Or you could make buff box alts and camp them wherever you are/want, instead of being limited to one zone, by personas.
This is not correct either. A "known issues" post was put up in the Beta Update News forum on 11/8, which just happened to be the date the first cut of the AP code went in. That post stated clearly that unrestricted swapping was temporary and "likely to change". A week later, tooltips were added which stated clearly that Live persona swapping would be as it is now, restricted to starter cities and fast camp zones. The zealots demanding that unrestricted swapping be made permanant kept posting over and over in Beta that the tooltips were wrong, even though our esteemed CM said they were right. It was >NOT< a last-minute dev decision. And it wasn't "many people" asking repeatedly. It was the same 6-8 people constantly raging about this. The vast majority on Beta were busy with the raids and missions and never once looked at AP. I would estimate there were 10x more posts about the pickzone issues than there were about AP swapping. Literally nobody was doing the combat-based swapping on Beta you keep talking about, because the basic functionality was broken and what you were asking for couldn't possibly have worked at any point in the Beta process. Even now as I post this, we still don't have the final Beta code on Test; they don't want people (such as me) testing it there, because they know it's still broken in certain key aspects. It's going to be months before the core AP functionality is stable enough to even begin to consider any options for an expanded swapping rule. If we ever do get to the point where what you're asking for is possible code-wise, I guarantee you they will charge you extra for the privilege, like a new perk. The swapping process is indeed much faster than having to login an alt, as long as you're in a designated swapping area. When this is stable, I can put a level 1 mage AP on my ranger main, and never have to worry about food or drink again, and never need to go to my second account to do that. There are all sorts of examples like that I could cite; they just don't have anything to do with combat.
Not even Daybreak agrees "swap classes quicker" is an accurate description since it's not part of the feature's description on the purchase page. The extremely specific case of "if you happen to already be in a tiny percentage of the game's zones" doesn't change the fact switching personas is dramatically slower than switching alts in the vast majority of cases. I hope they reverse course, because I see zero reason for the restriction in modern EQ. It's incredibly frustrating to see them take a killer feature and reduce it to a footnote with an 11th hour change just before release. Now all I can do is point at Final Fantasy XIV and say "See that? It's what personas could have been."
Here is the actual quote: Your version includes "temporary" and "likely to change" and the real version says nothing about it being temporary and actually says it MAY change.
Which is the worst argument you could possibly use. EQ is not FFXIV, doesn't want to be FFXIV, and trying to make it so would break pretty much every system design in the game. You'll have better luck lobbying for a bazaar plat limit increase.
The can of worms is already open. Trying to shove it closed by making a pointlessly tedious restriction does nothing for the game. Introducing a feature that does the exact same thing as job switching in FFXIV invites legitimate comparison. And you can't swap mid mission in FFXIV either, so no it would not "break the game" to get rid of the outrageously pointless restriction. I'm sure people howled about the Plane of Knowledge, as someone brought up on the boards. It is okay for the game to change! The one and only thing the restriction accomplishes is making the feature less appealing by adding tedium that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever because there are already numerous ways to move around the game world anyway, and rezz tokens exist.
Oh yes it is most certainly because of other games. People on this forum seem to recoil in horror whenever a different MMORPG is brought up, but there are other things other games do very well, and EQ should get inspired by that kind of innovation. On the same line, there are things other games don't do well, and should take a note from Everquest. APs are very obviously being borrowed from FF14's class system, and you could even say its similar to World of Warcraft specializations.
I took that as meaning how often you could change personas rather than restricting what zones you could change in. As it is now, there is no restriction on how frequently you can change personas as long as you are in certain zones. You can cycle through personas non-stop since there is no lockout timer for swapping. Before that tooltip update which said it was fast-camp zone swapping only, I don't remember anything in beta where there was any mention that swapping might be zone restricted. I wish they would have at least hinted that was a possibility. I was excited about personas based on how they were working in beta and was talking them up on boards. I kind of feel foolish for describing their functionality with anywhere swap and sort of feel bad if someone decided to pre-order because of comments I was making about how awesome I was making them sound. If EQ had hinted that they were going to be zone restricted, I would have had that in mind and been more accurate in my description of them on the boards.
don't really play at all anymore but I heard people had millions of missing plat from personas.... quite a "feature" there dudes
Thx for adding those details, Risiko. As I did not had access to the beta server and beta forums my perspective was a different one. I do agree with you that Darkpaw might had realized at some point how APs could be exploited, and I showed them an example on how that could possibly happen. To me they made the right decision in the end, even that it might had led to a broken promise, which is another story. The poor decision was to make a full-bodied promise in advance if such a promise ever got made.
I’m with you on this. Exploit what? Two very simple solutions: lock Personas in instances and strip all buffs when entering a raid dz.
There would be no need for something as overly punishing as forcing rebuffs every time you enter an instance. I can't image what supposed "exploit" that would prevent that isn't already possible by just swapping characters. Thank goodness they don't lock events and never did often. And it's a good example of why the persona restriction is so misguided. Just imagining it being impossible to replace people who need to go or ld mid event annoys me. And that is far more powerful than sitting there five minutes to change classes.
Personas could have really breathed a lot of life into EQ. I was just excited to play around with some cool combos of classes. But now, alts are still much better imho. Basically it would have helped travel, if they left it like it was and allowed people to buff easier, instead of logging in an alt. You would just have to invest a lot of time, leveling them up. I can't think of any exploits that would make one bit of difference. Not like the group game is hard. They could have addressed any issues, if something came up. I really wanted a new, fun addition to EQ, but we didn't get it this time.
It would be to avoid an unfun gameplay loop of having players sit in the guild hall and swap personas to pre-buff their burns. Rebuffing in a new a raid event occurs anyways. I didn’t say every instance. I also didn’t say lock instances, I said to lock Personas. No swapping inside the mission or dz like FF14. It’s not always about exploits to avoid, but it wouldn’t create a fun gameplay loop to pre-burn in the GH, then banner into the raid.
It's the exact same people making the exact same arguments as was the case during Beta. Devs didn't listen to you then, what makes you think they're magically going to change their minds now?
Ok, but you're still getting off another burn, and you're timer is counting down by pre-burning from the GH.
What? People could already do that without personas, and far more easily at that. I know you weren't proposing locking instances. I was saying the supposed "exploit" is already possible without personas, and far more easily. Should they lock instances because of some ridiculous hypothetical min/max situation that in actuality isn't some huge game breaking problem going on? No, just like they should rethink persona switching. And you already couldn't switch personas without being out of combat to begin with. I think adding a pointless layer of tedium to avoid ridiculous situations almost no one would bother with is silly. That's not to say that's why they did it, but if it was it's like tuning the bard reverse damage shield as an enchanter tanking raid mobs, resulting in a hilariously pointless ability so useless if I recall a dev that looked at it years later was baffled. Feedback is important. There's nothing wrong with civil criticism, and I think they made a terribly pointless mistake here. Devs also once had a 15 minute timer on using the guild banner, blocked AETL from working in combat for a few years, and once stated they refused to allow people to hide helmets because "that doesn't make sense" or something along those lines. Didn't they do something ridiculous like try and prevent people from tabbing out of the game too, way in the past? Just because something bad is implemented doesn't mean it has to stay. I already have alts on different accounts, so the supposed "exploits" wouldn't be of any use to me, especially as a bard that can already go pretty much anywhere anyway. But it bugs me to see a feature gutted like this, and the straws people need to grasp at to justify it only strengthens my opinion.
