Insta-Level 85 (280 AA?) (Heroic Characters)

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Daray, Aug 3, 2013.

  1. Ucala01 Member

    hmm, Eq has way way way more AA than eq2. this "bloat" doesn't exist, and even with a crap ton of AA everquest was "the game" for a long time.
    also they say eqnext has 40 classes, now I could be wrong, but that's more than the current amount in eq2...
    eq2 being a "small niche game" that you think really has nothing to do with it's amount of AA, abilities, or class. it's just poor choices with poor choices over the years.
  2. Deago Well-Known Member

    So they are going to sell the 280aa baubles....nice...now at least I can continue to level my new toon without going blah..what for?

    I really hope the heroic toon item is a bauble like on beta. Really really hope lol
  3. Archaical Active Member

    The "more is better" approach failed them miserably and they know that. Based on those lessons learned, EQnext will have a limited amount of starter classes that cover all roles individually and limited skills and abilities based on weapon selection, eight to be exact.

    Some of you are failing to grasp the concept that Smokejumper himself called this a "niche" game. This is not an opinion, this is what the man said about his own game. He openly admitted they took the name Everquest, which was the most popular MMO at one time, and turned it into a "niche" game. That kind of monumental incompetance will get you to rethink the entire structure of future games, thankfully.

    I still log into this game from time to time. I don't know, I suppose it is just habit, or it is for the mere nostalgia of what a good game it used to be. I even come back and buy a krono from time to time. It doesn't take long for me to remember why I left everytime though. You people are the minority. EQnext will be nothing like this game that you are defending for a reason.
  4. Malleria Well-Known Member

    Yea, they learned that lesson so well they decided to add another class into the mix! Clearly they believe more classes is a bad thing :rolleyes:
  5. Pauly Well-Known Member

    will be great for new players to start in one of the newbie zones at lvl 85 with no idea how to find level appropriate content. They will have to grind out one level before they can even do DoV quests. I'd bet most of true lvl 85 newbs will quit before they level to 87.

    also.. who's gonna buy a 280aa bauble when you can roll a lvl 85 for free?
  6. Archaical Active Member

    I guess you missed the part where I said EQnext. If at first you don't succeed, try try again.
  7. Astealoth Member

    I came here recently from WoW. I started playing WoW as my main MMO about 3 years ago. I'm still semi active there. I don't really play there anymore doing every day stuff, but I do log on three times a week to manage my guild and run our raid nights. I'm quite a good player there, ranking top 50 in class world wide nearly every raid tier since tier 11, tier 16 comes out next month. I also concurrently have played two other MMOs. I have played Ultima Online since 1999, and ran a seriously organized PVP world boss raiding guild from 2004 until 2007. In 2007 I got hooked on Dark Age of Camelot. I ran with a pretty active raiding guild there too for quite a number of years. But both DAoC and UO have completely died population wise, it's just impossible to play them on any serious level. I am still subbed to both, but there's really nothing to do anymore.

    You know what I miss from UO and DAoC as a WoW subscriber? Character building and raid difficulty. Now as I have yet to get to 95 here, I can't say anything of this game's raid difficulty. But from what I've seen, this game really shines in character building as opposed to WoW. In WoW you have a small set of useful abilities, absolutely nothing to train as everything related to your class is just handed to you at max power as soon as you get the level the spell requires. There is no customization of anything. The entire character building process in WoW is raid the newest tier dungeon, get all the loot in 3 weeks, wait for the next raid tier with your thumb up your bum. This is the absolute opposite of UO and DAoC.

    When I started at WoW it seemed new and fresh, gotta love when there's 20,000 people on your server to build a raid group from. But, what's it all about anyway? In the end everyone looks exactly the same and there's no feeling of accomplishment. I think these complex MMOs are a niche thing for us true nerds. How does WoW keep subs with such superficial and unrewarding systems?

    I'm going to play here awhile as my main MMO and see how I like the end game. Wish there was a really deep MMO out there with solid population. It's like searching for the holy grail. RIFT didn't do it for me, TOR didn't do it for me. They just feel like WoW clones. Hoping this will be better. Kind of excited for EQN also.

    tl;dr

    Not all WoW players are oblivious to what it takes to learn a complex class :p
    Alenna likes this.
  8. oldskool Active Member

    I am a big fan of this move because it gets rid of one of the worst elements of gaming of all times - levels.

    Levels are an artificial mechanic used by game designers in the past to slow down players and create roadblocks to progress.

    With EQNext not having having levels it seems this is a move to bring EQ2 close to being a levelless game.

    Now, instead of levels being what decides how strong your character can be it is how many AAs you have and how you spend them. You create a character and almost immediately have access to the entire game. But you may no be strong enough (because of AAs) to survive it.
  9. Vagrant Storm Active Member

    Yeah, I hate a level system...well, to be honest I hate the class system more, but that is just the former UO player in me getting out. I don't think people need their hand held to make a character. They don't need to level up and gain x amount of health and power, X amount of a stat. As you use skills...those skills gets better gradually. They don't get a large improvement after you use them 10,000 times.
  10. Bregdania Active Member

    I love this game! I have loved it from the very moment I began questing. What was that - "questing"??? What a shame we no longer "Ever Quest".
    If we are constantly in need of "end game" play - doesn't that mean the game is over?
    I loved the expansions we had that came up with constantly evolving story lines and quests. Okay I'm being cynical now but I really do wonder why the concept of Everquesting became lost.
    Wirewhisker and Raff like this.
  11. Ucala01 Member

    the game is never over, that's why it was called "Ever crack"
  12. Astealoth Member

    i miss playing my pure archer heheh, 120 archery, 120 tactics, 120 anatomy, 120 healing, 120 resisting spells, 120 meditation

    throw on a composite bow and a heavy crossbow and you'll be running those champ spawns :p

    i don't see why the UO style freeform classing hasn't caught on in modern MMOs. it simply works and was engaging enough to keep a solid player base paying huge sub costs for fifteen years plus in a game that looks like it could run on the super nintendo.
  13. Vagrant Storm Active Member

    Yeah I've never understood it either...it seems the genre just latched onto the Everquest style and ran. I think it was the games that used it. Asheron's Call was similar to UO in selecting skills...but the game was as fun as watching paint dry...at least for melees. All you did was auto attack. EQ1 was at least fun to play and required some thought. I tried them both for a couple days and went back to UO though. I didn't leave the game until a few months after EQ2 came out.

    Heh, it would be funny if EQ1 made the mold and then EQNext broke it
  14. Mermut Well-Known Member

    Actually, from many of the comments made at SoE Live, that is EXACTLY the goal of EQNext... to make the 'new' mold like they did with eq1.
  15. Raff Well-Known Member

    I don't think it ought to be available to new accounts. Only to accounts with...what...at least 4 lvl 90s? Something along those lines. Or maybe by account age? I think it would be nice to be able to max level one of my alts without running the same old stuff over and over ..and over.
  16. Deveryn Well-Known Member

    That's ridiculous and counter productive to what they're trying to achieve here. I've been playing EQ2 for about 4 years, but only have two toons above adventure 90. That's my choice. I'm still an experienced enough player that I can pick up whatever class I want. This kind of stipulation would be unfair to a lot of people, but most especially the new players who want to actually group with people.
  17. Gilasil Active Member

    I'd also like a classless system but it may be harder then it looks to do well.

    I played EQ1 for years and Asheron's Call for 8 months or so.

    I once saw someone who worked on AC say that the problem with their "classless" approach was basically balancing it. It's hard enough to balance classes, but when players can mix and match all sorts of things it gets really rough. Also, even though players can pick all sorts of combinations, some are more OP then others. What ended up happening in AC according to this person was that a few op builds emerged and characters tended to concentrate around those. Basically, a class system emerged anyway.

    Turbine made another try with DDO, although there they had the advantage of building on a PnP system which had been in use for decades, so it went better I guess. Not truely classless, but you can mix and match multiple classes. Looks to me like that's the approach EQN is taking. One problem with that approach is a new player is really at sea. Not only do you still have to pick a class to start with, what other classes do you add? Some combinations don't together work well at all. Good luck figuring out what does and what doesn't if you're brand new to the game. Even in a single class, there's many ways to build your toon which turns into many traps for newbies. They provided predone tracks to build characters, except it's commonly acknowledged that they aren't very good and if you want a halfway good toon you probably should stay away from them.

    At least with classes everyone knows what the progression is. Really boring, but they won't have players coming up with combinations nobody thought through.

    Bottom line, it has to be designed very carefully, tested a LOT, and even then it could be tough.

    But it would sure be nice for my character's career to not be so preordeained.
  18. Vagrant Storm Active Member

    Oh yeah, there are still classes in a classless system. In UO we had mages, fencers, jackers, alchies...ect and the same build got used over and over buy a lot of people. The difference is that the players got to make these classes. Plus there would always be slight variations. I for one decided to forgo some damage on my swordsman to have more dexterity so that I could remove a full second off the time it took for me to apply a bandage. I seldom pvped alone and when you have more than one sword doing damage it was more important to keep all the swords attacking than to boost the damage of one them...this worked well in PvE too. Yet it was not a common build. I also had gm magery on my blacksmith and miner just to Kal Vas Flam any red that came looking for an easy meal. Surprised a lot of people with that because it was considered wasted skill points to most people. So every one typically had one flavor of the month OP character built with an OP setup and then any other character were tailored to their play style or just to have fun with. And when every one has a OP character...none of them are OP.

    Plus the game doesn't stay the same. As patches come and go the OP builds change and players will get to experiment to find the next flavor of the month. In EQ2 for example if, Mages are the flavor of the month...well, there is nothing your Berzerker can do but be jealous. If it were classless you could just swap out a couple skills rather than level a whole toon. In essence this insta level options will give us a classless system. If I want a Warlock...bam...I will have one that is only a weekends worth of game time from end game. If there is no restrictions on the use of the insta level I will probably have a toon of every class at least setup for heroic content in a few months of casual game play....well probably not...there are some classes I have little interest in.
  19. Atan Well-Known Member

    EQN is being designed as a nice MMOG for console play. The design decisions reflect that.

    EQ2 is a deep MMORPG. As with RPGs they are heavily steeped in intricate combat systems and highly defined roles.

    EQN is designed for a different type of gamer looking for an entirely different type of game. I'm sure it will be wildly popular for a short period of time like successful console games are.

    However, there is 30+ years of RPGs out there, with plenty of gamers who really enjoy a good RPG. You can call that a niche, but its a plenty large enough marketplace to make good titles that can last decades rather than years. SJ wants to get away from D&D, but he has an existing customer base that really loves D&D based games. Its a pretty difficult place to be in for him, and its very telling what was not said at SOELive vs what was said. But thats a different discussion.
    Raff, Alenna and Kuulei like this.
  20. Quabi Active Member

    It's a Sandbox vs. Themepark issue. Themepark games rely on knowing the standard character/group builds in order to balance the content, especially for raiding.

    EQ was always a niche game. It peaked at around 500K subs? The entire genre was niche pre-WoW.

    As far as EQN goes, SOE have always been willing to try different things. Sometimes it blows up in their face like SWG's NGE, most of the time the ideas are interesting but the implementation is lacking, and occasionally it all works out (and if it's original, other games will copy it and make it a staple of the genre).