Vet thinking of coming back with young child

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Endaar, Sep 3, 2018.

  1. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I suggest just giving it a try. EQ can be as complex or simple as you want it to be. Expect returns commensurate with effort. Good luck!
  2. Aurastrider Augur


    I appreciate the thought put into your response as it is very thorough but I think the main aspect you are overlooking is the initial hook. I get that 7 year olds today are way more technically sound than they were when you or I were 7. Heck my 3 year old has figure out how to manually turn on the tv and dvd player, navigate to Netflix or a dvd and adjust the volume on the tv using the horrible rounded nob selector that my wife even has difficulty figuring out how to use. Its almost like these kids have a built in technology gene.

    When you consider the first 50-60 levels fly by on live with a solo character and a merc a duo using two mercs can potentially get there in a couple of days going pretty casual. Starting these little geniuses out playing a cleric initially will help them with things like movement, mouse control, learning in game features, geography of the game and overall will let them just experience the game without getting overly complicated. Its more of a learn to crawl before you learn to walk and learn to walk before you learn to run kind of approach. I agree that in the long run switching to a pet class with a more exotic race will play more into a child's imagination and keep them long term. A cleric will provide them with the opportunity to love EQ first and then they can class switch and figure out what class they will come to love. In the end if the goal is just some parent and child bonding time doing multiple class changes experiencing a variety of different regions throughout the game along the way will probably keep both parent and child engaged as they experience new content and mess around with different playing styles as the child increases their EQ knowledge and skills and can take on more challenging classes and group assignments. At most we would be talking 20-40 hours of actual in game playing time with a cleric which would go by fairly fast while the youngster learns the ropes.
  3. Endaar Augur

    First off, thank you to those who took the time to reply. Clearly a lot of the responses were very well thought out and I do genuinely appreciate it.

    Too much screen time is something many parents these days struggle with, and we're no different. But in this case if we did play EQ it would simply be instead of other games, not in addition to. And it would only be playing together; I'm well aware of the addictive qualities and raiding or even grouping with others isn't anywhere on the radar.

    He has played a lot of the common games for kids his age - Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Valley, etc. But he's also interested in other more complicated games like Scrap Mechanic, Kingdoms & Castles, and others I'm drawing a blank on. And we have played a little bit of Divinity OS 2 but I think managing an entire party is a bit too daunting.

    I think he'd like the idea of building a character, getting new gear, etc. He's very much a "numbers" kid so the stats would probably be appealing.

    Anyway, thanks again for all the feedback. Not sure yet what I'm going to do but you've given me a lot to think of.
    Yinla likes this.
  4. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Let us know what you decided on. :)
    And if your child does play which chars you both decided on. :)

    Good luck, whatever you decide.
  5. Gnomereaper Augur

    I've played a cleric main for years, the main reason why I don't support healing classes for most people is simply because they're highly stressful. Raid fails, blame the cleric. I used to go AFK, come back and get some nasty snark in a guild because I had to run the garbage out. Meanwhile in the same guild we had DPS hit auto attack on Vex Thall mobs and go afk. It wasn't until one of our cleric officers basically went off on the double standard basically saying that a rogue could go Stealth, afk, auto attack, and basically walk around his entire house and complete a honey-do list and still receive dkp and "do his job." Meanwhile, a cleric, this person in particular, couldn't go as much as five minutes with someone at the door over something important.

    When looking through the DPS parses, we found that the only people not afk were the warriors and clerics, caster dps, and a number of afk auto attackers. In the end, we began to use parses on raids and if you didn't deal "adequate dps" you didn't get DKP. Needless to say our Vex Thall clears got faster after that. Needed less healing and so forth.

    Then there's the whole Triality thing where they had a high dps setup for years and were one of the top guilds in Everquest for sometime.

    The game is a DPS centrific game, if you can outpace DPS you can avoid bad mechanics.

    Clerics you either love them or hate them :/. For a seven year old playing twitchy offensive games, clerics aren't a good class. I loved playing my cleric, but there are just times when playing one isn't a good idea and uber casuals they're not that great. Cleric mechanics mature early at 20, decline in complexity after 39 until 65 through 75 when the mechanical interesting abilities pick up again.

    Beastlord you level and get cool stuff all the way through, plus the epic is easy.

    Auto attack, send pet, nuke nuke nuke.

    Cleric post 39? /cast Complete Heal 1 1 1 1 with the occasional light or remedy. It's a 10 second lock down spell where you're not taking any other action. Let the merc do that stuff, and take the more interesting class.
  6. Aurastrider Augur


    Again you make great points but your entire focus is around someone new continuing to play the cleric where as my point is a cleric is an easy class to just get submerged into the game itself and learn EQ without having to focus to heavily on class mechanics. When you factor in a duo could run with a healer merc this will offset a seven year old's shortcomings while they figure out the game. The idea is not to make it to end game trying to be an uber cleric but rather just learn the ropes of EQ with a very reliable safety net in a healer merc to supplement the child along the way. Once they feel they have gotten down the basics of movement, navigation, how to interact with npc's and other players, what the different parts of the UI are and how to use them they could very easily start over playing a more interesting class but instead of having to worry about learning EQ basics that everyone has to learn they can actually focus more on the class end of things which will be significantly more beneficially to their overall growth and development playing said class vs trying to learn a class and everything within EQ at the same time. At most a couple of gaming sessions would probably be spent playing a cleric until the child feels comfortable with things. At which point the duo could start over. This would also give the parent a chance to evaluate skill and what classes the child would realistically benefit from trying next as to not overwhelm them but at the same time not bore them to death playing something they might find uninteresting. The parent would also be able to pick a class that they find interesting that would work well with the child's selected class and hopefully be able to compensate for the learning curve the child is going to encounter along the way.
  7. Kolani Augur

    I had a ranger in the guild about ten years ago whose 8 year old son played a ranger too. We always got compliments from people after they'd grouped with the junior about how great he was and how surprised they were that he was 8. He graduated as valedictorian this year and cited social skills he learned interacting with adults on Everquest as a key to his success.
    Grove likes this.