Will Hybrid XP penalties be implemented on Green Server launch?

[Jimjam]

To keep it classic staff should keep it secret.

Everquest game mechanics are best kept opaque.

[Zuranthium]

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

You're missing the point...

I'm not. The mission statement of this website says: "Relive the classic Everquest MMORPG Gaming Experience as it was in 1999 and onward."

Contesting NPC's by doing the most damage was part of the game for the first year of its existence. "Kill Stealing" is a fabricated term by players who didn't want to compete. Eventually the game company decided those players should be catered to (instead of fixing the underlying problems of the game design), and the entire MMORPG genre has been worse off ever since. Less immersive, less dynamic, less spontaneous; pixel farms instead of open world experiences.

A game's playerbase is supposed to deal with issues like this via in-game politics. Blacklist the more competitive players if you don't like their behavior. Some people will feel the same way and you can all band together and deny groups to the opposing faction. This was discussed in a recent thread, but it's important to note how the eventual Classic "Play Nice Policy" was different from what P99 has - nobody was EVER allowed to own a camp without possibility of contesting it in Classic. People had to take turns killing spawns after the "no kill stealing" change went in. The community still even played politics with that, to a degree; some people believed a camp should be owned by whoever got there first. Not all people/groups would invoke the Play Nice Policy, and would either wait for a group at a given camp, or form/find a group elsewhere (although some of that had to do with logistics; if you're trying to exp, then sharing a camp may not be productive enough).

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

Hybrids didn't get meditate in classic?

Not at release. That was the first buff hybrids got, like 6 or 7 months in. Then came the combat system change where casting a spell didn't reset the auto attack timer, maybe around 9 or 10 months in. These first two changes are poorly documented and weren't announced in patch notes (as was often the case with changes to the game), so I've not been able to find exact dates.

In Kunark era they got improved mana pools, slightly buffed spell tables, and a small increase to 2-hand weapon damage (this wasn't specific to hybrids, but impacted Pally's/SK's most especially). Yet they were worse in this era, because of having bad skill caps in comparison to other melee classes, and also because exp penalties being "shared" with groups became more common knowledge. Then in Velious came the removal of exp penalties, a few more new spells, buffs to their "unique" class abilities: Harm Touch/Lay on Hands/Tracking, and finally at the very end of Velious an across-the-board stat increase and big increase to 2-hand weapon damage.

[Jimjam]

I must admit I sometimes feel there is a layer of redundancy between having rules imposed on players that conflict with the core game mechanics.

Being able to burst dps with a wizard to secure loot rights on a named would make them much more desirable to groups where the spoils are decided by most damage done!

[Primordial Ooze]

I mean, for anyone thinking they want to finally start that troll SK, they're almost certainly going to create it on blue and not green. Among the many other ways this differs from classic, there's also the fact that on p99 you'll have a choice. And in a lot of ways it will make more sense to start that hybrid on blue, so there will just be a huge dearth of those classes on green.

[Zuranthium]

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

I must admit I sometimes feel there is a layer of redundancy between having rules imposed on players that conflict with the core game mechanics.

Being able to burst dps with a wizard to secure loot rights on a named would make them much more desirable to groups where the spoils are decided by most damage done!

It was even a common thing in Classic that people would bluff by saying "if you don't stop fighting *our* mobs, I'll call my Wizard friend over here and you won't get any kills." Except sometimes it wasn't a bluff, particularly since Wizards have the porting ability. They were able to be the police of Norrath. Although pet classes could still out-DPS Wizards a lot of the time even in Burst scenarios, since they had decent enough nukes on top of the (often very overpowered) pet damage. Waa waa.

After the Play Nice Policy got put in, that's when discussion about Wizard DPS being bad became rampant. This sentiment was already fairly common by early 2000, when more higher quality weapons had spawned their way into the game world, but then on top of it the ability to "nuke" things just became mostly irrelevant. A couple of my guildies quit playing shortly into Kunark, being fed up with how insignificant their class felt in the game by that point. The planar gear bump for melee in Classic was nothing compared to Kunark inflation!

[Jimjam]

Kunark really did kill Norrath.

[jolanar]

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

I must admit I sometimes feel there is a layer of redundancy between having rules imposed on players that conflict with the core game mechanics.

Being able to burst dps with a wizard to secure loot rights on a named would make them much more desirable to groups where the spoils are decided by most damage done!

You could very easily use this same logic to imply that feign death training people is a core game mechanic.

[Troxx]

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

The magnitudes of these values are correct, but by listing their opposites you're perpetuating the myth that the EXP penalty is a penalty to the amount of EXP that is earned, when it is actually an increase in the amount of total of EXP needed to reach each level.

Hybrids need 40% more EXP to reach each level, monks need 20% more EXP, warriors need 10% less, and so on. They all earn exp at the same rate.

Given how xp is split in Classic eq it absolutely has an effect on how fast group mates earn xp. Inviting a hybrid (especially a hybrid with compounding racial penalty) means everyone else gets a smaller piece of the pie kill after kill after kill.

I barded before the penalty was removed. It absolutely impacted group opportunities though I typically did a good enough job that repeat invites were easy once my name was well known.

But the rangers? Troll sks? Yeah that was a different matter. I watched several times groups in group chat unanimously veto a lfg undesirable for this reason. I watched groups dissolve over arguments about letting somebody’s buddy join who had a big penalty.

It was shameful but it did happen. I would like to think the community on green will behave more maturely but it doesn’t take much consideration of the raid dynamic on this server (and the rants/flames part of this forum) to see that it will happen all over again.

Hybrids need to be prepared to be lonely and lfg unless they have a tight squad or guild willing to overlook fairly massive xp burdens in having them along.

[Pindrought]

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

I'm not. The mission statement of this website says: "Relive the classic Everquest MMORPG Gaming Experience as it was in 1999 and onward."

From that statement you really got the impression that they were going to remove all the rules and PNP for green? You have to be trolling at this point. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Erati]

Hybrid gonna be brutal on Green.

Bless their hearts.