Quote:
Originally Posted by Vexenu
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These changes are made with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight and are conceived with the effort of promoting maximum balance between classes with minimal modification to the game.
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I get that the original devs did a lot of dumb stuff, and that they didn't predict a lot of gameplay that seems in hindsight like it should have been fairly obvious. Along those lines, I feel like removing recharging, altering many clickies, fixing patently broken things like buggy pathing, removing assorted exploits (think lev trick, zone warps, corpsing no rent items, gnome wall hacks, etc), and some balance tweaks would definitely be true to "the classic spirit."
But I think your changes miss the mark overall.
EQ classes are so obviously imbalanced that the devs couldn't possibly have actually intended them to be "balanced" in the modern understanding. Trying to do so, therefore, isn't in keeping with the spirit OR the mechanics of the game; you're basically just making a truly custom server and using the words "classic spirit" to make it sound more palatable.
And even beyond that, you have strong biases that show through in your balancing attempts. You heavily penalize solo players despite many classes having toolkits that obviously contemplated solo play? You nerf the enchanters to the ground, buff the hell out of wizards, and tweak some melee classes. But you don't address the asinine discrepancy between clerics and other healers? Between raid warriors and other raid tanks? You don't buff rogues to be more than a player mage pet who can sometimes drag corpses? Lol.
Personally as far as class balance goes, I'd limit enchanter charm to humanoids, give wizards innate crits and massively buff harvest, eliminate class exp bonuses/penalties, nerf CH (perhaps make it heal a percentage of max or something so it still is a unique, powerful spell), buff poisons damage and utility potential, give paladins significant self-healing perks, give SKs significant lifetap perks, give rangers significant archery perks. I don't know what else but I feel like that would go a long ways to evening out the classes without drastically altering their original design/vibe like totally reworking charm, moving clarity around, giving SK undead crits, etc. does. I want to say "no" to melody, but I guess I've never played a bard with it so maybe it's just a RSI relief and laziness tool more than a real adjustment to the class's power.