Experience Penalties...

[Kika Maslyaka]

Originally Posted by Atmas [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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 disliked the EQ2 aura buff system. It made no sense for magical enchanments to only work in the presence of someone.

I have nothing against strong lore/fantasy theme ties between classes and their abilities. Verant just did a horrible job and translating then from DnD over to a PC. Classes don't need to be identical substitutes of each other (like in wow) to be different yet balanced. But Verant completely ignored that. The blind following of the Vision ended in some classes being always wanted everywhere, while some others struggle to get anything done at all.

Even Verant themselves acknowledged that Xp penalties were dumb, and were an error in design concept - can't argue with that [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As far as EQ2 buffs go - the caster has a magical aura that radiates from him. If you range in range - you benefit from his aura. rather simple concept.

As far as travel bells go - they only connected near by areas anyway - don't forget that eq2 world is basically fragmented eq1 world. So instead of zoning from Freeport to Desert of Ro directly you travel there by using a bell.
Actual boat travel also made come back during Faydark expansion, thought wasn't really important.
EQ2 has a pile of its own flaws, but it also fixed a number of issues that were inherently broken in eq1.

[Atmas]

Originally Posted by Vasilyevich [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do they ever fix any of the obvious fuckups of the original dev team?

Something that comes to mind, obviously wrong 100% can not be used as a stat by this class stats on knight planar pants.

Or is this strict it must be as close to original as possible?

I remember a time when you could make toolboxes for a profit. That was part of kunark, but it's an obvious fuckup that should never be implemented here.

Exploitable cases like the toolbox get resolved. Bad itemization stays how it was, enjoy your +INT paly gear.

[Kika Maslyaka]

basically if its benefits a player - its an exploit
if it screws a player - its classic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Snaggles]

Originally Posted by Vasilyevich [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Do they ever fix any of the obvious fuckups of the original dev team?

While a side-note after watching Jace Hall's "Evercracked" with the original dev team I'm surprised they ever actually produced a game with the technology of the day.

[Kope]

I dunno, I just think playing a classic game again is fun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[stormlord]

The primary reason I don't like experience penalties is because they make it harder for you to stay in level range of your friends. Apparently, the experience penalties, for races anyway, are not so severe that they prevent you from sticking with your friends. But when you stretch this whole idea to its limits, you see that it could easily wind up separating close friends because they're not within a similar power range. Part of the problem is that the whole EQ system demands that you be within a certain level range to group with others effectively. The other is that the system is not friendly to non-linear things. Most MMO's are conservative how they handle all this. Mostly because it's hard to test all of it and also because players can be hostile to certain things. Again, all of this wouldn't be nearly the kind of problem it's, if the system itself was changed fundamentally.

This is a bit of a recap but.... I have compared the warrior and ranger up about 20. Up to that point, a warrior has double attack and more hp. Maybe a bit more defense skill. If you twink them, their ac soft cap will be higher. But, generally, I would have to say that the ranger is more versatile and has higher burst dps because of Burst of Fire and Flame Lick. The versatility has so much subjective, yet meaningful value. Root is, at that level, very powerful. So is snare. I think the ranger is, well, funner to play too. Tracking is nice to have. The ability to solo whenever is a big bonus. These things give you more options and make the game funner. But at the higher levels, particularly, the warrior shines as a tank and becomes pretty much required for raids. A ranger can feel ignored by comparison. And it seems that tanking as a ranger gets harder and harder.

So: IS a ranger overpowered compared to a warrior? ARE hybrids overpowered compared to a warrior? Because, if they're not, experience penalty or no experience penalty, a penalty AT ALL is unnecessary. If you read the link I posted in the first post, you'll see that Verant/Sony argued that hybrids were not overpowered, therefore, an experience penalty is not needed (or any penalty, for that matter). Was this true pre-Velious?

(remember, the game went through changes from 1999-2001)

In summary: I think that at the lower levels, rangers are "overpowered". But at the higher levels, the warrior cements his place in the group and raid scene and becomes a prominent figure in norrath.

As for FUN FACTOR, I'd say a ranger is, by far, funner than a warrior. I still think, even now, that just because you can make a class that's boring and still balanced, doesn't mean you should. Warriors, by and large, are just too simple for my interest levels. I find it hard to justify them, to be honest. I know that their job can be quite hard when managing aggro, but when I add up everything that I've seen in all my years in EQ, I really have to question why warriors or other basic classes were ever even acceptable. To my eye, solo-able classes have more tools. That makes them fun. I think all classes should be more like that, not less like that. People like to have AVAILABLE options. A fluid wall, not a HARD wall. Players should be more closely involved.

To some extent, modern MMORPGs have caught onto this and tried to give classes more options. This has allowed them to solo better. I agree with this. Much of this is not about making games easier, it's about making them more interesting. It's a good change. I think that the whole solo/group thing in EQ was misplaced. Soloers HAVE to have tools to survive the many different kinds of encounters. This, generally, makes the game more interesting. Groupers, typically, have less tools because they depend on each other. The problme here was that classes which specialize should have had more things to keep them interesting. I think this is, in part, where EQ failed. Anyway... Many modern MMORPGs are too casual for me. I'm looking for more bite, but at the same time, I'm not a masochist, either. I want ways to avoid being hurt. Both preventative AND curative answers.

If a game can make INTERESTING specialized classes, then there's no need to have a multitude of classes that all do the same thing. Show me a warrior that's FUN and I'll bite. Get me?

[Softcore PK]

Originally Posted by Palemoon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ok, another thread about the class xp penalties, so I will ask yet again. IS it planned that the class penalties will be removed in velious on p99?

I ask because then one must decide... play a hybrid now and take 40 percent more xp to level up or wait for velious and level the hybrid without the penalty to himself and his group.

Or has it not been commented on yet by a dev?

I'm fine either way, I just do not want to feel like a fool when a day after I ding 60 on say.. a ranger, I read a patch note that says the penalty is now gone.

I bet the remove it late velious, lots of people would like to see it and it's classic.

But I say level a hybrid now! If you want. Choosing not to play a class because hybrid will be removed later (like 2 years later I bet, for Red99) seems silly. And hybrids are great in pvp!

[Diggles]

FREE HOLISH TNOOPS

[stormlord]

Notice how I mentioned that changes happened between 1999 and 2001? Did those changes justify their statements in the producers letter in regards to the removal of class experience penalties? Might it have been true at one time that hybrids WERE overpowered? If so, they were being deceptive about it. But more than that, the fact that they saw an experience penalty as an effective balancing mechanism gives us a clue that they really never knew what they were doing. But, what happened after 2001? Read on...

They removed racial experience penalties on Sep 19 2006. If they removed the racial experience penalty in 2006, then what was their reasoning for doing so? Because we have an example here from around the 2000-01 timeframe where they justify racial experience penalties. What happened between 2000-01 and 2006 to change their mind? What I get from it is that they felt the faction penalties justified the bonuses for evil races. That is, in part, why they removed the experience penalty. But I'm not sure what the rest of the reasoning is.

Before 2006, they also removed some of the other restrictions on evil races. I think they removed the no-plate armor restriction for Iksars during Velious. Iksars, originally, could only trade in Cabillis. When POP came out they could trade in POK. Their reasoning for removing these (and maybe others) may or may not be similar.

But this also highlights that Sony is a company that doesn't really know how to do it right the first time. One year, they'll think one thing, the next, another. It's good to change when you need to: success is built on making mistakes. But if that becomes a habit then maybe you're making too many mistakes?

But I do think the whole culture of EQ changed too. Generally, the game got sour and old. It started to feel like Microsoft Windows does. Bloated, a bit. One size fits all kind of feeling from it. I think the biggest thing was that they started moving their funding from EQ to EQ2 and to other games on their roster. This starved EQ of development resources. Just compare the number of zones in Kunark or Velious to later expansions.

I'm not going to pretend. A lot of the changes did not agree with me. For example, I hated POK. POK felt like Walmart to me and still does. Defiant Armor and Old Man Mckenzie were just blatant mediocre excuses to level up low(er) level players. You could see this in a myriad of different things. Sony was not conspicuous about it. They had a warped sense of confidence. The quality of the game went down. Instead of giving players fun and expansive content, they'd just recycle some sh** and make an instance mission and have the players do it a couple hundred times. Instances avoided the overpopulation problem that open world zones have. What it amounts to is this: the changes they made reduced their development costs. Money was the driving force. They wanted to level up players, but they didn't have the money to do it RIGHT. That's the heart of it.

Compare the content in EQ1 to EQ2. EQ2 has GOOD instances. EQ2 has a million things that EQ1 does not. By all accounts, EQ2 is a better game, right now and has been for the past several years. My point is that they shifted resources from EQ to other games. This, ultimately, made EQ a mediocre game doomed to die.

The game that EQ became is nothing like hte game was between 1999 and 2001. The game in the old days was a world. There were many homecities and factions. There were boats and many zones and activity was everywhere. It requires a lot of money to keep it like that. Things felt whole. But as the years drifted by, EQ became like an old boat that no longer has a caretaker or somebody to maintain it. The boards started to rot. The sails were tearing. The crew were tired and not satisfied. The boat started to take on water. The crew grew anxious. But what could they do? The boat is adrift at sea. They stuck with it, vainly. And as all things seem to go, it will eventually sink to the bottom of the abyss, to be buried and someday forgotten.

EQ might have survived had they invested in it instead. But EQ would have changed from what it was in 1999. Unless you want to be a museum, you have to keep up with the modern world. Thus, with something like EQ, you have to upgrade it. They - vainly - tried to do this. But without the funding, it's futile. There was too much to change, and not enough time to do a good job with the changes that they did manage to produce.

What does all this amount to? Well, first off, Verant/Sony, at one time, thought experience penalties were acceptable as a balancing mechanism. Second, we know they have changed/patched the game over and over, year after year. Third, we know that they often retract on past statements or design decisions and do a turnaround. Lastly, we know that they're not resistant to shifting money from one game to another, even if it dooms the outlook of said game. All in all, take it, mix it, let it sit for a while and heat for 15 min. Eat.

Here are the patch notes for the removal of racial experience penalties:
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=7973

[Kika Maslyaka]

call me weird, but I actually liked earlier version on EQ2, than the later.
Not at the very start - it was buggy as hell, but about 1 year later, after 1st expansion.

I liked how EQ2 was much more solo friendly than eq1, but without insane easiness than came later on. For example you could run around soloing, but if want to do your armor quests, you had to group up. And since everyone was doing those quests, it was very easy to find groups for them, so it wasn't a problem.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED EQ2 crafting system. I could log in for hours and do nothing but craft away for days. But i was extremely frustrated when they dumbed it down by removing sub-combines, which resulted in flooding the market with instantly crafted items all over.

I liked how on one hand world was split into 2 opposing factions, but wasn't restricted as hard as in WoW (you could still group with your friends from the other side, where in WoW you can't even send a tell to your friend on other faction, even on non PvP server, which I hated)

I liked how both sides had their own market system, yet there was the fence, and I enjoyed smuggling goods from one side to the other for profit. But at some point they combined both markets into one, which imho, really sucked...

On other hand, it wasn't without some rather weird design approaches:
24 classes, where 12 would do, was weird, and grown more ridiculous when i realized that some of the "pairs" were nearly shadowed copies of each other. How was it logical that both versions of druids could start in both good and evil sides, yet Conjurers (ala mages) could only be good? They managed to fit in as many as 3 different Rogue stile classes, yet somehow managed to drop off Beastlords...

Overall, I loved and was amazed at EQ2 initially. Specially the elaborated zone scenery not found in eq1 - don't have to go far - just look at Antonika, and realize how blunt eq1 world was. Not because of its 5 year old graphics, at the that point, but because of its emptiness and lack of any sort of zone layout features

But then they started to dumb things down. A lot. In their desperate attempt to catch up with WoW, they moved away from what they had right. Many group encounter found in variety of zones were lowered down to solo difficulty.
While they still added many good things since then, I felt like at the end, they are not moving in the right direction. I decided that I will not be investing my time into it, knowing that I won't like it at the end.

If there is one reason to like Emu, is that you can make yourself anything you want and deem right. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]