Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

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Dullahan

Golden Knight of the Realm
259
256
If there was such extreme downtime between pulls, you must have played with shitty pullers or people incapable of understanding the nuance of resource management and combat efficiency. Which I guess wouldn't be a surprising outcome for people who view combat merely as a glorified chatroom. A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
 
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Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
As a puller, I can safely say you have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you are specifically referencing either beating the entire server to a dungeon or playing it during off hours/well after it was relevant. Otherwise your viewpoint is simply not true.
 

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,056
If EQ was so shitty, then why did you play it for so long? Talk about retarded. You know what I do when I buy a game that I don't enjoy? I take it back or stop playing it!
 
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Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
Hey the old hits are still happening!

I enjoyed EQ for what it was, because I played one of the few classes that actually -played- the game. For much of its successful life, it was also the only popular online role playing game on the market.

I feel like you just don't understand how someone who enjoyed something can be critical of it. EQ shit the bed on a ton of levels, but it was also the only decent mmorpg at the time. I also had fun playing it. But again, I actually was playing the game, while the vast majority of people involved in it were watching myself and others play while they hit a button occasionally and typed in chat.

Any game you can effectively box in a group environment without really losing efficacy shows you -exactly- how little attention the game required. Hence, chatroom with a GUI commentary.

You're one of my favorite DJs on this station. Never change.

edit: I'll save some time:

1999 =/= 2004
1999 =/= 2008
1999 =/= 2016

Technology, competition, consumer base, and society have changed since EQ came out. You cannot make EQ again and have it be anywhere near as relevant as when it originally came out.

Hours long travel time unless you know a class that has teleportation abilities or pay for a service =/= fun content for any class that isn't one with teleportation.

Raids were all tank and spanks until the end of Luclin. The only strat was "have enough dps" or "have enough healers" and there was a CH chain setup for most raids entirely based upon this reasoning.

People fondly remember the grouping experience if they were a needed class and have no concept of how it was for the other classes. If you were a cleric or enchanter your opinion of how grouping and the grouping environment worked in EQ is most likely not how it was in reality. The one thing I willingly give to EQ without question is that it created a very diverse set of opinions of how the game worked. However, most of those are incredibly biased with very little basis in reality.

I think that covers most points that might be brought up.
 
Last edited:

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,056
Hey the old hits are still happening!

I enjoyed EQ for what it was, because I played one of the few classes that actually -played- the game. For much of its successful life, it was also the only popular online role playing game on the market.

I feel like you just don't understand how someone who enjoyed something can be critical of it. EQ shit the bed on a ton of levels, but it was also the only decent mmorpg at the time. I also had fun playing it. But again, I actually was playing the game, while the vast majority of people involved in it were watching myself and others play while they hit a button occasionally and typed in chat.

Any game you can effectively box in a group environment without really losing efficacy shows you -exactly- how little attention the game required. Hence, chatroom with a GUI commentary.

You're one of my favorite DJs on this station. Never change.

edit: I'll save some time:

1999 =/= 2004
1999 =/= 2008
1999 =/= 2016

Technology, competition, consumer base, and society have changed since EQ came out. You cannot make EQ again and have it be anywhere near as relevant as when it originally came out.

Hours long travel time unless you know a class that has teleportation abilities or pay for a service =/= fun content for any class that isn't one with teleportation.

Raids were all tank and spanks until the end of Luclin. The only strat was "have enough dps" or "have enough healers" and there was a CH chain setup for most raids entirely based upon this reasoning.

People fondly remember the grouping experience if they were a needed class and have no concept of how it was for the other classes. If you were a cleric or enchanter your opinion of how grouping and the grouping environment worked in EQ is most likely not how it was in reality. The one thing I willingly give to EQ without question is that it created a very diverse set of opinions of how the game worked. However, most of those are incredibly biased with very little basis in reality.

I think that covers most points that might be brought up.

I never said you can completely remake EQ now, but I also don't spend endless hours in a thread dedicated to an EQ type game telling people why they're wrong for wanting one. If you hate EQ so much, and the idea of Pantheon, why the fuck are you constantly here posting?
 
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Sevens

Log Wizard
4,959
15,128
I played EQ for many years, and yeah it was pretty much a chat room with a GUI..but for some reason It just hooked me, most likely the friends I made simply because it was a chat room with a GUI
Played WoW for a maybe a week (at most) about 3 or 4 months after launch...God I hated that game, quest hubs just really killed it for me. Was really disappointed cause I loved the Warcraft and Diablo games from blizzard (with Diablo II being one of my all time favorite games ever) and yeah I know that was blizzard north which pretty much went on to become Arena net (IIRC, could be wrong on that) but still had a lot of high hopes for WoW
 
1,678
149
The chatroom thing is the only way to make these games tactical. You can't have constant action without ruining the whole concept of downtime and resource management. You can play TESO and not talk to a single person in any group or any raid, and you are tapping your number keys constantly as well as diving around. And most modern MMO's are the same as that. You never go oom because it is constantly regenerating quickly, so there is no downtime, no chatting, but also no danger and no strategy required. EQ is unique because you had to med after fights and chatting is all you can really do in that time. But the medding is essential for a lot of reasons. The combat is exciting but you have to have downtime after it. This is one of the things I didn't like about Vanguard, there was virtually no downtime and it ruins so many important things.
 
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Hateyou

Not Great, Not Terrible
<Bronze Donator>
16,207
42,096
VOIP ruins your whole "you 'need' downtime to chat" stance.
 
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gLobal

Trakanon Raider
112
130
Some people seem to think EQ combat was boring, but it seemed great to me. Even after going back and playing on the progression/emulated servers. It's all about planning, awareness, efficiency, coordination, and a little timing. I still prefer the style of combat over modern mashers.

When soloing or grouping, typically you didn't blow your wad because it was less efficient, and you would be resource starved later. You saved some for emergencies. You wanted the highest, sustainable DPS. There were a lot of little tricks you could master.

- Casters had limited spell slots and you had to plan for high damage, efficient damage, resistances, types of mob, emergency spells, buffs, debuffs, utility, control, etc.
- Chaining the abilities/spells right, either by yourself or in a group
- Keeping your mana/stamina at a certain level. I preferred ~60-70%. If the healer was struggling, pick up DPS. Time it so casters/healers maintained mana and finish medding around the same time.
- Being ready to travel at a moments notice, like when you'd quickly pack up and move to a better camp or snag a named with little warning.
- Little additional roles that would pop up, like rooting/snaring/dispelling adds. Keeping adds locked up for the fight. Peeling off healer/chanter. If someone else struggled with a role, you could take over to give them breathing room.
- Checking group mates to make sure they were doing their thing properly, watching their actions/positions.
- Being aware of other people in the area, and the dangers or opportunities that might arise. Coordinating with them. Sometimes sending out a scout.
- Rotating group members, so replacements arrived at the right times. Sometimes helping them find/get to you.
- Timing your spawns if you were a puller, so they didn't respawn at wrong times. Being in range of the kill so you got XP. Pullers occasionally required a tagger.
- Waiting to kill a mob because you wanted their respawn to be spaced out better.
- Standing/casting/sitting in between the 6 second ticks
- Rotating lootable items, clearing corpses.
- Effective use of clickies, AA's, discs/abilities to make sure they were available at the right times
- Refreshing buffs without pausing the action
- Sorting inventory/eating so you didn't consume your stat food
- Checking the combat log (I probably have a disorder from doing this too much)
- Staying out of combat until the last possible moment to get OOC regen rates
- Managing aggro of course
- Mob positioning/kill order

Every little thing could shave seconds off a kill, or save you a % here and there and it all added up. You could tell when someone wasn't playing efficiently. Sure you could probably ignore a lot of it, but good players were always looking to maximize the flow of combat and there were a lot of details.
 
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gugabuba

Golden Knight of the Realm
129
38
That's a pretty solid run through of what makes EQ combat more interesting than it seems. Death had consequences sure but fucking up and blowing all of your mana did too even with no one dying. Efficiency wasn't always simple, but then again too often playing it safe and turning the game into a chatroom was the best option.

I think there is a lot of room to improve that resource management gameplay but that's certainly not how WoW chose to improve on EQ, and the post-WoW lemmings have been too scared to innovate in that direction.
 
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zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
<Gold Donor>
18,748
72,981
I am interested to see how they work class redundancies in this game. In EQ, you just didn't want or need multiple players of one class in your group. This was even more evident in raids. WoW went too far making everyone a tank/healer/dps but it's still an issue I haven't heard much about. It will probably be even more important in a smaller game like this where there aren't dozens of options available at all times. Anyone have information about this?
 
1,678
149
I am interested to see how they work class redundancies in this game. In EQ, you just didn't want or need multiple players of one class in your group. This was even more evident in raids. WoW went too far making everyone a tank/healer/dps but it's still an issue I haven't heard much about. It will probably be even more important in a smaller game like this where there aren't dozens of options available at all times. Anyone have information about this?
It has group size of 6 which is bad.
 

wilkxus

<Bronze Donator>
518
210
I am interested to see how they work class redundancies in this game. In EQ, you just didn't want or need multiple players of one class in your group. This was even more evident in raids. WoW went too far making everyone a tank/healer/dps but it's still an issue I haven't heard much about. It will probably be even more important in a smaller game like this where there aren't dozens of options available at all times. Anyone have information about this?

Heh. In my experiecne, nothing could be farther from the truth with respect ot EQ. It was often extremely beneficial to have multiples of players of one class in the group! I will however agree that generally speaking most people did not understand the ins and outs of their own or OTHER classes to effectively experiment and play constructively to find the beneficial combinations and hybrid tactics.

EQ allowed you to think out of box and rewarded you for it.
EQ had very fun nuanced depth with lots of ways to exploit it (beyond intended power limits, in MANY situations). It is what made it so fun compared to Wow. You could find ways to exploit unknown and hard to predict combinations of skills (that werent too nerfed yet) and achieve great things (sometimes too great like with Wizard epic nukes hehe). Many other les extreme cases existed at group level, more in tune with hidden secrets that could be added to gLobal gLobal s nice post above.

To be effective in combination, the two people playing the same class would need:
  • (1) sufficient knowledge of own class skills and application in individual situations
  • (2) sufficient knowledge of combinations of two of own class (playing/experimenting duoing)
  • (3) sufficient knowledge of combinations in (2) to adapt group tactics depending on what OTHER classes were.
What would result is a change of tactics & roles from the trio tank/slow/heal that less experienced people constantly b*tch about not being able to get. Over the years classes got changed and enhanced sometimes to significant benefit or hindrance of certain combinations.

My estimations of how difficult were to combine and to what degree of scope:
  • 2 monks (easy) high applicability to dangerous dungeon exp groups: 2 skilled pullers could safely shred many a dungeon area SAFELY
  • 2 clerics (tough) but they are already essential for *risky* high value (exp/camp wise) groups
  • 2 druids (medium) esp in kiting groups, esp outdoors, but even indoors
  • 2 wizards (easy) good stacking with complex pulling/herding tactics with druids/ranger/bard but limited to outdoors
  • 2 enchanters (tough) but already highly valued in groups esp *risky* pbaoe ones
  • 2 necros (good) .... too bad most were loners tho....because soloed so well :-(

You could extrapolate this to 3 4 5 6 and 7 8 (boxed once that was common). Some combinations great for exp, some for farming, some group raiding etc. The much maligned hybrid classes often excelled in NON standard groups..... as long as players were able or willing to think out of the box. It did require extensive broad knowledge of spells across classes and their effects.... often it required *teaching* other classes how to play their class a different way (easy with friends & guildies, almost impossible with strangers unless grouped with em a few times, or were patient :)

Just as quick example:

  • PBAOE groups (exp & farming)
  • mini raid groups (stacked cleric healing)
  • non healer agro or stun kiting

Result? Tons of fun, often custom groups in many areas did much better than the *classic* boring groups. There were ways of sharing PBAOE and exp groups if you had knowledgable players, essentially Power Leveling, Power farming that would be impossible with the *classic* groups people desired so much.

Wow? ..... solo grind...... *ugh* lmao the eliminated the FUN of creatively progressing through the exp grind by eliminating the need to level, making it trivial.
Good guilds and players in EQ knew how to and had fun playing helping others exp while farming/mini raiding and gearing :) in EQ.

Some guilds had SKELETON crews of players that NEVER watched TV or button mashed... but achieved GREAT things, with fun and unique and mostly secret/kept to themselves tactics. If you were unfortunate enough to be in a guild with semi afk boobs (as many/most were), you had to share less loot across more of a zergy force, compared to slower progressing groups, that shared more loot across a smaller tighter knit group great players. Just like you could get amazing groups for group play, it was possible to find amazing guilds for guild play. Night and day differences if you look beyond the measure of first/best.

It was often much more fun playing that way than zerg/grinding and working for dkp in a big raid guild.
There were a GREAT many fun and different ways to play and progress in EQ, it is why EQ classic has such a high replay value even years later (EQ before it tried to narrow and wowify itself).

If Pantheon replicates EQ in this respect, with some of the nice class *IMBALANCES* EQ had.... it might very well turn out to be a blast to play again! :) I doubt it will happen because of skill/experience limitations on the dev & design team but tis theoretically not impossible =p
 
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zzeris

King Turd of Shit Hill
<Gold Donor>
18,748
72,981
Heh. In my experiecne, nothing could be farther from the truth with respect ot EQ. It was often extremely beneficial to have multiples of players of one class in the group! I will however agree that generally speaking most people did not understand the ins and outs of their own or OTHER classes to effectively experiment and play constructively to find the beneficial combinations and hybrid tactics.

EQ allowed you to think out of box and rewarded you for it.
EQ had very fun nuanced depth with lots of ways to exploit it (beyond intended power limits, in MANY situations). It is what made it so fun compared to Wow. You could find ways to exploit unknown and hard to predict combinations of skills (that werent too nerfed yet) and achieve great things (sometimes too great like with Wizard epic nukes hehe). Many other les extreme cases existed at group level, more in tune with hidden secrets that could be added to gLobal gLobal s nice post above.

To be effective in combination, the two people playing the same class would need:
  • (1) sufficient knowledge of own class skills and application in individual situations
  • (2) sufficient knowledge of combinations of two of own class (playing/experimenting duoing)
  • (3) sufficient knowledge of combinations in (2) to adapt group tactics depending on what OTHER classes were.
What would result is a change of tactics & roles from the trio tank/slow/heal that less experienced people constantly b*tch about not being able to get. Over the years classes got changed and enhanced sometimes to significant benefit or hindrance of certain combinations.

My estimations of how difficult were to combine and to what degree of scope:
  • 2 monks (easy) high applicability to dangerous dungeon exp groups: 2 skilled pullers could safely shred many a dungeon area SAFELY
  • 2 clerics (tough) but they are already essential for *risky* high value (exp/camp wise) groups
  • 2 druids (medium) esp in kiting groups, esp outdoors, but even indoors
  • 2 wizards (easy) good stacking with complex pulling/herding tactics with druids/ranger/bard but limited to outdoors
  • 2 enchanters (tough) but already highly valued in groups esp *risky* pbaoe ones
  • 2 necros (good) .... too bad most were loners tho....because soloed so well :-(

You could extrapolate this to 3 4 5 6 and 7 8 (boxed once that was common). Some combinations great for exp, some for farming, some group raiding etc. The much maligned hybrid classes often excelled in NON standard groups..... as long as players were able or willing to think out of the box. It did require extensive broad knowledge of spells across classes and their effects.... often it required *teaching* other classes how to play their class a different way (easy with friends & guildies, almost impossible with strangers unless grouped with em a few times, or were patient :)

Just as quick example:

  • PBAOE groups (exp & farming)
  • mini raid groups (stacked cleric healing)
  • non healer agro or stun kiting

Result? Tons of fun, often custom groups in many areas did much better than the *classic* boring groups. There were ways of sharing PBAOE and exp groups if you had knowledgable players, essentially Power Leveling, Power farming that would be impossible with the *classic* groups people desired so much.

Wow? ..... solo grind...... *ugh* lmao the eliminated the FUN of creatively progressing through the exp grind by eliminating the need to level, making it trivial.
Good guilds and players in EQ knew how to and had fun playing helping others exp while farming/mini raiding and gearing :) in EQ.

Some guilds had SKELETON crews of players that NEVER watched TV or button mashed... but achieved GREAT things, with fun and unique and mostly secret/kept to themselves tactics. If you were unfortunate enough to be in a guild with semi afk boobs (as many/most were), you had to share less loot across more of a zergy force, compared to slower progressing groups, that shared more loot across a smaller tighter knit group great players. Just like you could get amazing groups for group play, it was possible to find amazing guilds for guild play. Night and day differences if you look beyond the measure of first/best.

It was often much more fun playing that way than zerg/grinding and working for dkp in a big raid guild.
There were a GREAT many fun and different ways to play and progress in EQ, it is why EQ classic has such a high replay value even years later (EQ before it tried to narrow and wowify itself).

If Pantheon replicates EQ in this respect, with some of the nice class *IMBALANCES* EQ had.... it might very well turn out to be a blast to play again! :) I doubt it will happen because of skill/experience limitations on the dev & design team but tis theoretically not impossible =p

Yep, they didn't know or actually care what multiples brought and this affected grouping. There is a reason chanters, clerics, and warrs always had a group and it wasn't because they knew the inner workings of their class. I knew high-level guild leaders that had no clue a necro could mezz or held any value to groups beyond the rezzs. I hope you are right since only the most determined will probably play this game at first. Good groups always can make a game good or bad but they did have significant overwrite issues or SOE wouldn't have gotten so many complaints about it.