only time I mentioned graphics is my ideal new game, and updated visuals is a given. I'm saying these MMO's that come out aren't smooth and well made to play. Awkward combat, movement, interfaces, etc are killing these games. Features are cherries on top imo.
On August 08 2013 00:21 FFGenerations wrote: global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
No news for PvP yet afaik. Although I'm with you. I really want another MMO where you can world PvP. Wildstar seems to have it apparently. I know world pvp is often ganking on poor PvE players doing their stuff, making them whine and thus the feature is not popular, but I had my best times pre flying mount in WoW because of that.
I think Lineage 2 has by far the best world pvp design. Open world pvp needs to have real consequences and risks so that it doesn't just turn into mindless griefing, which definitely happened from time to time in WoW and other similar games. I don't know who honestly enjoyed one shotting people half their level, but that mechanic only promoted annoyance. Luckily that sort of shit died down a lot after instanced pvp became a normal thing.
I never played Lineage 2, but I played vanilla WoW and loved the open world PvP which was largely without risk. It's hard to pin point exactly what made it fun, but part of it was the way it tied entire zones, and sometimes more, together. It would usually start out as simple griefing, often one shotting lower level players. However, once these lower level guys got their high level friends and/or alts, it would evolve into larger skirmishes. With luck, it could turn the whole zone into a complete disaster (in the good way), with people fetching others from main towns and high population zones. Now you would be dying a lot in these zone clusterfucks, but the consequences were insignificant which also compelled a greater amount of people to participate.
As I mentioned though, I haven't tried world PvP in other MMOs, so I can't really comment on whether or not I think this system is better than one with more severe consequences upon death. I just feel like there was lots of fun to be had in the more or less casual system of the early days of WoW.
On August 08 2013 03:00 Maxyim wrote: Can someone please give me a TLDR scoop on this? Why should we be excited? What kind of game is this even supposed to be?
Very shortly, It's an MMORPG with dynamic environment, including some elements close to builder type of games. ( like Minecraft )
On August 08 2013 03:00 Maxyim wrote: Can someone please give me a TLDR scoop on this? Why should we be excited? What kind of game is this even supposed to be?
Very shortly, It's an MMORPG with dynamic environment, including some elements close to builder type of games. ( like Minecraft )
Thanks, that is interesting enough for me to follow. I wonder how it will stack up to the likes of Wildstar and Camelot Unleashed.
On August 08 2013 00:21 FFGenerations wrote: global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
No news for PvP yet afaik. Although I'm with you. I really want another MMO where you can world PvP. Wildstar seems to have it apparently. I know world pvp is often ganking on poor PvE players doing their stuff, making them whine and thus the feature is not popular, but I had my best times pre flying mount in WoW because of that.
I think Lineage 2 has by far the best world pvp design. Open world pvp needs to have real consequences and risks so that it doesn't just turn into mindless griefing, which definitely happened from time to time in WoW and other similar games. I don't know who honestly enjoyed one shotting people half their level, but that mechanic only promoted annoyance. Luckily that sort of shit died down a lot after instanced pvp became a normal thing.
I never played Lineage 2, but I played vanilla WoW and loved the open world PvP which was largely without risk. It's hard to pin point exactly what made it fun, but part of it was the way it tied entire zones, and sometimes more, together. It would usually start out as simple griefing, often one shotting lower level players. However, once these lower level guys got their high level friends and/or alts, it would evolve into larger skirmishes. With luck, it could turn the whole zone into a complete disaster (in the good way), with people fetching others from main towns and high population zones. Now you would be dying a lot in these zone clusterfucks, but the consequences were insignificant which also compelled a greater amount of people to participate.
As I mentioned though, I haven't tried world PvP in other MMOs, so I can't really comment on whether or not I think this system is better than one with more severe consequences upon death. I just feel like there was lots of fun to be had in the more or less casual system of the early days of WoW.
Ahh yes, vanilla WoW world pvp could be crazy at times. I can remember having some fun battles in Booty Bay with guards chasing people way out into the water. Then there was of course the unofficial "start shit here" quest hub, Tarren Mill.
I think that it's safe to say that the past 6 or so years have proven one thing about MMOs - instanced PvP is the pits! Hopefully more devs start realizing this and fast...the only game that I have seen on the market that has really grasped this bull by
I think that it's safe to say that the past 6 or so years have proven one thing about MMOs - instanced PvP is the pits! Hopefully more devs start realizing this and fast...the only game that I have seen on the market that has really grasped this bull by the horns is Camelot Unchained.
On August 08 2013 00:21 FFGenerations wrote: global shadows and destructable terrain is pretty sick for immersion
i didnt like the look of that desert-like environment that they walked through. environments should be big broad fields, not narrow channels that you walk down the middle of like in a single player fps.
anyway no word on pvp? i thought ff14 might be pretty cool until i heard there is no pvp lol. whats the point? and the elder scrolls mmo has "you can teleport from anywhere, to anyone, at any time" going for it..(nice feature)
No news for PvP yet afaik. Although I'm with you. I really want another MMO where you can world PvP. Wildstar seems to have it apparently. I know world pvp is often ganking on poor PvE players doing their stuff, making them whine and thus the feature is not popular, but I had my best times pre flying mount in WoW because of that.
I think Lineage 2 has by far the best world pvp design. Open world pvp needs to have real consequences and risks so that it doesn't just turn into mindless griefing, which definitely happened from time to time in WoW and other similar games. I don't know who honestly enjoyed one shotting people half their level, but that mechanic only promoted annoyance. Luckily that sort of shit died down a lot after instanced pvp became a normal thing.
I never played Lineage 2, but I played vanilla WoW and loved the open world PvP which was largely without risk. It's hard to pin point exactly what made it fun, but part of it was the way it tied entire zones, and sometimes more, together. It would usually start out as simple griefing, often one shotting lower level players. However, once these lower level guys got their high level friends and/or alts, it would evolve into larger skirmishes. With luck, it could turn the whole zone into a complete disaster (in the good way), with people fetching others from main towns and high population zones. Now you would be dying a lot in these zone clusterfucks, but the consequences were insignificant which also compelled a greater amount of people to participate.
As I mentioned though, I haven't tried world PvP in other MMOs, so I can't really comment on whether or not I think this system is better than one with more severe consequences upon death. I just feel like there was lots of fun to be had in the more or less casual system of the early days of WoW.
Ahh yes, vanilla WoW world pvp could be crazy at times. I can remember having some fun battles in Booty Bay with guards chasing people way out into the water. Then there was of course the unofficial "start shit here" quest hub, Tarren Mill.
Stv, Silithus, Both Plaguelands, Tarren Mill, Un'Goro, Tanaris, searing gorge...
To be honest i had pvp in pretty much every zone. I used to lvl 2 hours a day, and pvp for the rest until i got to 60 lol.
On August 16 2013 13:22 TheRubicon wrote: Can someone tell me where i can find the lore books they spoke about, stand of the tier dal or fall of basion, something like that. Ty )~
Watched some streams. Seems there are two distinct kinds: builders and diggers. And that's about it. Dig, dig, dig, build, build, build, dig, dig, dig, build, build, build, dig, dig, dig, build, build, build.
On February 08 2014 08:50 figq wrote: Watched some streams. Seems there are two distinct kinds: builders and diggers. And that's about it. Dig, dig, dig, build, build, build, dig, dig, dig, build, build, build, dig, dig, dig, build, build, build.
Not much more than that right now no, but it's alpha, and it's actually in an alpha/beta state instead of the PR-machines we're used to seeing these past years. At release it will be much more of an MMORPG.
Tons of fun though even in it's current state, and SOE is being pretty awesome right now.
This is a panel not to be missed! Join us for the EverQuest Next keynote panel. More details to come! This event is part of our livestream schedule.
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
EverQuest Player Designed Missions 1
Want to know what it's like to make a mission? Come to our Mission Creation workshop and work together with a small group, led by an EverQuest developer, to design a mission for the game. Seating is limited, so come early!
2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
EverQuest Tournament
In Death, Death, Death, players will use pre-created characters for this event, and not their own in-game characters. Groups can only contain one of any specific class. This is a progression-based game where teams of six players have forty minutes to defeat as many boss mobs as possible. If a tie occurs, the tie-breaker will be determined by which team defeated their encounters in the shortest amount of time. Portions of this event are part of our livestream schedule.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
EverQuest Next: Fiction and Lore
Join our loremasters in exploring fantastic tales set within our re-imagined Norrath. We’ll answer your questions about the fiction released to date, and hint at the direction of stories to come.
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
EverQuest Next: The Tech Evolution of the World
Come and find out some of the details of how we got to the current technology being used in both EverQuest Next!
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
The Classes of EverQuest Next
Learn about how classes will work in EverQuest Next, including how to build your class and how that will impact combat. This event is part of our livestream schedule.
SATURDAY
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
EverQuest: Q&A
Have you always wanted to ask the EverQuest developers something? Bring your questions, concerns, and comments to our Q&A panel.
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
The Content of EverQuest Next
Learn more about how the team is working with Storybricks to create content in ways that will make the world of Norrath come alive in EverQuest Next.
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
EverQuest: Art
From concepts to completion. Take a look at how things are built for EverQuest and get a sneak peek at some upcoming creatures and environments.
SUNDAY
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
EverQuest: Player Designed Missions 2
Want to know what it's like to make a mission? Come to our Mission Creation workshop and work together with a small group, led by an EverQuest developer, to design a mission for the game. Seating is limited, so come early!
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
EverQuest: Q&A 2
Have you always wanted to ask the EverQuest developers something? Bring your questions, concerns, and comments to our Q&A panel.
It's been a while since we've heard much from SOE on EverQuest Next. Much of the past year has been about Landmark, the building and creative cousin of EverQuest Next. For months, EQN fans have been asking "when are you going to work on EverQuest Next?" What Dave Georgeson told us on Wednesday was that they have been working on Next the whole time... and it's called Landmark.
Now before we get confused about whether or not these are two separate games, let's clear that up: Landmark and Next are still two completely separate games. But every thing that's been added and built for Landmark use, is part of what you'll find in Next. The building tools, cave systems, water, monsters, combat... it's all going to be used in Next. Every piece of the tools used for creation in Landmark, is being used to help make EQ Next. And yes, so are the creations of the players. But the big news from our presentation with Dave was the announcement of three new classes: the Cleric, the Elementalist, and the Tempest.
Learn about how classes will work in EverQuest Next, including how to build your class and how that will impact combat. This event is part of our livestream schedule.
SoE say EverQuest Next to ‘turn the MMO genre upside-side down’ Revelations about SoE’s upcoming third installment of the long-running EverQuest franchise have arisen in an interview with CVG. SoE exec Laura Naviaux has let on that the relative silence surrounding the game to date is due to the fact the game shows a marked difference to previous titles from Sony’s online division.
When questioned as to why info about EQ Next is less forthcoming when compared to SoE’s other new MMO in development H1Z1, Naviaux said: "The easy answer there is that EverQuest Next needs new technology.
"So we've spent a lot of time actually making a voxel world, and the technology and the infrastructure and the data pipeline that it requires to service a game of that magnitude, and the dynamic AI, and some of the other pieces and parts.
"Whereas with H1Z1, we were able to leverage a lot of our existing technology from PlanetSide 2 with the vehicles, Forgelight, the map, the fact that it's a shooter. So we weren't having to reinvent - and I'm not discounting H1Z1 by any means, but it's just apples and oranges, so I don't know if it's a great comparison.
"But we really are wanting to be just as open with EverQuest Next as we've been with H1Z1, we're just focused on different things right now. And H1Z1 will be an early access product, where Next probably will not.”
In the interview Naviaux was also asked if community focused development processes were better suited to titles the likes of H1Z1, her reply was: "With EverQuest Next, we're turning the MMO genre upside-down. I wouldn't disagree with your statement, and maybe it is a little bit genre-specific.
"But when you're trying to turn an entire genre upside down, it is very different than when you are able to bring a game to market so quickly and there's sort of an established path."
EverQuest Next was initially announced last year with some very promising new features that have huge potential to move the MMORPG genre into new pastures. The game is set to include more realistic AI, that for instance will cause mobs to move location if they are attacked frequently. The EQ Next world will also be built around fully destructible environments which players can interact with Minecraft-style, revealing previously unknown dungeons. Plotlines will also be more open-ended and reactive to player actions and a new progression system will be brought in that intends to do away with conventional levelling mechanics.
A spin-off game for EQ Next, entitle Landmark is currently underway, giving players the chance to build and profit from making their own in-game creations.
A due date for EverQuest Next hasn’t yet been provided but it has been announced the game will be coming to PS4.
While there was certainly a focus on combat at SOELive 2014 when it comes to EverQuest Next and Landmark - a huge undertone in all the presentations was: story. Not just about the lore, but really in how the lore and the story of the game are getting infused into the all the core systems. The development team set aside an entire panel talking about Storybricks AI, and then another panel for the Lore of EQNext. Curious yet?
Content Delivery of EverQuest Next I want to make something clear right away. EverQuest Next will be an entirely different experience, for tons of reasons; but one of the biggest differences between Next and other MMOs is how content gets delivered to the player. This really doesn't get as much attention as it should. Everyone's looking at combat, and multi-classing, and the exclusion of a traditional leveling system and age-old trinity. When really, they should be looking at how the story is getting fused into every system of the game.
Storybricks AI System The developers at SOELive jokingly said that Storybricks would use their AI technology in the crafting system, if the team would allow it. They want to make everything smarter. Now I won't be getting into the deep details of Storybricks AI, but seeing how that technology is shaping the entire content system is important. Really, this new AI system is not only going to completely change the way players experience content in the game - but also the way the developers add new content, updates, and progress this new version of Norrath forward in time.
In the exclusive demo we saw during the Storybricks panel, we got to watch events unfold in the world on an accelerated rate. It was almost like a giant game of risk, with Dryads and Dark Elves, and other beings all playing different colors. You see, this new AI system attributes actual goals, desires, and motivations to different factions within the game. This system actually empowers the NPCs to be active participants in the world, allies and enemies alike.
Changing the face of Norrath can potentially be as simple as adding a new important resource to an area or changing some deep motivation of a particular race or faction (from some major lore story arc). And what makes it really crazy is that most of this stuff will be fairly automated. The NPCs are being built from the ground up in such a way that making a tweak to their goals on the fly can cause a rippling chain reaction of effects throughout the world.
Premium on Player Choice All of the above being said, nobody will be more active in this new Norrath than we the players. In the same way the developers are able to change, tweak, and adjust NPC factions (or individuals) to accomplish certain goals or initiate large-scale events... we the players can do the same by just playing the game. Our choices will be remembered and any actions we take will have some weight and will influence the world around us.
Essentially, we will be our own content delivery specialists. Players populating any given server are going to choose their own content. At SOE Live I got the opportunity to talk with Jeff Butler (Creative Director of EverQuest Next) and he proposed an example to help illustrate how this concept can become a reality in the game world by going into detail about
Rallying Calls. Rallying Call Scenario Example Imagine the first few weeks of the game. We've all landed in Qeynos and have been strengthening the city and expanding it. Eventually it gets to the point where all of the races that banded together to resettle Amaril begin having issues with each other (or maybe start pursuing other goals after their initial ones are complete). A few prominent NPCs strike out on their own to go found different cities for their respective races. Now the players get to choose (individually, and collectively) which of these races they're going to help first.
Perhaps most players decide to aid one particular race (maybe to unlock a new playable race, or maybe for some other reasons). Most likely, the server population will choose to split between all the different options we're being given. Can we do that? Yes, it just means that if there are four locations, they are all going to progress at 25% the speed that they potentially could if everyone focused on just one particular "Rallying Call".
The most interesting part about it all, is that the developers aren't wasting time and resources by some content not getting played. Each server will be unique in how their worlds unfold and which choices all of its players are making. So the content is going to get experienced on at least some of them without any developer intervention.
The other option the developers have is creating new incentives to start leading us towards that unplayed-content we never originally bothered with. Suddenly "new" content comes to the world months after other servers have unlocked it and played through it. Not only can they give us direct incentives, but they can insert new goals and desires within different factions to make the NPCs themselves start showing interest in a particular area... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The "Rohsong" Journal We're also going to each have our own personal record of important events that we've participated in (and also of which side we aided). It's going to be our pseudo "guide" to progression, as it continues to lead us on with information picked up via NPC interactions. It will help lead us towards other active rallying calls, important NPCs, new locations, worlds, and a myriad of smaller events and actions. The Rohsong, as it is called, will take the place of the "quest journal" that we're all familiar with from other games, except it won't be static in nature and it definitely won't be referring us to static NPCs.
The entire world will be moving and changing, and I fully expect our Rohsong journals to be changing right along with it. As NPCs change (or better yet as we change and influence them), our journals will also change. Our "stories" will be written over time as the world progresses forward in time and Norrath continues to evolve around us.
The major conceptual difference of to the dynamic of "questing" in this next-gen MMO will be that our Rohsong journal won't be a list of things we need to do. Instead it's going to be a list of things that we have done. While that wouldn't amount to squat in most MMOs today (that's basically what today's games call "acheivements"), in EverQuest Next our past choices and actions have influence and weight. It means that by looking back at what we have done, we can see where we need... or rather want... to go next.
Final Thoughts No more grocery lists, odd-jobs, or silly errands that usually have zero impact on the greater story of the world. No more sitting on our thumbs while we wait for developers to create new content that is going to get gobbled up hurriedly in a mad dash for the next step of gear & level power-creep. Levels won't exist anymore. Huge, world-changing content updates won't exist in the same way anymore. Quests, as you know them, won't exist anymore.
Honestly, we really need to toss out almost all of those preconceptions when it comes to EverQuest Next. This game is, and will be, radically different. It's being built from the ground up with a totally different mindset and developer toolset. The core systems being created for this game are entirely unique, and the way we consume all content will be completely different than any MMO ever made.
So if you're still trying to understand EQNext in terms of MMOs currently on the market, don't be surprised if you find yourself very, very confused.
Thanks for reading everyone. I hope you enjoyed taking a look at the big picture of EverQuest Next's content and how its systems are shaping up to be something refreshing and unique. Of course, leave us your own thoughts, opinions and ideas in the comment section below!
A year ago, or just about, I sat in a large banquet hall in Las Vegas as Dave Georgeson outlined the next big project for Sony Online Entertainment. The speech centered on a list of “Holy Grails” in MMO development, and how their EverQuest Next team would be reaching to achieve those lofty benchmarks.
Terrain destruction and the ability to affect permanent change on the game world were two that I’ve been hoping to see for years, and with their voxel-based terrain, it’s something that seemed well within their reach. As expected, SOE demonstrated almost immediate success with both when they rolled out Landmark. There was another goal that I reserved judgment on, however. That was their stated intent to create an emergent AI system.
This year at SOE Live, the AI for EverQuest Next was highlighted by the developers, and once again they were way ahead of where you might have expected them to be. For all of John Smedley’s talk about being open with their development, SOE still knows the importance of showmanship with the big reveal and how to employ it regularly.
It Looks Good
I just have to say that I’m really impressed with where SOE is with their AI development. They demonstrated a number of scenarios this year in Las Vegas, and had more problems getting videos to play than they did getting the AI to behave appropriately. That says a lot about the development and its progress. ...
No. This is not a fat-joke about how financially heavy the creation of EverQuest Next has become - although that's a valid point. When you consider how they scrapped years of development on versions of "EQ3" that will never see the light of day, and how much sheer R&D is going into all these new core systems (Storybricks, Voxel Farm, etc), the game is probably getting very heavy indeed. However, I do believe it will all pay off in the end.
Why?
Because of the philosophical change that's taking place behind the closed doors of Sony Online Entertainment. It's just something that no studio has ever done before, for a combination of reasons. Lack of sheer funding, lack of suitable technology, and most importantly - the cost of failure. All that aside, the real reason I chose the title for this article is the fact that the majority of it will be talking about scaling from a meta-perspective - and most importantly, how EverQuest Next may be ditching it as an overarching mechanic. ...
Anyone knows some new stuff about this? I only know the landmark thingy were you can pay to build the game so the real game devs can do something else ^^ On a more serious note, this game does look kind of awesome. Anyone here that has played alpha/beta yet? any thoughts?
Anyone knows some new stuff about this? I only know the landmark thingy were you can pay to build the game so the real game devs can do something else ^^ On a more serious note, this game does look kind of awesome. Anyone here that has played alpha/beta yet? any thoughts?
Haven't heard anything since the big announce a while ago. Whole game is voxels or some such.