Quote:
Originally Posted by Kika Maslyaka
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Well hybrid Xp penalties were the most stupid idea in initial game design.
Verant designed a game where half of the classes were ultra specialized, while other half were "jack of all trades" but good at nothing.
Their idea was that pure classes will group and raid, while the other half will solo. This of course ultimately fail, cause game obviously proven non solo friendly from any reasonable perspective, other than extreme grinding boredom
However, at the same time, classes like necros or mages who were UBER at soloing, did not had such a MAD XP penalty like hybrids did.
Verant finally realized this, albeit 2 years later, and removed Xp penalties in Velious era.
Another thing - the design concept where some classes sacrifice their combat potential for cash-generating abilities is DEGENERATE beyond believe. This approach leads to EVERYONE making cash generating char first, getting ton of cash and then twinking the hell out of their combat character, instead of legibly playing them.
Please do give druids and wizards self ports as a "travel bonus", but do not allow them to turn it into unlimited source of income - aka do not give them group ports. Or make group ports cost an insanely expensive reagent so they can only afford it if their guilds pays for it for some sort of guild emergency. So approach to buffs. Enchanters should not be able making shit load of plat by sitting in place whole day casting Clarity.
This is why I keep praising EQ2, where buffs you can cast, act as "auras", and only affect your group - if person joins the group - he gets buffed, if he leaves, buff stays behind.
|
Mostly disagree with this post with the exception of that classes like Necro probably should have gotten more of an xp penalty (they do have some).
I don't think the xp penalties were a bad thing but they probably should have been announced. The benefits of hybrids over pure melees was very pronounced earlier in the game. In a lot of ways its like the newer editions of DnD that allow people to gain levels in different classes.
The roles of certain classes are tied to Fantasy Lore and MUDs that go way back. It was actually upsetting to most people when PoK arrived and made the world too easy to traverse for all. The bells were something I and many people dislked in EQ2. There are basically only two places you can't get to without a porter and those have a cost component. For the rest porting is a time saver and many classes have unique abilites, IE rez, corpse summon, crack, buffs, that only they can provide.
Not everything is always fair and I hate when games try to make it that way. A major reason why I quit WoW (the 3rd time) was the homogenizing of multiple classes to placate people. Paladins complaining that their AoE dps was inferior to Mages was just ludicrious.
I strongly dislked the EQ2 aura buff system. It made no sense for magical enchanments to only work in the presence of someone.