Lord of the Rings Online: Passive Racial Skills

Comments

• Treesong Member UncommonPosts: 15

  March 2007

  Ever since Everquest, where racial abilities actually covered areas like Forage, Stun immunity, Ultravision, Improved Swimming skill, Slow Fall, Hide, Sneak, Increased Food consumption, improved health generation and so forth, companies have started to water down racial abilities  to some min-maxing of  a few stats, that nobody in the end-game will care about anyway, since items and levels and expansions will have made the differences completely moot.

  Off course Everquest actually had a world where food consumption was required, where falling damage could kill you, where Ultravision actually was a boon, where extra regeneration was definately a boon and frontal Stun immunity made a lot of difference. Today, many of those features are considered a hassle, "unfair" or simply obsolete, and those racial Abilities to offset some of the hardships of the world would now be considered an utter imbalance, undoubtedly raising a storm on the forums if they ever dared to favor one Race with something like better vision, or stun immunity.

  Yes, even EQ is now falling prey to this "equalizing" trend, taking out xp-penalties for races, trivializing an ability like improved regeneration by out of combat regen and where every class now can get Forage as an AA, if only to a low level.  Should we keep seeing every little old fashioned feature that EQ had in newer MMO's? I guess not, some things are simply not viable, like the feature where a Summon class would summon a pet that could range in levels, thus players ending up summoning pets untill they had the "high level"one. But the current trend is much, much worse then simply tweaking out those early mistakes and honing those early experiments.

  This trend of watering down these Virtual Worlds, it's Races and Classes, all for the sake of a few less customercalls and a few less whines on the forums is the reason why I finally gave up on the genre, after 8 years.  I am sorry, but I am simply not interested in playing a perfectly balanced Fantasy Combat-sim.
• Almuderas Member Posts: 10

  March 2007

  Wow, very well put Treesong. I absolutely agree.
• kb4blu Member UncommonPosts: 717

  March 2007

  Originally posted by Treesong
  
  
  Ever since Everquest, where racial abilities actually covered areas like Forage, Stun immunity, Ultravision, Improved Swimming skill, Slow Fall, Hide, Sneak, Increased Food consumption, improved health generation and so forth, companies have started to water down racial abilities  to some min-maxing of  a few stats, that nobody in the end-game will care about anyway, since items and levels and expansions will have made the differences completely moot.
  Off course Everquest actually had a world where food consumption was required, where falling damage could kill you, where Ultravision actually was a boon, where extra regeneration was definately a boon and frontal Stun immunity made a lot of difference. Today, many of those features are considered a hassle, "unfair" or simply obsolete, and those racial Abilities to offset some of the hardships of the world would now be considered an utter imbalance, undoubtedly raising a storm on the forums if they ever dared to favor one Race with something like better vision, or stun immunity.
  Yes, even EQ is now falling prey to this "equalizing" trend, taking out xp-penalties for races, trivializing an ability like improved regeneration by out of combat regen and where every class now can get Forage as an AA, if only to a low level.  Should we keep seeing every little old fashioned feature that EQ had in newer MMO's? I guess not, some things are simply not viable, like the feature where a Summon class would summon a pet that could range in levels, thus players ending up summoning pets untill they had the "high level"one. But the current trend is much, much worse then simply tweaking out those early mistakes and honing those early experiments.
  This trend of watering down these Virtual Worlds, it's Races and Classes, all for the sake of a few less customercalls and a few less whines on the forums is the reason why I finally gave up on the genre, after 8 years.  I am sorry, but I am simply not interested in playing a perfectly balanced Fantasy Combat-sim.
  

  
  
  Totally agree.  Could not have said it better.

   
• knowom Member UncommonPosts: 195

  March 2007

  I agree with what your saying racial abilities and stats is part of what made EQ so good a game back in it's prime. I actually miss the grind camps trains ect was known for it made the game a lot more rewarding when you succeeded at something. The only thing I didn't like was that it was to raid centric high end requiring some massive guilds.