EQ Never

Lenas

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So, the only REAL customization comes from hero (character) abilities. But you have to ask yourself, why do they seem so chill and laissez faire about balance issues? Ill tell you why - because the character skills, within their various types, are going to be almost totally homogeneous. Sure, a wizard will have a blink ability to keep it mobile, but it will be almost identical to the warrior's leap, and the ranger's ground slide or whatever. Who cares which one you pick? They are basically the same skill with different animations...

Prove me wrong Sony.
You are wrong. You MUST be wrong. If all class abilities were homogenous, no one would have any reason to multiclass and the entire model would fail.
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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You are wrong. You MUST be wrong. If all class abilities were homogenous, no one would have any reason to multiclass and the entire model would fail.
Oh there will be a few exceptions I'm sure, but for the most part, differences will be minor and superficial.

Movement abilities:

Wiz blink: teleport 10m ahead of you.
Warrior leap: leap 8m ahead, small aoe on impact.
Ranger: slide 8m ahead, small stun on impact.

Also, they have specifically stated multiclassing is not required. Playing a pure class is viable all the way to tier 5 (lvl 50).

The more I'm reading, the more I'm realizing this game will be about illusion of choice, rather than meaningful choice.
 

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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That just screams "generic" to me and I have a feeling the novelty of it will wear off very quickly.
I don't know. Minecraft's procedural content did generate a lot of epic-type landscape and challenges, even if they toned it down a bit for consistency's sake (if I say "gargamel", do you know what I'm talking about?). And that's with essentially one person doing it at the time.

Thing is, they can procedurally generate every zone. The zone has a specific set of landscaping rules (Rathe Mountains are highly different from Everfrost Plains), it has a fixed number of POI/features (there's three barb outposts and two tent camps in Everfrost; their location will vary according to where the local ressources - wood/water - and threats - ice goblins camps - were originally generated, even if those move later), and the rest can be completely different. It's a bit more work to have a consistent feeling with a completely different terrain rather, but you don't need as many artists creating a map and modeling your static terrain in 3Dstudio. And each server ends up with its own references, notably glitches ("let's meet at the place of the three fused trees. You know what I'm talking about?" "yea, I saw it before").

The respawning undergrounds is just edging their bets: if the generated dungeons aren't interesting, well, they won't last long.
 
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The more I'm reading, the more I'm realizing this game will be about illusion of choice, rather than meaningful choice.
Finally someone gets it. It will be finely balanced so that everyone is dps, tank, carry, etc. but really, they are all more or less the same. You have to have horizontal progression in these kinds of games, because as soon as you have vertical progression, some people rush ahead and stomp everyone else. And you can't have little timmy lose! Gosh no. Otherwise he will rage quit and will stop throwing money at the screen to get little upper hands here and there.
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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Oh don't get me wrong, I'm still gonna buy the game and play the shit out of it. I love Norrath and have purchased ever Everquest product released since the original (except late EQ/EQ2 expansions). The mere sigt of certain landmarks in the world will give me a raging nerd boner.

They just aren't fooling me with their bullshit dev speak.

Also, welcome back
wink.png
 

Cinge

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Oh don't get me wrong, I'm still gonna buy the game and play the shit out of it. I love Norrath and have purchased ever Everquest product released since the original (except late EQ/EQ2 expansions). The mere sigt of certain landmarks in the world will give me a raging nerd boner.

They just aren't fooling me with their bullshit dev speak.

Also, welcome back
wink.png
And probably the main reason for using the EQ IP. Smart business.
 

Teekey

Mr. Poopybutthole
3,644
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I love how because it's not EverQuest HD, it means they're just cashing in on the EverQuest name.

You guys are great.
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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And probably the main reason for using the EQ IP. Smart business.
Know what stat I'd love? How many unique individuals have subscribed to any everquest product for more than a 3 month period? I bet it's easily multiple millions of people.
 

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
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Small differences can be pretty big in close fights. I really don't get the hate on this class system. Like the class systems in other games offer you real choices? What choice did you have in EQ that you won't have in this game?

The examples you gave of different blinks all seem like pretty good ways to differentiate the abilities and create meaningful choice. Have you ever played DOTA? Do you know how huge the difference is between a blink and a leap with a stun or a leap with an aoe, or the difference between a targeted leap and a directional one?
 

Quaid

Trump's Staff
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I've been playing DOTA since your grandparents were in diapers sonny.

I get it man... But original EQ... If you were an enchanter you were so vastly different from a cleric, or a warrior, or a monk it was basically a different game. Not so much with EQnext.
 

Braen

<Medals Crew>
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What was playing a Warrior in Eq1 like? In soloing/grouping/raiding. How did you play them? What were the abilities you used in those situations?

I ask because playing a class in this game with 8 -12 class abilities seems like more things to do than say the warrior class in EQ1. Someone mentioned, how can 4 or whatever abilities make a class. How many true abilities did the Warrior in EQ1 have?
 

gogojira_sl

shitlord
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I wonder how disgruntled employees were when they said "look guys, we're scrapping what we got. Again. WE GOIN VOXEL Y'ALL!"

I bet that's a punch to the gut, but hey, at least that's job security.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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Well even in dota, not every hero is the same. Not every hero has a blink or any sort of movement ability, not every hero has nukes, not every hero has right click passives, there's clearly defined roles that heroes can fill(some heroes fill multiple roles) and on top of that each hero is pretty much entirely unique, some skills are similar/exactly the same but not many. It's very likely that in a mmo setting however the variation will be small. The leap, blink, blink+stun, leap+knockback variations for example is filler shit, it's all the fucking same. They have slight side effects added to them but no one is fooled, it's all a fucking movement ability that does only that. Increasing your movement speed, teleporting you in random directions or on specific targets, those are movement abilities that are at least different enough. We'll see how much they make them different.
 

Lenas

Trump's Staff
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I'm calling bullshit on EQ1 play styles being different for most classes. If you were a melee you would auto attack and mash kick. If you were a caster you'd /assist and Alt+1-4.

The only different play styles in EQ1 were very specific classes and I'm sure SOE can manage to make something similar with 40 of them.
 

Grumpus

Molten Core Raider
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Did they mention if all the classes will be shown before release? Or if there will be some that need to be found.
 

Muurloen

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Perfect tie-in. All of these heroes from Heroes of Newerth have different traits, skills etc etc, and have access to the same gear. However, putting something, say for instance, an item named Fire & Ice on Tempest is pretty stupid as he has no use for a melee weapon. If you want to do it the choice is there, but the benefits of Tempest having that item is retarded.