There are plenty of ways skill can matter in EQ, ranging from messing up simple things
or making strategic errors to really quick, complex movements that are actually rather difficult to pull off. I've seen an Innoruuk raid wipe twice. Consulting the logs afterwards showed the same cleric both times took 7 seconds to respond to his CHeal chain prompt. I've seen VS fights fail because the tank didn't circle correctly and got VS stuck under a rafter, I've seen lots of problems with pets going haywire and training a raid, I've gotten a raid force wiped personally due to making incorrect assumptions about how a pather would enter our camp. A high percentage of the time I've been in a group that died due to an overpull, the group probably died due to either insufficient skill in clicking root nets or insufficient strategic forethought to acquire them. I once watched a 26 man raid force nearly wipe to an icy servant because no one had fought them before and responded incorrectly in the moment. Plenty of raid mobs with high single target damage could have been killed and were not if melee with autoavoidance discs picked up aggro with mallets or nets. I've seen push fail due to poor coordination or people pushing against each other or pets on many occasions. I've seen people eat enrage and die en masse, both in dumb ways where they just aren't paying attention and in more reasonable (but still avoidable) ones where the boss deathtouches the tank and flips on the melee during enrage. I've watched the only cleric in a raid catch aggro in a chaotic situation with an entire 18 man raid force (including myself) unable to find them and pull their adds off before they died. I've personally been unable to attack bees in sky or ashenbone drakes in hate for reasonable percentages of their fights due to wonky hitboxes. The ways you can screw up in Everquest are many, and its a learned skill to avoid them.
On the other side, I've seen a paladin LoH a tank at 1% life half way though a raid encounter. I've seen rangers and monks save a raid by picking up a target with weaponshield or void dance on a tank death. I've seen enchanter+cleric pairs duo icy servants. I've seen plenty of cleric chains work flawlessly, many tanks handle VSR correctly, lots of cheals disrupted by push or preempted entirely by mana sieve. I've seen enchanters AOE stun lock an incoming train while other casters coordinate mez and root enough to make it survivable. I have seen the cleric or enchanter take aggro and nearly die before being saved by on point tanks pulling the adds safely to themselves.
There are a lot of ways to do better or worse in this game. If you have a situation where there was a failure, think about what could have happened if everyone responded absolutely correctly with no hesitation or mistakes, and consider how that would have affected the outcome. Was there any way to win? I find the answer is usually yes unless there was a large mistake in the planning phase. I also realize both that perfection is not really a reasonable requirement, as we're all playing for fun rather than professionally, and that in the grand scheme of things I am not actually very good.
That's ok though, we play, we learn, and we improve, just like every other game and activity in existence. Asserting there is no skill in Everquest, however? I do not think so.
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Jayya - 60 Rogue, Officer <Auld Lang Syne>
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10-04-2018, 01:01 PM
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