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What I Think... Trinity/Multiclass/Destruction..
Slavakk
Member Posts: 36
Ok now that we have all seen the reveal of EQN... I like the ideas Destructibility, Emergent AI, Consequence, etc.. These are all great Ideas.. I think some of them are ground breaking.. But I hope this just doesn't turn out as some cheap hack and slash game.. I think the above ideas with some sort of Trinity would be great.. Vertical Progression is great also.. though I wish they had separate continents not just one big land mass.. Now these new Ideas joined up with a decent Trinity combat system and some depth I think this game will be great...
The one thing I believe is yes of course with new tech we get the abilities to do more nice things.. some of them great and amazing ideas.. But DON'T change it so drastically that the basis of MMO is left in the dust.. Dave is right.. we need new fresh ideas.. and sometimes a new direction.. BUT we don't need OVER change in MMO...
No one can be happy with any class restriction of any kind any more lol.. While I do like the fact you start of with a clean slate and learn as you go along instead of picking something set in stone.. But everyone wants to roll with that hybrid MAGE/TANK or HEALER/MAGE.. but no Lvl's??? well actual lvl's at least//
All I say is that new ideas are great and improvements as well.. BUT lets not over do it SoE.. you got something good going here that's for sure... Just shape it right...
Comments
The best part of this game is putting the storybricks toolkit to use.
Everything else is gimmicky nonsense that wont be appearing in future MMOs.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
I am not really surprised that a lot of people don't like the idea of
- more horizontal progression vs. more vertical progression
- open class/skill system vs. fixed class system
or to say it even more pointedly more of a open system vs. a more guided, linear system.
Thats the old themepark vs. sandbox discussion. And it is really no surprise for beeing a EQ game, that a lot of people do like the more themeparkish, more linear, more fixed approach to things.
It is sometimes hard to be responsibly for your self, for what you do, for what you choose, and for how you play as opposed to themeparks where you do have a very clear path to follow with one clas with one fixed role, with one way to progress through the world.
But if you never have played a sandbox.. and there are really not that much well made sandboxes around.. just give it a try, and you may be surprised that you actually like it. Everyone played UO or SWG, and didn't like it, and not just because of the bugs/limitation(old graphic, 2D, lot of bugs) will most probably never like a sandbox.
After all, it is a matter of preference.
And about choice.
Lets take the class system.
In a sandbox you can play a very pure class and a very fixed role.. you really do not have to collect any other class or toy around with it(as stated in one of the Q&A panels). It really is your choice.. but a lot of people will try around, will try different things and will try to define their own role/class. So you can basicly have both. The problem with such a open system, is of course to balance all different classes/skills so that no combination is superior to any other (tank mage problem of UO).
But as i have seen say have some ways to easier balance it, with the different subsets of skill, like movement, defend, attack, utility and the distribution to the different classes. So they can easier balance the skills within subset to gain a overall balance.
And about the vertical progression and the fear to feel no advancement to feel not stronger over time. I guess you will have some kind of slight vertical progression (the hint about tiers in any class). But it will be rather limited, but nevertheless with more choice within your class, with more choice of different weapons (horizontal progression) you will feel advancement and you will feel you stronger.. just not overpowered, godlike.. nomore 1 hit kills of lvl 1 mobs with 1000times the dmg, which would be required.
But finally we don't know a lot of details, we don't know how it will be exactly. So lets wait, and then give it a try, and we will see if we do like it or not.
The misnomer is that the developers have never stated the roles would not exist.
They said that the roles weren't required. I'd even go so far as to say that they stated that the roles were made obsolete by how they plan on coding the AI for the monsters, but that would be putting words into their mouths.
The fact is, I've been a "healer" for MMOs since EQ1 onward. The dynamic of watching the health bars and filling them up does need to change. It's actually very trite. There were a few attempts at doing this, but I haven't seen anyone throw the HPS/DPS/Aggro mechanic out for something more organic.
Let's take an example of how an existing model could break the mold and "not require healers". As a Disc priest in WOW, we started getting abilities which did not, strictly speaking, heal the player, but were far more effective. They prevented incoming DPS from removing health. Again, in NWO, this mechanic surfaced with the control wizard. Through many dungeons, our cleric simply DPSed, because my controls prevented damage and the healer simply wasn't required to "just heal". In one instance, I locked down 5 orc mobs on a chain whihc lasted three minutes. If each orc delivers 100DPS, over 3 minutes that was 9,000 damage prevented. You can't metric that, but that was healing the cleric didn't do. However, it was just as effective (if not more effective) than someone hitting flash of light over and over again.
Let me break the immersion of roles a bit more. The role of the tank is to absorb damage and control a mob which might otherwise defeat a group. What if that became five mobs? What if (as in the disc priest above) I was also able to keep a mob locked to a particular location? Am I a healer, or a tank? After all, I'm preventing damage to other players with shields (just like a tank would do) and I'm keeping the mob controlled (a la my control wizard), so, how do you categorize that?
And thus, trinity is no longer "required", because the role is fulfilled with a different mechanic. Was that a zerg? Was that removing a staple of the game? Not really. The requirement to keep players alive still existed, it just could not be categorized as a "healer" because I did "not-damage", and also did not have any healing abilities whatsoever.
It's time we thought outside the box on how these "ideas" are being executed, moved past the green bars and "aggro" and all that crap. We're collectively able to envision far more powerful mechanics than "I take hits, you heal me, boss doesn't hit you" and execute the same actual effect. That's old think. It's been imposed upon us by statements like "we don't have time to implement that feature" or "market demographics show that this isn't desirable". And we've all been pissed by developers cutting features they wanted to do because a publisher said "not in the budget".
I think we need to act less like the publishers want us to in order to fit us into neat little boxes, and imagine more, so we can get the genre moving in a better direction than it has been (faster, at least) for the last 10 years.
Well I guess we should take your word for it, because what they're doing has failed so many times before.....
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I know the feeling. I remember playing GW2 for the first time, and with all the contrivances and tedium of prev MMOs removed, I was WTFBBQ WHO PUT BLOPS IN MY MMO? and then uninstalled Xpadder, threw the controller, and went back to EQ for some real MMORPG gameplay.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I felt that this part really needed to be highlighted. Seems many people missed this part of the class Q&A. Tanks and healers WILL exist, but they aren't required to do content.
They way they talked about their "threat" mechanics, suggests that the tanking roles wouldn't be your typical tanks, but rather more durable character types. The tank types will probably be classes with more defense slots. Healer type classes may have more utility slots.
This whole talk about "trinity" is conjecture until we actually see what the classes are and how they break down. At the end of it all, we may end up with some type of min/max meta (this will exist) that requires durable types and healer/support types. Any fan of the mmo should understand that the community at large is really good at finding the path of least resistance, the same will happen for EQNext.
Honestly, there's a decent example in GW2 (for those who actively play it) to show how well a good group setup will make content much easier. I play a support Guardian who heals and tosses out boons like they're going out of style. He doesn't kill much, but my group performs better when I play him. Same thing with our support ele when he plays. The role of support/healer exists in the action mmo that's "trinity lite", it's just hard to sift through all of the DPS MOAR builds that are so popular.
With the classing system in EQN, it might be easier to create the classic tank or healer builds.
Nothing they have shown is groundbreaking and all of which can have severe pitfalls with the exception of the emergent AI which still needs to be proven. Everything is all hype marketing crap.
Muticlassing? This has loooong been in MMOs. EVE, TSW, DDO to name a few have long ago done this.
Destructability? From the vid it seems like your playing a legos game with the warrior whirlwinding through walls. I'd like to see where it takes TIME and EFFORT to destroy structures and not some mindless lego land destroying. And what about repairing your structure? PFO addresses this issue as it will take time and effort at the same token can be defended and repaired. Be intresting how SOE will address this.
Rallying Call? ANet sang this same tune with DEs and this can be a repetitive series of quest that give an illusions of difference but when in fact are really the same quests over n over with a different skin. Might be great first time round but it loses it's luster very quickly.
Progression time and time again has been brought up, which was one of the pitfalls of GW2. Lack of character progression is a pitfall for any MMO. PFO address this with it will take 1-2 years to reach level cap that one has to earn merit badges to advance and follows EVE's model where it takes time to train skills. Hunting classes isn't really much of a character progression, really no different gaining levels for better abilities like the capstone abilities in WoW that you get at your last few levels. Forty classes is not that much at all if this is your only char progression.
Great concepts but I fear that is will be halfed assed in many eyes as SOE will not go as far as it should. I have a feeling EQN will be the sandbox wannabe MMO while games like EVE, PFO, CU, Star Citizen will be the true sandbox MMOs.
I didnt say that. but then again, i dont have to.
What i am saying is, of the list of features they have showed us in their POWERPOINT presentation, the only promising one is storybricks.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson