I have always loved focus effects and manically (probably mostly needlessly) obsessed about them on my low alts. Defiant made this easy of course, and modern gear has it all slot templatized which takes away pretty much all of the fun of the hunt and mix-and-match. But what if they just didn't bother and took them out? Does it actually break anything on live? Future spells could just be "focused" tuned by the rank system already in place. On progression, they are early and overpowered where content is already trivial. PoP (when they are supposed to show up) would still be beatable without them. The really dramatic old focus effects (Lunar Whispers is one name iirc) were converted to direct +mana and such ages ago. Any true must-have could always be era set as new AA. Just wondering, as this is something that has become bloated and takes up time (and especially in the templatized slot gear era) just doesn't seem that valuable.
I presume his thought was that rank 3 spells would be given values appropriate to raid focus effects, while lower ranks would be appropriate to group focus effects.
Biggest challenge for Devs, as I see it, would be retaining the original Planes "feel", including a perhaps modded version of progression (though hopefully without the "we ain't telling you squat" hidden progression steps so we had to sit and gab with the sage for clues on where we missed something) ***Would be refreshingly novel too, if expansion went more "horizontal" than "vertical"...offering more actual variety rather than current Hotter, Faster, BIGGER stuff!!...so I can retro back and kick butt in last exp!!
Today the focus effect also work at rank 1 and rank 2 so rank 3 too late. And it would also require level increase. And today people are more likely to have raid armor with raid focus than rank 3 spells. As i see this, the idea is extremely bad.
At this stage in the game focus effects are pretty much copy and paste with the main time needed is creating new names if needed.
It would be great if progression server people decided to play everquest. Note the keyword ever. That means it continues - we have live servers where people are still playing ever quest. Stop trying to change ever quest to suit your 1999quest.
