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Originally Posted by t0lkien
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Not to get into an extended design discussion, but I couldn't disagree more. It's not poor design at all, it's just what you think you don't want.
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It's not what anyone wants. Nobody truly finds it rewarding to sit there and buff the group with a spell, full med, buff them with another couple spells, full med, a couple more buffs...and THEN starting fighting...and THEN start the buffing rounds again another 30 minutes later. If you ask anyone for a top 10 list of things that made Everquest exciting, memorial, and special...this process I just described would never be mentioned as one of them.
Look at Guild Wars 1 for how Healers in MMORPG's should be played. I'll let you use an account if you've never experienced it before. Actively "protting" (protecting) yourself and teammates with the most appropriate skill as the damage comes in, or a couple seconds BEFORE it comes in, is far and away a more active and skillful and enjoyable endeavor than applying rounds of buffs every 30 mins and casting Complete Heal every so often.
Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien
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What you are advocating [with not being able to twink] is what almost every other game does. You lose a lot more than you gain with these restrictions.
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You don't lose anything and you GAIN far more community interaction and long-term stability in your game. No twinking means lower level characters always need to progress at a relatively normal rate and with a group. This means new players coming to the game will constantly have people to play with, since older players can't just RUSH the leveling of their alts. It also means the newer players are LEARNING, since the older players are forced to actually put effort in on their alts and therefore are interacting with the newer players. Plus the older players will receive much more fulfillment in the end.
None of this would even be a question if game content was much more dynamic, rather than being static. That's obviously what the developers would have wanted from the beginning, but there was absolutely no way at the time to make it happen. They would have had to hire a ridiculous amount of programmers and/or GM's to make it a reality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien
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Why can't a lower level pick up and use that sword, within the game world I mean? What is the explanation? That's a great mechanic for specific items (like the magic named swords in D&D that required a certain Wisdom or Intelligence score to wield and subdue the "will" of the sword") but as a general "that's just the way it is because we have to balance things", it's frankly a cheesy, cheap, nasty solution. I don't like, and never did, the No Drop element even in EQ.
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Oh, a lower level player could certainly be allowed EQUIP higher-level items, but the stats would simply change to automatically be level-appropriate when they equipped it.
However, you just gave the reason for why many (most) higher level items shouldn't even be equippable by lower level players, IN THE RPG sense -- higher level items are almost always magical. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that a magical item would refuse to work for someone who isn't worthy of it. ("The Sword in the Stone", HELLO?!?!?)
There's also a practical gaming reason for this -- because equipment is a status symbol. It's a visual representation that MEANS something and creates an added level of visceral competition. This is incredibly important for keeping some players interested in a game after they've reached "the max level". If a certain item does the exact same thing as another item, but is far more rare and/or has a much better look, players WILL go out of their way and spend a lot of time to obtain those rarer and more aesthetically appealing items.