EQ theory explanation?

[Topgunben]

Did Brad ever explain why certain things were the way they were in classic?

Just a couple of examples below but we all know there are a lot more.

-Casters are simply more powerful than melee, was it a willful imbalance? Or accidental?
-regen rates are virtually the same for casters as they are melee?
-wizards are kind of shitty
-certain zones are just dog shit. Beholders maze is just one example.

Personally I like the imbalances of the early game. For a brief moment, I thought anyone that would choose a race/combo other than iksar/necro or ogre/warrior was playing the game wrong. But the charm is choosing what you like rather than what’s the “best”. Same with leveling zones. Sometimes it’s just fun to go to a new place and get bad experience/loot.

[Pulgasari]

-Casters are simply more powerful than melee, was it a willful imbalance? Or accidental?


Nobody ever talks about it but casters have an exp penalty.

[Trexller]

Nobody ever talks about it but casters have an exp penalty.

Expand on that

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Did Brad ever explain why certain things were the way they were in classic?

Just a couple of examples below but we all know there are a lot more.

-Casters are simply more powerful than melee, was it a willful imbalance? Or accidental?
-regen rates are virtually the same for casters as they are melee?
-wizards are kind of shitty
-certain zones are just dog shit. Beholders maze is just one example.

Personally I like the imbalances of the early game. For a brief moment, I thought anyone that would choose a race/combo other than iksar/necro or ogre/warrior was playing the game wrong. But the charm is choosing what you like rather than what’s the “best”. Same with leveling zones. Sometimes it’s just fun to go to a new place and get bad experience/loot.

Everquest was heavily inspired by DnD, and the same discrepancies existed between the classes in that system.

In the earlier levels, DnD melee classes are much better than casters. They do good consistent damage, and low level caster spells kind of suck. But by the endgame, casters are simply way better due to getting really powerful spells later on.

Same thing in Everquest. First 30 levels or so a Warrior can just chew through enemies if they are twinked. But by level 60 a naked Necromancer is going to run circles around a raid geared Warrior when looking at how well the two classes can solo.

Racial choice was also heavily influenced by the faction system in original Everuqest. The idea is pretty clear: Good races are weaker individually, but they have more class choices and more cities to find each other. So they band together to make up for individual disadvantages. Evil races naturally distrust each other, so they are more likely to go solo. This means they need to be naturally stronger to compensate.

The problem is that they basically started abandoning the complex factions in Kunark. By Velious, your race/relgion basically didn't matter at all. So you end up with races that are simply better than others, because the original counter-balance of good races coming together via faction abd location was abandoned.

[Swish]

Expand on that

10% penalty for being high INT in a robe.

[Topgunben]

Everquest was heavily inspired by DnD, and the same discrepancies existed between the classes in that system.

In the earlier levels, DnD melee classes are much better than casters. They do good consistent damage, and low level caster spells kind of suck. But by the endgame, casters are simply way better due to getting really powerful spells later on.

Same thing in Everquest. First 30 levels or so a Warrior can just chew through enemies if they are twinked. But by level 60 a naked Necromancer is going to run circles around a raid geared Warrior when looking at how well the two classes can solo.

Racial choice was also heavily influenced by the faction system in original Everuqest. The idea is pretty clear: Good races are weaker individually, but they have more class choices and more cities to find each other. So they band together to make up for individual disadvantages. Evil races naturally distrust each other, so they are more likely to go solo. This means they need to be naturally stronger to compensate.

The problem is that they basically started abandoning the complex factions in Kunark. By Velious, your race/relgion basically didn't matter at all. So you end up with races that are simply better than others, because the original counter-balance of good races coming together via faction abd location was abandoned.

Thanks for the explanation. I suppose the only think I would disagree with is that everything remaining the same, I don’t even think a low level warrior/rogue beats a Druid, shaman, mage, cleric, necro.

[Topgunben]

10% penalty for being high INT in a robe.

Here, you can have this warrior that can’t solo a blue con mob and even if he could it will take you 30 minutes to regen all of your health, but you’ll have no exp penalty.

Or you can have this clothie that has this 10% exp penalty but can kill 5x the mobs (probably more) in the same amount of time and with way less risk.

Truth is, every class in the game depends on the robed ones, just like the hobbits, dvarves, humans and elves depended on Gandalf.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Thanks for the explanation. I suppose the only think I would disagree with is that everything remaining the same, I don’t even think a low level warrior/rogue beats a Druid, shaman, mage, cleric, necro.

Melee characters (when twinked) can power through low level content quite well, because they don't need to meditate back mana. My Monk from 1-30 with a fungi could just about non-stop auto attack mobs to death for the most part without sitting, unless I got really greedy and pulled too many. My twinked Warrior in a Ceremonial Iksar Chestplate had a similar experience from 1-24.

But I do agree with you that Everquest casters are stronger in the low levels than their DnD counterparts. DnD casters were basically useless for the first few levels lol.

[magnetaress]

Yep. DnD. Casters are Gandalf. Melee r meant to team up. Casters are too butt we developed the enchanter/
shm meta as emergent play.

I'll be 10000% with you. Casters have it a bit too easy on p99. Especially enchanters. Everyone grouped for safety. Especially against DC's and lag.

[Danth]

Did Brad ever explain why certain things were the way they were in classic?

Just a couple of examples below but we all know there are a lot more.

-Casters are simply more powerful than melee, was it a willful imbalance? Or accidental?
-regen rates are virtually the same for casters as they are melee?
-wizards are kind of shitty
-certain zones are just dog shit. Beholders maze is just one example.

It was all talked about on usenet or the various EQ-related boards, but good luck finding all the discussion today. Verant's right arm didn't always know what its left was doing, so sometimes you got completely different answers from one developer to the next.

The idea with casters was they were stronger as long as they had mana, but they paid for it with lengthy downtime and blind spellbook meditating. It didn't work out all that well in practice because often enough the melee had to sit around waiting on casters anyway, and melee gear was so weak that melee players couldn't really take much advantage.

Some zones were plain unfinished, and a few weren't implemented at all. Same issue most of these types of games have. In EQ, more often than not the unfinished parts tended to stay unfinished. Development preferred to focus on the never ending expansion rush or money was diverted into other projects.

989/Verant was repeatedly told Wizards weren't great, but they doubled down. It was supposed to have the highest burst damage of any class--which it does. Just VI apparently thought burst was way more important than the players did. Wizards did provide a group protection against kill-stealing, so there was that, and with most experience groups waiting around for spawns between cycles, without P99-style nonstop fighting, they didn't seem as bad as they do on here.

[magnetaress]

Melee be liek

wE5O0OPL0ak?si=pNZyEtAsMDDqM0n3

[Ciderpress]

The imbalance is crucial to the charm of classic EQ. A big problem I have with modern mmo's is that everything feels homogenous. You can easily over-balance things to a point where no one class really feels any more or less specialized at anything than any other class, like there's just one big generic all-purpose class that everybody's playing.

You might say EQ was TOO imbalanced, but I'll still gladly take it over the watered down experiences on offer today. I don't care how pretty your game engine is if I never once feel any kind of investment in my character.

[magnetaress]

One of the downfalls of modern wow is Tanks being able to self heal and dps effectively enough "they don't need their groups". It's only inconvenient butt they can solo slowly the big bosses.

Warriors give up the ability to solo so they can take the big hits. To solo they would need massive hp pools and fights would last upwards of 40 minutes. So they are relegated to dpsing and taking the hits for their team. That said two warriors can easily trade off and succeed very well with just bind wound. EQ gets good when you add another... ench/clr combo way better than solo ench. Trios are the sweet spot unless you have a full group with plenty of mobs around.

[Toxigen]

also all the drugs brad was doing off strippers buttholes

[Jimjam]

One of the downfalls of modern wow is Tanks being able to self heal and dps effectively enough "they don't need their groups". It's only inconvenient butt they can solo slowly the big bosses.

Warriors give up the ability to solo so they can take the big hits. To solo they would need massive hp pools and fights would last upwards of 40 minutes. So they are relegated to dpsing and taking the hits for their team. That said two warriors can easily trade off and succeed very well with just bind wound. EQ gets good when you add another... ench/clr combo way better than solo ench. Trios are the sweet spot unless you have a full group with plenty of mobs around.

Warrior was so powerful on p99 when sneak pulling was in and bind wound could be done in combat while taking/doing damage.

Well, still not as powerful as the top tier classes, but it was a window into 'if Verant made warriors have decent self support like modern (read 2004) MMOs'.

[Topgunben]

Warrior was so powerful on p99 when sneak pulling was in and bind wound could be done in combat while taking/doing damage.

Well, still not as powerful as the top tier classes, but it was a window into 'if Verant made warriors have decent self support like modern (read 2004) MMOs'.

It seems as though balances can blur lines between classes so badly that they become a bowl of mush.

However, giving warriors some type of double bonus to AC from worn armor would balance the classes and while also further distinguishing them.

[Trexller]

strippers buttholes

[Evia]

The imbalance is crucial to the charm of classic EQ. A big problem I have with modern mmo's is that everything feels homogenous. You can easily over-balance things to a point where no one class really feels any more or less specialized at anything than any other class, like there's just one big generic all-purpose class that everybody's playing.

You might say EQ was TOO imbalanced, but I'll still gladly take it over the watered down experiences on offer today. I don't care how pretty your game engine is if I never once feel any kind of investment in my character.

This is so true. I think one of the major reasons I hate modern MMOs is that the obsession on "balance" has totally gutted all creativity and uniqueness in different class options in modern games.

[Pulgasari]

Expand on that

I think they misjudged what would be powerful/useful. There's also a distinct lack of trivial mobs mixed in with on-level exp content, which melee/hybrids would be better at dealing with efficiently while the casters keep meditating.

Brad forgot about the gibberlings.

[Ciderpress]

The original devs have stated that they didn't expect the game to ever see a first expansion, let alone a second expansion. So for kunark\velious, they basically assumed this is gonna be it, cause that's just how game development cycles went for most game up until that time. They might get one expansion, then it's on to the sequel. That was the business model, and these newfangled mmo's were confusing to the beancounters.

Same reason why it always grinds my gears when anyone complains about p99 not being "classic". It literally can't be. There is emergent player behavior and metas that have developed in the 25 years since eq was developed which are *also* not classic. So the devs here are in the impossible position of either ignoring those things, or making changes to address miserable game breaking behavior that didn't exist in 1999. You'll never have it both ways, but imo they do the best job here at striking that balance of any emu I've ever played.

[magnetaress]

Brad forgot about the gibberlings.

I feel the same way.

[Wakanda]

Melee characters (when twinked) can power through low level content quite well, because they don't need to meditate back mana. My Monk from 1-30 with a fungi could just about non-stop auto attack mobs to death for the most part without sitting, unless I got really greedy and pulled too many. My twinked Warrior in a Ceremonial Iksar Chestplate had a similar experience from 1-24.

But I do agree with you that Everquest casters are stronger in the low levels than their DnD counterparts. DnD casters were basically useless for the first few levels lol.

This isn't melee exclusive though. Get some HP items, a velium crystal staff and a tolapumj robe and you'll basically be a melee DPS with pets and sick nukes until 20+.

If we counting priests too then it's going to become even more trivial with sarnak devastators, oakleaf scimitars, rune etched icewurm fangs, girdle of rapidity, and fungus tunics.

Edit hopefully I don’t sound hostile, but I’m just keeping it real �� I’m leveling an enchanter atm and I feel like a beast lord running around with my pet crocodile and easily face tanking mobs I’ve slowed while beating them to death with random frost strike procs. Necromancer was even more faceroll, Harmshield, lifetaps, snare/fear. Class legit feels like a shadow knight for the first 20 levels ��

[Zuranthium]

Twinking and power leveling should not exist. Itemization at lower levels should be better and natural regen should be better.