I played EQ PvP for a while. I had quite a bit of fun doing it. Things were kind of different back then in PvP.
For starters, you could actually talk to your opponents on other teams. This actually was better for the servers, imo. You weren't just slaughtering nameless unknowns, but you had rivals and often respectful relationships with your opponents. I had some pretty interesting conversations with opposing players after a fight, for instance. There was sportsmanship and mutual respect for your fellows back then.
There were griefers back then. There always were since the very old days, but they were fewer in number -- largely thanks to the ability to communicate with enemies, imho. Communication with rivals creates an avenue of diplomacy. This is where the later games went wrong, I feel. Once you severed communication, open world PvP became nothing more than slaughtering red names as if they were NPCs -- in other words, a "gankfest".
Overall point being, there's a massive divide between "PvP players" and "griefers" in the same way that there is a massive divide between "regular PvE players" and "hardcore raiders". -------------------------------------------
More on point: Regardless of how they implement PvP here, anyone who is following Pantheon for its PvP is following the wrong game.
Even though EQ PvP was a blast for a while, it was only played so much because there was nothing else. As soon as other options appeared, there was a mass exodus. The game simply wasn't focused on PvP, and neither will be Pantheon.
I was on Sullon Zek when DAoC launched, for instance. Half the server moved on as soon as DAoC became a thing. The majority of the remnants left after AAs and one-shot killing were introduced.
I was on RZ, and I didn't notice this mass exodus. Some left for a time, but most came back as the competition over content in EQ was not a mainstay of DAoC. It was mostly about fighting over frontiers and relics, both of which had very little importance in the grand scheme of things. I believe EQ even opened a 4th PvP server about that time, so they clearly weren't suffering.
For those who think PvP in Pantheon is a bad idea, I'm sorry you missed EQ PvP. If you like PvP, you are going to be surprised how much more fun PvP over PvE can be in the long-term versus fighting over castles and territory that ultimately grows monotonous and has little impact on your personal progression.
The nostalgia is great, totally agree......here is the thing I think that needs to be focused on, VG had SOOOO much potential (Yes, I leaped forward in time stay wif meh) and one thing you don't find talked about is the bridge that almost was, IE what Brad has failed to do, ever, is bridge that gap of a sandbox dynamic and implementing a PvP mechanic into his world, successfully. PvP in VG was an after thought, and like the rest of it poorly implemented and rushed, BUT OMG had SO much potential, alot of us loved it still, regardless of said issues..... and it looks like he is about to make the same mistake(s) heh, not to bash anyone, but a few of his team have a history of being just about the PvE.
You can't dev an open world game, and want the player to be 'immersed' in a sandbox, and have "arenas" as your only point of conflict......I want those hard engaging big targets too, but I will never go back to not having another human added into the equation that is competition, and I don't mean ninja looters \m/
Open world PvP is the most boring shit there is. It is nothing more than high level people camping a low level spawn to gank noobs. Wow, lots of fun and challenge there....
Then, if the game decides to have "large scale" PvP it is nothing but multiple large zergs avoiding each other as they run around the PvP area trading objectives to farm whatever kind of points or currency they need. Yeah, sounds amazing.
The only PvP that is any good comes in the form of team based (6v6, 8v8) scenarios where you only get a reward if you win the fight.
I like the feeling of scared and challenging but the EQ franchise did not do combat or even thee scary feeling too well.
They used two primary ideals to deliver their combat.. 1 A boss that was so ridiculous it was all about your gear and not the skills of the players. 2 They would simply fill a room and have 6-20 mobs run at you all at the same time like they were on a rope or something.
I don't want to have some labeled "tier 1"gear to be able to tank a Boss and i don't want AI on a rope and i don't want rooms filled with 20 mobs for no reason other than to fill a room with 20 mobs.I want Ai to look and act realistic not like computer code which was one of my bigger peeves in VG which tells me the team did not learn anything from EQ1.
I want good quality map design/layouts and i want good quality AI along with good spell and ability selections that allow ME the player to determine the outcome and not my gear.
I think you might be confusing EQ for WoW.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Having a pvp server is fine. If it has enough population then maybe someday there will be more. If you want to insist that all servers are pvp then no they already said its not going to happen.
If you want a game where there is forced pvp on all servers go play something else. You lost that battle already.
I think the fantasy of what EQ was back then is greater than the reality of what this game will be.....Taking EQ as an example, many of the players that have left never returned, even after it went f2p and they could play their old characters again....I had 2 guilds with over 100 toons in each and I was the only one that ever checked back in......I think this will definitely be a niche game......While the nostalgia for this kind of game is great, I dont see people willing to pay much for it
The game changed with time, starting with the expansion POP, some would say Luclin. Offering the game as free to play does not take the game back to the roots that made it fun. Also having a progression server does not help as the classes still remain changed, and features are there which were not there when the game launched or was consider prime. You can not experience the game as it was then, Project 99 comes a little close which is why some return there from time to time.
Nostalgia for me is that feeling I get when I play something and remember the good times and I do have some nostalgia with EQ. However there are features that I cant find other places. Your were required to group if you wanted to take on harder content, many will say some could solo but not never tackle what a group could. When I say group a mean a proper party that takes into the consideration of the mobs you are fighting. The KOS (kill on site) system was woven into the world like no other game has been able to replicate, this made such a tremendous impact on giving the world life and was done so well that some didn't even notice it as a feature. The language system was fun, something I see as never returning due to voice chat. I also loved that items did not bind and could be sold, though now I would like to see it break at some point. Items could take weeks or months to drop, which was ok due to the non binding issue, your garbage became someone else treasure and all that time you put in on getting it will still make you a profit or be passed down to an alt/friend. I miss farming spell regents for my spells or for selling. Oddly I miss the bazzar, I miss that you had to leave your PC on if you wanted to sell all night. I could go on forever, I sometimes do, but the point is EQ had so many of these tiny little feature that if you look at one by one means nothing but as a whole was amazing.
EQ went a different direction and has not returned. The people that understood what made it special are no longer there. Yes people are nostalgic for EQ, but that's not why we miss it.
I like the feeling of scared and challenging but the EQ franchise did not do combat or even thee scary feeling too well.
They used two primary ideals to deliver their combat.. 1 A boss that was so ridiculous it was all about your gear and not the skills of the players. 2 They would simply fill a room and have 6-20 mobs run at you all at the same time like they were on a rope or something.
I don't want to have some labeled "tier 1"gear to be able to tank a Boss and i don't want AI on a rope and i don't want rooms filled with 20 mobs for no reason other than to fill a room with 20 mobs.I want Ai to look and act realistic not like computer code which was one of my bigger peeves in VG which tells me the team did not learn anything from EQ1.
I want good quality map design/layouts and i want good quality AI along with good spell and ability selections that allow ME the player to determine the outcome and not my gear.
You played a different game than me. If the game required tier gear then it would never have be beaten. A boss could spawn a couple time a week if your lucky, then your guild was on a rotation list given your server didn't try and FFA it, then only a few got loot. Gear had a longer life span in the early days of EQ than in most, some items like flowing black silk sash remained usable for a very long time.
My gear ranged from Level 30 content dungeons to 60 plus with few raid pieces I was blessed to get. Normally people decked out in an entire "raid set" is either wearing an older "raid sets" or purchased them. A lot of guilds I knew would sell gear that was consider Best in slot for gold or real money and buy the next best for two or three people. Gear helped but it was team work that took down a raid boss.
A well oiled guild could manage to pull off chain heals, mana transfers, dots, slows and occasional off tanking that was required to down the boss. If you couldn't manage the teamwork then gear wouldn't help.
EQ had some pull mechanics in which you had to try and break apart(Monk, SK FD) mob packs. If you had aggro-ed 20 mobs that's most likely a failed pull and will soon be trained to zone.
The buff line/wait would be enough to scare most people today. On off nights we had guild runs were we didn't mange to make to to the boss and lost our spot in the rotation. So for some just getting to the boss was scary.
I don't need to be scared so much as I want to feel like at least a little effort needs to be put into staying alive. If I have any gripes about the "modern MMO" is that it became hard to die, rather than the other way around. Even if Pantheon has some spread of solo content, even EQ could be solo'd honestly, it needs to be worth the time spent.
Edit: Some parts of EQ could be solo'd and leveling to max could be solo'd though not as effectively as in a group. I hope that Pantheon emulates this exact premise as it make the most sense.
Open world PvP is the most boring shit there is. It is nothing more than high level people camping a low level spawn to gank noobs. Wow, lots of fun and challenge there....
Then, if the game decides to have "large scale" PvP it is nothing but multiple large zergs avoiding each other as they run around the PvP area trading objectives to farm whatever kind of points or currency they need. Yeah, sounds amazing.
BS...... Open world PVP in SWG was nothing like that, nor was PVP in DAOC...
For good PVP you need the same thing you need to make the very concept of Pantheon work.. Community involvement. Arena PVP has always been trite IMO. You might as well just play COD. What sets the MMORPG apart from that is the ability to have the dynamic that was there in SWG, and I'm sure existed in other games (possibly something like L2 or EVE.
Where you have multiple guilds coming together to offer each other great content, the bad guys play their part, the good guys play theirs, and you have night after night of dynamic as well as fun encounters. WHen all is said and done you head to a cantina or forum to laugh your asses off at how things went down.
It's folks with your mentality that have ruined today's PVP. as it's all about winning for you. When you don't, you whine about zergs...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I don't need to be scared so much as I want to feel like at least a little effort needs to be put into staying alive. If I have any gripes about the "modern MMO" is that it became hard to die, rather than the other way around. Even if Pantheon has some spread of solo content, even EQ could be solo'd honestly, it needs to be worth the time spent.
Edit: Some parts of EQ could be solo'd and leveling to max could be solo'd though not as effectively as in a group. I hope that Pantheon emulates this exact premise as it make the most sense.
I wonder if they'll put any effort into learning from certain EQ mistakes, though. For an example, Shaman was so overpowered for so long that they finally started making mobs completely/partially immune to attack slows altogether.
And, yet, the big selling point and role of Shaman in Pantheon is attack slows... This could very quickly end up a problem just like in EQ.
Shaman could solo some raid level bosses fairly early on(Lodizal, etc.), and could solo pretty much anything lesser.
The point wasn't to rant about that one class, in particular, but about challenge. Some mechanics from back then just make things stupidly easy and some things that shouldn't be soloable became so.
I don't need to be scared so much as I want to feel like at least a little effort needs to be put into staying alive. If I have any gripes about the "modern MMO" is that it became hard to die, rather than the other way around. Even if Pantheon has some spread of solo content, even EQ could be solo'd honestly, it needs to be worth the time spent.
Edit: Some parts of EQ could be solo'd and leveling to max could be solo'd though not as effectively as in a group. I hope that Pantheon emulates this exact premise as it make the most sense.
I wonder if they'll put any effort into learning from certain EQ mistakes, though. For an example, Shaman was so overpowered for so long that they finally started making mobs completely/partially immune to attack slows altogether.
And, yet, the big selling point and role of Shaman in Pantheon is attack slows... This could very quickly end up a problem just like in EQ.
Shaman could solo some raid level bosses fairly early on(Lodizal, etc.), and could solo pretty much anything lesser.
The point wasn't to rant about that one class, in particular, but about challenge. Some mechanics from back then just make things stupidly easy and some things that shouldn't be soloable became so.
I agree and one of the main goals for VR I think will be making sure all classes have an identity, are balanced (to some degree) on their usefulness and how they interact will be good for grouping. It's easier to do this when you have 6 classes but not so much at 12. I played a Pally during my original EQ days so I did not have the soloing luxury and was glad for the almost constant grouping
I'm not sure what the "end game" AI is for Pantheon but I would love to see mobs adapt to some extent in a fight, making spells like slows either less effective or useless when it comes to boss fights. Maybe some behind the scenes RNG for regular mobs as well.
I wonder if they'll put any effort into learning from certain EQ mistakes, though. For an example, Shaman was so overpowered for so long that they finally started making mobs completely/partially immune to attack slows altogether.
And, yet, the big selling point and role of Shaman in Pantheon is attack slows... This could very quickly end up a problem just like in EQ.
Shaman could solo some raid level bosses fairly early on(Lodizal, etc.), and could solo pretty much anything lesser.
The point wasn't to rant about that one class, in particular, but about challenge. Some mechanics from back then just make things stupidly easy and some things that shouldn't be soloable became so.
I think part of the problem with shaman slows in EQ was that they were so dramatic. By the 50s you were slowing mobs by 75%. That was just too much. They had to either design mobs so that they had to be slowed, or make them immune. That tells you something was wrong.
They could probably aim for 40-50% on the high end. There was an EQ custom server called Shards of Dalaya that did this, and I think it played better in that respect.
I think a better way of improving Slow in Pantheon would be to give them different secondary effects instead of increasing the percentage every upgrade. Maybe one has a debuff, another has a dot, or another has a reactive that heals melee a little bit on every hit. Then it becomes a choice. Do you use the standard lower mana slow, or are you serving as the main healer and need to use the reactive, or maybe the mobs are more resistant and need an extra debuff? Adds more strategy.
I wonder if they'll put any effort into learning from certain EQ mistakes, though. For an example, Shaman was so overpowered for so long that they finally started making mobs completely/partially immune to attack slows altogether.
And, yet, the big selling point and role of Shaman in Pantheon is attack slows... This could very quickly end up a problem just like in EQ.
Shaman could solo some raid level bosses fairly early on(Lodizal, etc.), and could solo pretty much anything lesser.
The point wasn't to rant about that one class, in particular, but about challenge. Some mechanics from back then just make things stupidly easy and some things that shouldn't be soloable became so.
I think part of the problem with shaman slows in EQ was that they were so dramatic. By the 50s you were slowing mobs by 75%. That was just too much. They had to either design mobs so that they had to be slowed, or make them immune. That tells you something was wrong.
They could probably aim for 40-50% on the high end. There was an EQ custom server called Shards of Dalaya that did this, and I think it played better in that respect.
I think a better way of improving Slow in Pantheon would be to give them different secondary effects instead of increasing the percentage every upgrade. Maybe one has a debuff, another has a dot, or another has a reactive that heals melee a little bit on every hit. Then it becomes a choice. Do you use the standard lower mana slow, or are you serving as the main healer and need to use the reactive, or maybe the mobs are more resistant and need an extra debuff? Adds more strategy.
This exactly. Situational buffs/debuffs. The core component (slow, haste, etc) can stay roughly the same, but have secondary effects that you tailor to the situation.
Maybe the enchanter equivalent has a haste that caps out at 45%, but one has a small lifetap, or another has a armor debuff component, or a bleed effect, etc etc. Maybe he also has a 55% haste, but that's ALL it does.
Same thing with the debuffs like dullahan said. Maybe you're fighting a boss that has a nasty dmg return, so everytime your melee hits him, it returns a certain amount of damage. Perhaps using the debuff that adds a reactive heal is the best option. In this scenario the enchanter may not want to haste the melee as it would amplify the damage shield, etc.
The options are truly endless. I know some people will complain because they will have a spellbook with 100's of spells, but IMO that's a better thing than having the GW2 style of having basically the same half a dozen abilities and no ability to do anything other than mash the same buttons and jump around like a rabbit.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I remember being scared to death of my first orc encounter in Faydark, I remember what EQ really was, I have high hopes and expectations. I wish you well in this endeavor, good luck folks and looking forward to more.
Tegweien Ironwood/IIadwen Draconisvenator
Being scared of mobs has a lot more to do with "first MMORPG" experience than anything else.
Sure EQ1 had real bite to its death mechanic and it had high level mobs mixed in with lower level mobs (shadowmen camps in starting zones were always fun) - but you won't feel the same in Pantheon.
In Pantheon they can do the same thing and I doubt that you'll be "scared" - you'll probably be like - oh those guys there are too high level for me, so just avoid until later.
Recapturing the same potency of "feelings" evoked by the first MMORPGs is impossible.
My perception exactly. The feelings I had playing UO are unique to my mmo experience. Not to mention I'm sure that most of us are looking through rose colored glasses when we think back to those old games.
Strange, because when I log on EQ I immediately regain a respect or fear for my surroundings, because I know they can kill me and that means I have to get my corpse.
It's not that complicated. A game like EQ created fear because of the death penalty and the power of mobs relative to that of the player. If you stopped fearing that, it was because you had no concern for your time, or the game removed the elements which created that feeling.
One of my greatest hopes is to see some epic trains to the zone line a la Karnor's Castle, the Kith-side entrance to the Halfling city, and dozens of other places. I'm not even joking, seeing some of those situations play out were some of my best memories from EQ. The hilarity and anger of people sitting afk at the zone line was real. The death penalty was real.
One of my greatest hopes is to see some epic trains to the zone line a la Karnor's Castle, the Kith-side entrance to the Halfling city, and dozens of other places. I'm not even joking, seeing some of those situations play out were some of my best memories from EQ. The hilarity and anger of people sitting afk at the zone line was real. The death penalty was real.
I know exactly what you mean. One of my favorite parts of EQ was the trains. For anyone who enjoys wild and crazy fights, trying to take out massive trains is good fun. Seriously, trains were one of the best aspects of the game.
Ah Tulrezzor those were the salad days I miss them sorely. I remember being in the hand room in Karnors...a bad pull coming so everyone jumped out the nearest window then ran for the zone.....1 min later all hell broke loose at the zone in. Your guild helping you in the next step of your epic weapon...teamwork on bosses like the AOW.
I created a great train in early EQ in solb. What happen my group had a camp deep in when we got a message from another group that a certain guild was using a monk to train groups and then taking over the sites. So I did a who of the area and we were the only group left for them to train. I told my group that when they came for them to go one way to the zone and I take the mobs they other way. AE fear was a great skill for train creating. Anyway I gathered every mob I could (sadly the giants got stuck) and trained the whole zone and then zoned out. My group was the only people alive at the zone entrance. We zoned back in and the area near the zone was just packed with bodies. We were nice enough to res a few clerics and then left but before I got out of the area, I got a tell from a GM telling me Congrats that was one great train.
The biggest thing I think Pantheon is going to bring back is the Group Centric style of play. In EQ, you had to have a group no matter what you did unless you were a kiting class. You really got to know people on your server, the good and the bad. It made reputation a big part of the game. With Pantheon not allowing name changes, reputation will once again matter. Its going to be a long 2017 waiting but atleast we know it is coming.
The thing is there were quite a few classes that could solo fine:
Druids, Shamans, Bards, Necros, Mages - later game Wizards and Chanters, also Rangers, SKs and Pallies
I played a bard in vanilla and was swarm kiting before this mechanic was even known or named - very few players knew about how to play to the full potential of classes - heck enchanters were misunderstood for th first 3-6 months.
I think the general population not really knowing the mechanics on how to play their classes or how to even gear up correctly made a huge impact on why EQ1 was viewed so group-centric.
Heck look at project 1999 today - most players solo there because everything is known.
i think Pantheon will face the same challenge - after 17 years the mechanics on how to play "optimally" a game like EQ1 is very well known.
So Pantheon will be played very differently at launch than EQ1 vanilla was - on day 1 there will be a full optimal leveling and gearing guide for every class, as well as solo guides etc...
Even without any guids, the general familiarity on how to play MMORPGs is ingrained in players after 10+ years of playing.
Even if Pantheon is even harder than Vanilla EQ1 - top players will rip through content in a matter of weeks. It took people months even years to get there in EQ1. Won't happen in Pantheon like that at all.
The mystery of wondering around on a server where everyone was a complete noob to "online MMORPG" genre is gone forever.
That's your opinion. If content is designed to need a group, it'll need a group to complete. We'll know when it's released. Al you're doing now is stating your opinion as fact in order to knock Pantheon and EQ down a peg.
Comments
For those who think PvP in Pantheon is a bad idea, I'm sorry you missed EQ PvP. If you like PvP, you are going to be surprised how much more fun PvP over PvE can be in the long-term versus fighting over castles and territory that ultimately grows monotonous and has little impact on your personal progression.
Open world PvP is the most boring shit there is. It is nothing more than high level people camping a low level spawn to gank noobs. Wow, lots of fun and challenge there....
Then, if the game decides to have "large scale" PvP it is nothing but multiple large zergs avoiding each other as they run around the PvP area trading objectives to farm whatever kind of points or currency they need. Yeah, sounds amazing.
The only PvP that is any good comes in the form of team based (6v6, 8v8) scenarios where you only get a reward if you win the fight.
I think you might be confusing EQ for WoW.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
If you want a game where there is forced pvp on all servers go play something else. You lost that battle already.
Nostalgia for me is that feeling I get when I play something and remember the good times and I do have some nostalgia with EQ. However there are features that I cant find other places. Your were required to group if you wanted to take on harder content, many will say some could solo but not never tackle what a group could. When I say group a mean a proper party that takes into the consideration of the mobs you are fighting. The KOS (kill on site) system was woven into the world like no other game has been able to replicate, this made such a tremendous impact on giving the world life and was done so well that some didn't even notice it as a feature. The language system was fun, something I see as never returning due to voice chat. I also loved that items did not bind and could be sold, though now I would like to see it break at some point. Items could take weeks or months to drop, which was ok due to the non binding issue, your garbage became someone else treasure and all that time you put in on getting it will still make you a profit or be passed down to an alt/friend. I miss farming spell regents for my spells or for selling. Oddly I miss the bazzar, I miss that you had to leave your PC on if you wanted to sell all night. I could go on forever, I sometimes do, but the point is EQ had so many of these tiny little feature that if you look at one by one means nothing but as a whole was amazing.
EQ went a different direction and has not returned. The people that understood what made it special are no longer there. Yes people are nostalgic for EQ, but that's not why we miss it.
My gear ranged from Level 30 content dungeons to 60 plus with few raid pieces I was blessed to get. Normally people decked out in an entire "raid set" is either wearing an older "raid sets" or purchased them. A lot of guilds I knew would sell gear that was consider Best in slot for gold or real money and buy the next best for two or three people. Gear helped but it was team work that took down a raid boss.
A well oiled guild could manage to pull off chain heals, mana transfers, dots, slows and occasional off tanking that was required to down the boss. If you couldn't manage the teamwork then gear wouldn't help.
EQ had some pull mechanics in which you had to try and break apart(Monk, SK FD) mob packs. If you had aggro-ed 20 mobs that's most likely a failed pull and will soon be trained to zone.
The buff line/wait would be enough to scare most people today. On off nights we had guild runs were we didn't mange to make to to the boss and lost our spot in the rotation. So for some just getting to the boss was scary.
I don't need to be scared so much as I want to feel like at least a little effort needs to be put into staying alive. If I have any gripes about the "modern MMO" is that it became hard to die, rather than the other way around. Even if Pantheon has some spread of solo content, even EQ could be solo'd honestly, it needs to be worth the time spent.
Edit: Some parts of EQ could be solo'd and leveling to max could be solo'd though not as effectively as in a group. I hope that Pantheon emulates this exact premise as it make the most sense.
For good PVP you need the same thing you need to make the very concept of Pantheon work.. Community involvement. Arena PVP has always been trite IMO. You might as well just play COD. What sets the MMORPG apart from that is the ability to have the dynamic that was there in SWG, and I'm sure existed in other games (possibly something like L2 or EVE.
Where you have multiple guilds coming together to offer each other great content, the bad guys play their part, the good guys play theirs, and you have night after night of dynamic as well as fun encounters. WHen all is said and done you head to a cantina or forum to laugh your asses off at how things went down.
It's folks with your mentality that have ruined today's PVP. as it's all about winning for you. When you don't, you whine about zergs...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
And, yet, the big selling point and role of Shaman in Pantheon is attack slows... This could very quickly end up a problem just like in EQ.
Shaman could solo some raid level bosses fairly early on(Lodizal, etc.), and could solo pretty much anything lesser.
The point wasn't to rant about that one class, in particular, but about challenge. Some mechanics from back then just make things stupidly easy and some things that shouldn't be soloable became so.
I agree and one of the main goals for VR I think will be making sure all classes have an identity, are balanced (to some degree) on their usefulness and how they interact will be good for grouping. It's easier to do this when you have 6 classes but not so much at 12. I played a Pally during my original EQ days so I did not have the soloing luxury and was glad for the almost constant grouping
I'm not sure what the "end game" AI is for Pantheon but I would love to see mobs adapt to some extent in a fight, making spells like slows either less effective or useless when it comes to boss fights. Maybe some behind the scenes RNG for regular mobs as well.
They could probably aim for 40-50% on the high end. There was an EQ custom server called Shards of Dalaya that did this, and I think it played better in that respect.
I think a better way of improving Slow in Pantheon would be to give them different secondary effects instead of increasing the percentage every upgrade. Maybe one has a debuff, another has a dot, or another has a reactive that heals melee a little bit on every hit. Then it becomes a choice. Do you use the standard lower mana slow, or are you serving as the main healer and need to use the reactive, or maybe the mobs are more resistant and need an extra debuff? Adds more strategy.
This exactly. Situational buffs/debuffs. The core component (slow, haste, etc) can stay roughly the same, but have secondary effects that you tailor to the situation.
Maybe the enchanter equivalent has a haste that caps out at 45%, but one has a small lifetap, or another has a armor debuff component, or a bleed effect, etc etc. Maybe he also has a 55% haste, but that's ALL it does.
Same thing with the debuffs like dullahan said. Maybe you're fighting a boss that has a nasty dmg return, so everytime your melee hits him, it returns a certain amount of damage. Perhaps using the debuff that adds a reactive heal is the best option. In this scenario the enchanter may not want to haste the melee as it would amplify the damage shield, etc.
The options are truly endless. I know some people will complain because they will have a spellbook with 100's of spells, but IMO that's a better thing than having the GW2 style of having basically the same half a dozen abilities and no ability to do anything other than mash the same buttons and jump around like a rabbit.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
It's not that complicated. A game like EQ created fear because of the death penalty and the power of mobs relative to that of the player. If you stopped fearing that, it was because you had no concern for your time, or the game removed the elements which created that feeling.
Seriously, trains were one of the best aspects of the game.