Last Minute Class Decision - Necro vs Shaman - Raiding

True. This game isn't very good about acknowledging that, I've noticed the time sink gap vs actual difficulty isn't the same. It's kind of a miserable game when you wanna just play for a 30minutes and it takes almost all that time to find a camp and form a group. This just gets worse when they continue to nerf things like quest xp. I don't think I've seen an effective group/xp grind that doesn't take 4+hrs. And now that I think about it. That's actually bad game design. A hot take I know, I expect the redditors to start flipping desks momentarily.

That aside I also enjoy the pace in a weird way too.

You are right though. When I am introducing friends to the MMO genre I tend to let the know that in some games classes or builds don't really flush out until X_level. Which is also kinda bad design (I highly recommend watching

"It gets better after 100 hours..."). I appreciate why devs use this method but its bad design too. Which is why I try to becareful about what games I ask my friends to try.

But its true. Its about the fun you have. Chasing metas is poor decision making you just end up miserable if your class ends up getting broken later.
I am enjoying my shaman, I am little behind on Yelinak but I will get there. I never really enjoy Classic so I get bored easily but maybe if I find some friends in game that could change, in hindsight I think I could have waited for Kunark/Velious and had just as much fun. But I am here now and even with a few missteps I am getting my EQ footing again.

Coming back a little late to the thread because I was out leveling.

Great Video by the way but he missed a key factor as to why games like this are designed to take 100 hours to "Get Good". It is really simple, its due to human psychology.

When something is difficult to achieve, people tend to take pride in the accomplishment or use the time invested in that endeavor as a reason why it would be a waste to quit. If a game is too easy, then is also becomes easy to quit.

People might decide within 2 hours if they want to continue to play the game or not, but they aren't really "Hooked" until that 100 hour investment so I am not sure if that really is poor game design when trying to establish a long term player base.

Also, another thing to consider is asking yourself the question if EQ's progression is bad game design at all. I mean I have leveled my Necro to 49 and probably will get it to 50 today. Further I have leveled my Shaman to 17 and plan on pushing him up to max before Kunark launches as well, then maybe focus on a bard if I have time. My point is, due to EQ's character design, where you can't really tell how good a class is going to be until let's say 100 hours of play time, I am investing the time leveling 2-3 characters to see what "Gets Good" about them.

I play a necro, on raids they are pretty boring except just the boss fights. On trash the mobs don't last long enough to really do much, even on the boss fights can be a little boring because of mechanics where you can't use dots. I'd pick a shaman, you'll be buffing a lot but they are always wanted on raids.

He's covered that aspect in other videos. But that's not really if you watch any Diablo Immortal video, you'll see that they actually have teams of psychologists, to help manipulate systems to find ways to do things like extract as much money as possible from players. DI is a very aggressive example and alittle more mainstream than most mobile games.

Oh I am sure it is a combination of events but I still think if EQ was a much easier game with much more loot being dropped, it would have had the same impact on players it obviously has. Also lets be honest, the TLPs are 10x easier than original EQ. I am not sure how long it took me to get to 50 in the original game but I do know it took me more than 2 weeks. I am back mostly to do the things I couldn't do originally and if the game wasn't so demanding back then, I doubt I would be back now.

TLPs are definitely easier. Though, I get very frustrated with the player base because they make it harder than it needs to be an exp group in the hole nearly made me quit right then and there not because we wiped, I expect that from time to time especially with enchanters (sorry to all you baller chanters) but yeah anyway it was a miserable CR.

You aren't wrong OG EQ was hard but I only attribute that to it being new and not understanding a game but even that didn't take long as I came from Ultima Online originally to try out EQ. I had considered that "hell" levels could be a challenge. It's a interesting subject because it was a bug according to some as "Originally, hell levels were 24, 29, 34, 39, 44..." so it's been argued as a bug because it was related to the client and a mathematical error. Lots of speculation and many posts over the years that go back and forth on it. A big ole time sink.

I worry in cases people confuse a time sink with challenging content. There was some pretty genuinely interesting and challenging stuff though.

I tend to agree but if we are talking about retention, you have that sunk cost fallacy coming into play. Many people will look at the time sink as a rite of passage and become more attached to their character because of the time invested.

Though if I have to be honest, there are many, many time sink I find in EQ that are nearly rage inducing so yeah, lots of bad design but when you consider it was kind of the first game of its kind and they didn't have a clue what worked or didn't work, EQ designers did OK. On the flip side though, I definitely prefer EQs progression over any modern MMO I have played outside of a beta test. I mention the beta test because I was a Beta Tester for SWTOR and they had amazing progression mechanics during beta. It was kind of a weird cross between EQ and WoW with easy solo grinding if you wanted to go that way but the best loots and leveling speed required cooperation, good group class composition and really knowing your class in a group situation. Then toward the end, completely caved to the casual crowd and everything became pretty much soloable and zergable.

Moving back to the original topic, I couldn't decide between Necro and Shaman so I decided to play both. Now if I could only get my guild to recognize that both are my mains for the purpose of DKP and Raid loot, I would be golden. Sadly, that isn't going to happen

Melody of Mischief allows you to raid and earn dkp on two mains.

Indecisive?

No I just get bored easily so I am always playing 2-3 Mains. I also don't box so it is just me playing one Character at a time. This is the first time I am really focusing on raiding though and my guild only allows one main and has some pretty heavy restrictions, in my opinion anyway, that is going to make it really hard to gear up anything but my designated main. You can take whatever character you want to the raid but if it is not your designed main, it is classified as an Alt and has a very low max DKP bid and it gets very little consideration toward Epics. I can kind of see the situation with Epics but personally I feel DKP should be DKP, I mean it is not like if I am splitting my raiding time on two characters that my DKP totals for each character are ever going to threaten anyone focusing on a single character. However, they don't see it that way and/or really want people to focus on one main character which is my only disappointment with my guild.

The indecisiveness comes from having to pick just one as a main. Normally I don't have to pick one character over the other, I just play what I want, when I want, how I want but in this case it looks like I am going to have to choose.

Currently my Necro is 50 and raiding while my Shaman is only 28. Working really hard to get my Shaman up to 50 to see which I like to raid with better. Also I think I am kind of leaning on swapping my main to the Shaman when he gets 50 because I thinking that of the two classes, the Necro will have less limitations on what content it can do imposed upon it by a more limited set of raid gear and lack of Epics.

I do like the sound of that but aside from this one rule, my current guild has been fantastic. Also we do have different rules for off night raiding which are more alt friendly and they do off night raiding quite often so I am hoping I can gear up my second main while doing that and just use my designed main on official DKP raid nights. We will see how it goes.

Necromancer for sure! DOTS OWN!!

Yeah it is definitely a hard choice that is for sure. They are very powerful and I haven't even got around solo farming with it and pissing off half the server by taking LGuk camps by myself yet. That is much harder to do on a Shaman.

most characters are super boring to play early on in eq, as you get past dodh it feels more like modern MMOs with alot more button presses. Bard used to be when you had to manually twist, but with /melody that went away and now classes are fairly mindless

True. The tricky thing with retention is also how easily the population can nose dive when world of mouth gets out the typical "games dead" is surprisingly effective its very hard to recover if something like that gains any traction, a good example is new world. I don't think you'll ever see early numbers like that ever again, or another would be No Man's Sky, you'll have some loyalists definitely. But you'll be hard pressed to retain people who are worried about losing money if the game actually disappears.

Man, SWTOR was so good. I didn't stick around long with that one though I found it entertained me for about a year and a half or so then I kind of had my fill.

You should play necro... Who likes buffing other people???

hopefully people that play buffing classes

I end up playing both. Got my Necro to 50 and my Shaman is up to 33 as of last night and can say they both are fun and not at the same time. They are just too different.

In a group setting at least in classic I have found the Necro to be a bit boring. MoBs just don't live long enough for DoTs to feel fun since often you only managed to get 1-2 ticks off before the MoB dies. I ended up finding that my lifetap was generally more mana efficient than my DoTs. Also aside from snaring and ghetto mezing for 18 seconds, your just standing, sending pet in, hitting 1-3 buttons and sitting down again. It gets a bit more fun when you can charm and undead pet but aside from dealing with charm breaks it is still the same 3 step process in a fight. On the other hand, the tool set you have is amazing for solo play and only an Enchanter, which I have mained twice, can compare at least in terms of fun factor.

The Shaman is exact opposite for me. I find it amazingly fun and active in groups and requiring constant decision making. Which mobs do I slow, which do I not bother with because they are going to die too quickly to every worry about it? Which MoBs are going to be up long enough to be worth a DoT, which would be better to engage with a DD? Should I jump in to help the healer, is he struggling? Is the time to kill slowing because the healer is struggling with mana and should jump in to help the healer by topping off the wounded after the the fight or would I be more effective using my mana to nuke, slow, or DoT? Should I melee or focus on canni to keep my nukes/DoTs rolling? What classes need what buffs and do I even have time to buff or would be be better to say the time and mana for heals, nukes, slows, etc. The decision tree just goes on and on. Also unlike the Necro, I can be the core the group forms around because I can be the groups dedicated healer. To me there is no comparison between the two in group setting, Shaman is clearly more fun, even when you are having to single target buff every single party member (blah).

Solo though, it is pretty damn boring. Root, DoT, Canni, Wait. Maybe a little melee if the MoB doesn't hit too hard.

From as raiding standpoint, I only know the Necro and it pretty much feels the same as grouping. It doesn't help that everything in classic strong enough to really want to use my DoTs on seems completely resistant to my spells. Honestly in about 90% of the fights in raids so far, I have felt the only thing I have contributed with my Necro is my pet DPS provided a AOE doesn't get him. Oh yeah and summoning people in Sky up to islands they aren't yet keyed for.

Don't know how the Shaman will turn out but I can't help but feel it will be pretty similar to the group experience because as far as I can tell the role is similar. Keep your party buffed and healed and contribute DPS and any other utility you can offer wherever you can. I am hoping to manage the 13 levels I need to get my Shaman to raids by the end of the weekend so hopefully will no more about how it feels on the raiding seen then.

In any case, from where things stand right now, I think I will end up maining the Shaman while keeping the Necro for those times when I want to solo or farm. I also think the Necro is less raid reliant and will be the more capable of handling whatever content I want to engage while equipped in droppable, buyable gear than would a Shaman.