Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilder
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I was too young to know the true game mechanics back in 99. (Hell, I still don't know even 10% of the game, but that's another thread)
Why exactly did they penalize hybrids in the first place?
Did the exp penalty actually *benefit* anyone?
Was it removed as a result of the players efforts? Or did the Devs just come to their senses?
Genuinely curious, as I play a Troll SK and I've greatly noticed the before and after effects.
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On live, I played a ranger in 1999 and kept playing them all through the years. (I also played hybrids here when the penalties were active. I didn't care, contrary to a lot of people who seem to.) But back in the early times, nobody knew much about the game. I didn't even know I had a penalty when I was playing in 1999. You know, back then, most of the joy came from it being so spectacular and new. We didn't hyper examine it, nor was all of this on the internet yet.
BUT I think the reason the hybrid penalty failed is primarily rooted in how players select for group members and also the incorrect work of developers. Explaining this fully is not possible in this single post, but I can try.
Fundamentally, in ideal terms, all classes are balanced around the group-centered game, so that they're dependent on each other and mutually equal. As a class designer, if you take a point from one skill, you must put it elsewhere in a skill or skills, resulting in an equal value. For example, I might take 1 point from tanking and put half of it in dps and the other half in healing. How much I put in dps and healing is dependent on how much value those have compared to tanking. Everything has value and this is how you balance the classes to ensure they're mutually equal and dependent on each other.
In all practical terms, they failed somewhere in making the classes mutually equal and dependent on each other. The addition of experience modifiers wasn't necessary, but the fact it was there from the very beginning for different races and classes shows it was considered a viable means to balance the classes around a center point. Not only do I think this was probably a mistake (mostly due to how different experience modifiers cause players to level at different rates and not be able to group with each other eventually), but I also think they misjudged the value of abilities or traits or skills the classes or races had. This means their capacity to balance around a center, regardless of the method--like exp modifiers, would be in error.
Their failure meant that when groups came together they would discourage hybrids from joining and much preferred specialists like rogues, warriors and clerics. Rangers couldn't tank as well as a warrior or dps like a rogue or tank/dps as well as a monk. Rangers traded raw tanking/dpsing for utility spells like root and snare and sow and minor heals. Theoretically, those things had mutually equal value, but ultimately, this shown to be untrue. Groups valued raw tanking/dpsing/healing/cc/etc over utility. Utillity for rangers covered a broad range from healing to dps to cc and buffs, but since they were utility they tended to be weaker versions. In a group,
weaker didn't float. The designers mistakenly attached too much value to it.
I do think as the years went by they did make rangers more specialized dps. I get the distinct impression we started out much more blurred, tanking and dpsing and just doing all sorts of things
not very well. (This could be a mistaken impression, since the early levels are blurred for nearly all of the classes, until about level 20.) Yet modern EQ classes seem more homogenized. This may be an attempt to make it simpler and easier to balance, but for me it ruins it. I loved hybrids.
(I played my ranger up until 85 and 1000's of aa. A pally was my highest alt.)