Casters overall better than melee, is it a question of customer retention?

Discussion in 'Melee' started by Bighitz, Sep 22, 2013.

  1. Bighitz Augur

    I was speculating why some of the flat +dmg abilities you could implement for melees and that all 3 melees have basically been hoping for and asking for are not implemented.
    Because we need to compete better with casters on both consistency in DPS (both on burn and sustained) and the level of sustained DPS.

    Then it hit me, maybe its a matter of customer retention, if the caster classes are more newbie friendly and more popular overall than their melee counterparts, they probably also got a higher playerbase. Is the current balancing a result of that? Wanting the big classes to suceed?

    If there is some kind of logic behind it I cannot understand it, enligthend me please.
    Tuluvian likes this.
  2. Lenowill Augur

    I doubt this is true.

    Popular classes often get nerfed (or stagnated compared to other things). Sometimes the reasons they got nerfed (or stagnated) were part of why they were so popular at that time.

    This is a reality that happens (and has happened) in every frequently-patched online game since the Internet.

    Necros are about as newbie friendly as you can get (strictly speaking, in terms of a new player picking up the class and finding it easy to succeed in the game). Their endgame incarnations are about to take what some are calling a pretty sharp nerf.

    Honestly, if you want to know why there aren't currently more melee fighters coming up, don't look at endgame so much.

    Look at the first seventy levels, where casters get the following:
    1. Everything they need to kill efficiently in the form of spells that are readily and coherently purchasable from vendors in PoK, and most of which had their damage numbers severely buffed years ago.
    2. Relevant focus effects on the defiant armor that they're getting, either randomly or through HJ quests, which make those spells better.
    3. Utility abilities that allow them to affect the outcome of battles through skillful, tactical play from a very low level onward.
    Melee fighters in contrast get the following:
    1. Wimpy defiant weapons - the things are mediocre at basically every level of gameplay. The Crescent Reach newbie quested weapons from TSS era are better DPS than level-appropriate defiant. x.x
    2. Less engaging combat.
      • Prior to level 51, all pure melee fighters except for berserkers are essentially pure autoattackers with 1-2 buttons mash every few seconds.
      • Prior to level 51, all pure melee fighters except for berserkers are almost entirely a game of pure math and strategic decisions undertaken prior to fights. (Do I have enough DPS to kill it before it kills me, and how are my current buffs / consumed potions affecting this?) Outside of when they choose to use a healing potion, they have few tactical choices to make in how they approach fights while they're happening.
      • no reliable utility outside of their autoattacking/mashing prior to level 51 - not even monks, whose leveling far outstrips their Mend and Feign Death's ability to gain enough skill to become reliable in a timely fashion without idly mashing the buttons for hours while half-AFK in PoK watching TV or something.
    3. Incoherent hodgepodges of systems that aren't transparent and trip up anyone who doesn't have very specific game-knowledge about the classes in question. In particular:
      • Nothing in the game guides melee fighters in improving their weaponry (which is extremely important early on for all pure melee classes except monks, and can be a big help to monks too).
      • Nothing explains how damage and delay and damage bonus work, and most of the playerbase can't even coherently explain some aspects of it.
      • There are no vendors with standard melee weapons that are actually useful and don't cost a fortune.
      • Nothing in the game tells new monks that continuing to use their bare fists as weapons for a while will probably do them more good than early weapons will, nor that their barefisted damage scales with their H2H skill (which scales with level).
      • Nothing in the game tells new rogues how sneak and hide actually work or that their optimal strategy is to hire a tank merc.
    4. A hard row to hoe in solo questing compared to any offensive caster class or even a healer paired with a tanking merc.
      • Solo questing as most melee is pretty much a matter of being carried by your tank merc while your defensive skills fall behind, which is boring.
      • If you are a warrior, your merc definitely fights better than you if it's at least A5 (silver returnees can get this), which is discouraging.
      • If something does go horribly wrong, you generally can't do anything to save the situation, leading to fewer "epic clutch save omgoodness did you see that?" moments and adrenaline rushes that keep people interested in the game.
    There are few logical reasons why someone wanting to relax and have fun playing the game, who does not have a twinking package already set up and ready to go, would want to play a melee fighter for the first 70 of EverQuest's levels when they could play a magician or necromancer instead and actually feel like a competent contributor to fights from level 1 onward, with zero interruptions in that feeling for a very long time (if it is even interrupted ever). And this is in fact what you see happening -- lots and lots of good soloist casters being brought up lately, often in small-time silver box setups with one or two other supporting characters.

    Now, I should add, reasons do exist -- including the very specific reason that a particular high level player has decided they want to roll a particular melee class and are willing to do whatever it takes to make it work and make it fun -- but they're just not that attractive as picks for character creation anymore. If the first 70 levels aren't fun, most sane people aren't going to go through them.
    Quatr, Norathorr, Anex and 8 others like this.
  3. Bighitz Augur

    Well thats kind of my point, all the way through the game casters are more newbie friendly. Thats also why they got a greater player base, and then I ask the question if that has resulted in the imbalances we see?

    Anyway I see necros are getting nerfed, I am not sure how much of a nerf it really is, time will tell.
    I guess it could have an impact on trash parses (conserving mana for sustained on bosses).
  4. Gragas Augur

    Eh, a lot of people have monk alts now, wonder why?
  5. Lenowill Augur

    Mostly I see this as one of the consequences of the game (by all appearances) being nigh-entirely balanced around the top five levels of play at any given moment.

    Melee are designed to be balanced in performance against casters in the latest levels of content - usually in group or raid situations. Even with the best of developer intentions, you can have any of the following happen:
    • Melee in general are overtuned and get nerfed the next expansion.
    • Casters in general are overtuned and get nerfed the next expansion.
    • Who is overtuned isn't clear or it's more class-specific, and weird stuff happens (this is what we have going on right now).
    Anytime anything like this happens in a way that makes melee players grumpy, some people stop playing melee classes and/or quit EQ for the time being.

    The same also happens with casters. (See the angry high level Necro exodus that happened a year or two ago over something with some of their DoTs -- I forget the specifics.)

    The difference is that when casters quit the game, there are still large numbers of people making caster alts coming up behind them and actually advancing those alts to later levels because playing the character feels rewarding and fun even while still leveling up. The same can't necessarily be said for, say, rogues and warriors, who (at least in the areas I play in) seem to be becoming veritable endangered species. There are, however, magicians and rangers (and some necros here and there) as far as the eye can see, often accompanied by a boxed priest, bard, or chanter.

    So, the tree of melee fighter population rots from the roots upward. Sure, the leaves at the top are falling off because of normal elemental wear and tear (the ebb and flow of balance and of player interest in the game), but it's the disease in the roots that's going to discourage the leaves from growing back in large enough numbers to keep the tree alive.

    Pure melee fighters in EQ were designed for a group-centric low-level game that simply does not exist in EQ anymore at this time, except possibly on Vox or a progression server (I don't play on either, so I can't comment). Rogues' backstab ability is a really obvious example (something else MUST be tanking it for you to do optimal damage), and the monk's "tanky DPS" status is very favorable in low level groups - and, in a slower-paced leveling game where skills don't fall horridly behind, so is its mend and FD.

    (Having nothing else to do but autoattack and mash also isn't so boring when you're in a party and the simplicity of your character makes you an ideal candidate to type out messages to your party warning them of impending adds, or to otherwise be a source of stimulating conversation.)

    This is part of why I want to see low-level grouping make some sort of actual comeback - be it through revamps to Shrouds, updating the rewards of LDoN, and/or anything brand new that the developers might come up with - because without it, there are some serious design problems with warriors, monks, and rogues with regard to low-level play. (Berserkers aren't supremely better off either, but they at least get some wizardesque utilities to keep fights a little more interesting and their tactical input more engaging.)
    Quatr and beryon like this.
  6. Reilloc Lorekeeper

    I would LOVE to know these berserker wizard tricks you speak of. Berserkers are in the same exact boat but i would contend even worse than the others. Lower lvls, they dont do any more dps, have less ability to tank/defensives than monk and warrior and if you parse it, rogues also. Berserkers have less utility of any of the melee classes( auto attack and flurry).
  7. fransisco Augur

    Why on earth are you comparing berzerker defenses to monks or warriors?
    Of course Berzerkers have horrid defenses compared to warriors. So does everyone else.
    Berzerkers were never meant to tank, ever.
  8. Bighitz Augur


    Random comment lol?
  9. Brogett Augur

    Lenowill summed it up well. An example of baffling logic is rogue "evade". It's called evade, but I don't know where the name came from as I can't ever recall it being referred as such. Maybe just in dev chatter early on? For those that don't know, the hide skill as well as obviously being used to hide, will also reduce your aggro if you attack off, hit hide, and then obviously attack on again. The 3 are very commonly put into an evade hotkey to do just that.

    If we have an evade skill, *make it a skill*! Obscuring it by reusing another ability in a particular scenario isn't exactly helpful, nor at all obvious.

    On the different issue regarding power, berserkers in particular are in an odd state. In the right circumstances they're godly having some of the best burn potential in game. 250k+ dps for a minute? Sure, no problem. However in general they're weak because those circumstances require planetary alignment and a support group "just so" with perfect synchronisation. Rogues and monks suffer similar requirements, but the dps gain isn't as high as berserkers as they just happen (probably by luck) to have the perfect set of synergistic skills to multiply up shaman epic and beastlord fury.

    What this means is everyone points at a few exceptional parses and cries nerf. Rather than receive nerfs across the board, the class would be better off accepting lower multipliers on various skill and/or poorer synergy so that they get a better middle ground (better all-round dps but maybe also lower burst in the rare aligned cases). Otherwise they end up paying the penalty for something that doesn't normally happen.

    I think this is where caster vs melee balance suffers the most infact. The relative likelihood of a caster burn working well is simply far higher with less demands from and dependencies on other players. Whether or not they are overpowered in the end-game guilds, the bulk of players see good caster burns day in day out while the perfect sychronised melee ones are a rarety.
    Ulain, Norathorr and Reilloc like this.
  10. fransisco Augur

    If you would read, the poster before me (Reiloc) is complaining that berzerkers cannot take hits like monks and warriors.
  11. Lenowill Augur


    In the level 1 to 51 range, Berserkers are the only melee fighters that get real utility abilities that can be used in combat and whose use is intuitive.

    The wizard-like utilities I'm referring to are their snare (level 8 onward) and four-second stun (level 16 onward) Combat Abilities. They also have the ability to summon throwable axes using a reagent, and the power of these axes soundly beats the power of throwing weapons available from vendors.

    So, if a low-level berserker is soloing something that is a little above his ability to handle, he has the potential to overcome it through skillful play -- for instance, by snaring the thing, kiting away while throwing some axes, and then running forward to Stun the foe once the utility axe ability is off cooldown, allowing the zerker to get a frenzy and a couple of autoattacks in, unanswered by the enemy in question. If the zerker is using a cleric merc (something new and returning players are apt to do), this tactical kiting also provides time for the cleric to regain a bit of mana if oom, potentially allowing for another heal.

    Also, there's just the simple fact that berserkers can snare things at all, which means they don't have to worry so much about getting a train of adds as a a result of runners.

    All of that might still not sound like much, but compare that to the other low-level melee fighters. What are their options if they get in over their heads?

    Warrior: drink a pot, run away, or die.
    Rogue: drink a pot, run away, or die.
    Monk: drink a pot, use unreliable Mend that might hurt you instead of heal you or just do nothing, use unreliable Feign Death that might just leave you getting beaten on, run away, or die.

    So yes, in the 1 to 51 range the berserker definitely has more options for using tactics to win a difficult fight. This also means playing a berserker in that range tends to feel more satisfying than the others, since player input during the battle matters and can affect the outcome. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Berserker is the one of the only pure melee classes whose population among new/returning players I don't see lacking horribly.

    (I also still see a goodly number of monks leveling up, but for the most part they're all either ancient monk mains who have long since advanced past the frustrating Mend/terrible FD reliability days and are returning now to find that they have a whole lot of interesting pre-combat tactical gameplay to do do using their lull discs, feigning, and so on; or else they're players who very deliberately decided to make an alt monk and to twink it and powerlevel it in whatever ways necessary to skip past the "boring" part. In contrast I have seen genuine newbies choose a berserker and take the character all the way up into their seventies without much complaining - actually, I met someone like that who became a friend for a time a few years back).
    Quatr, Ulain, Necromonious and 2 others like this.
  12. Bighitz Augur

    I respect your views Leno, but level 1 to 51 is not terribly important in todays game, even new players are there max a week.
  13. Lenowill Augur


    The first twenty minutes that a player spends playing a game are the most important 20 minutes you have with them, and you can never get those minutes back - ever.

    The first week to two weeks that a player spends playing a long-term commitment type of game are the most important week or couple of weeks that you have with them. You can never get those weeks back - ever.

    I've introduced four genuine newbies to the game over the course of the last two years. One of them still plays with me on a regular basis and has a wizard and chanter who are level 75. The other two do not currently still play.

    One of the two who do not still play made a monk as the first character he tried, and he got so bored of his unstimulating gameplay in the tutorial (and so frustrated with how irritating the UI was) that he let out a loud groan of frustration around level 7 and just quit.

    Now, some degree of that is going to happen. This is EverQuest. But this is a word-of-mouth invite situation, so I can lobby for him to keep trying it until it gets fun.

    But there's nothing anywhere coming up or him to look forward to.

    If he had been playing a berserker, I could have said to him, "Hang in there. It gets a bit more tactical and stimulating by level 16 or so.)

    If he had been playing a beastlord, I could have said, "Wait! Don't stop! You get your pet next level! It changes everything and you will forever be managing a warder that wants to nom everything!"

    If he had been playing a bard, I could have said, "Wait! I know you're a flimsy wimpy character with songs that don't do much, but next level you get a song that lets you bring just one mob when you pull, as long as you do it right!"

    But he was playing a monk. What could I tell him? That his Mend will not work right for hours of gameplay unless he goes to a trainer and blows every practice he has on it every level, and that even then it's going to be a shaky proposition until he levels up enough for the skill number to be higher? That he will soon get an ability to play dead that won't work right at first either? Yeah, no, that wasn't going to happen.

    Interestingly, I was able to get the same player to come back and try the game as a Shadow Knight some time later. The game still frustrated him (as it does most new players), and he did consent to using some powerleveling and semi-powerleveling (e.g. fighting normally with some buffs) from my high-level druid to breeze through from level 11 to level 60ish, but he stuck with it all the way into his late sixties this time and had some dedicated duoing sessions with one of the other newbie friends when I wasn't around, and he did indeed feel more like his actions in combat had the potential to mean something (e.g., if he's losing, he can snare or lifetap, and he had an interesting mana-management game with maximizing DPS from DoTs and stuff).

    Low-level necromancers and magicians never run into this kind of problem where their input during combat feels unrewarding and meaningless, and they don't run into it at high levels either. Their kits of abilities are strong and varied enough to let the player have a great deal of independent influence on the outcome of battles, with the necro being more suited to experimentation and killing on the fly (the player's mistakes punish necromancers less), while the magician is ideal for players who like to prepare adequately beforehand, pick fights well, and then use both tactics and brutal force to win them. So that is why I recommend necros and mages to people quite frequently - it gives them some of the the best chances consistently feeling like their decisions have an appropriate and fun effect on the outcome of battles.
  14. Bighitz Augur

    you are missing the point of the thread :).
  15. Lenowill Augur


    The initial point of the thread was to speculate that SoE doesn't care about people who play pure melee because the population of casters is larger. I pointed out that I disagree with this assessment and have now thoroughly and exhaustively explained why I think there are fewer melee players than casters in the first place.

    To whit, it isn't that SoE hates melee fighters now -- it's that the game has ever and always been designed for melee fighters to be very dependent on group support, and that this is systemically visible from the lowest levels onward, and THAT is why you don't have people playing them as much anymore -- because most of them (the ones prone to switching mains) have realized they can have more fun playing classes that consistently feel empowered to affect the outcome of battles more.

    The problem of melee needing tons and tons of ADPS support in order to achieve good enough numbers in endgame raids to pull their weight is just the logical conclusion of a design philosophy that has been deeply entrenched in the game from waaaaaay early on.

    It has nothing to do with the devs currently hating the players of melee or ignoring them because their population is small, and everything to do with the trend toward designing them that way being a huge, giant boulder that is already in motion rolling down an old and very tall hill and is going to cause a lot of turmoil if they suddenly try to stop it.
    Jent, Ulain and Raptorjesus5 like this.
  16. Dre. Altoholic

    SOE needs to come out with more clear goals when it comes to DPS tuning. Let the players sort out the rest. The issue IMO is that there's simply no direction at all. You can't have balance without that.

    The biggest caster vs melee tuning issue I see is how much easier it is to tank with a Mage vs gearing up a player tank for group content. Sure, you can't use melee DPS with a pet tank, but who cares when Wiz mercs beat pretty much everyone I've run combined parses on and they don't afk.
  17. RagePaw Augur

    Brogett needs to be the berserker class rep, I don't care if he's a rogue, he's about the only one that gets it and actually wants to balance all classes.
    Norathorr, Dre. and Krickitt like this.
  18. Reilloc Lorekeeper

    Neither were monks and we see how they tank much better, especially for a leather class.
  19. Riou EQResource

    Monks were considered light tanks for the vast majority of EQ (up until like HoT/VoA where the Devs seem to have changed that thought), same as Rangers
    Lenowill and Sinestra like this.
  20. Krickitt Lorekeeper

    As long as he still supports the rogues I'm for this lol