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Old 06-09-2011, 04:35 PM
Zuranthium Zuranthium is offline
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Join Date: May 2011
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Interesting correlations you drew, Aadill. There are certainly elements present from other games (with Warrior, Cleric, Ranger, and maybe Shadowknight being the most direct replicas from another game, Guild Wars) but I don't see anything wrong with drawing from good game mechanics either. Warriors, Clerics, and Rangers in Guild Wars are the most dynamic I have ever seen those classes in a game and there is little need to change them too much because they represent exciting, skillful gameplay at is best (not talking about PvE Guild Wars, which needed a lot of work, but rather what they represented from PvP).

Paladin isn't really comparable to anything in Guild Wars. Yes, that game has a multi-class system where you can go primary Warrior and secondary Cleric (they are actually called monks in that game), but it doesn't result in my vision of the class. There is no such thing as a Stun in Guild Wars and grafting the secondary healing/protection abilities onto a Warrior wasn't ever something that was very good, at least in spectrum I imagine with an actual Paladin (nor did it result in a class that was especially great against undead).

Elementalist only draws slightly from Guild Wars. It takes a few of the ideas from the ability lines but it also has similarities to the Geomancer in Final Fantasy Tactics and additionally takes inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender (not a game, but a great fantasy series). It's most definitely my own vision of a class, filtered through some outside influences in addition to my ideas, in an attempt to try and create something unique and flavorful (both in terms of the RPG aspect and how it operates in combat). Elementalists in Guild Wars are squishy casters and don't at all draw from the elements around them to influence what they can do (plus their "Water Magic" is almost exclusively Ice rather than actual liquid water). My vision of the Elementalist is something that would be physically more sturdy and have melee capability, constantly switching between melee attacking and distanced attacking depending on the situation at any given moment in time, as well as combining abilities in different ways at any given moment in time, and it would exist outside of the standard "magic" system.

I have not played Anarchy Online or even really looked at it, so I can't comment on if my Druid and Wizard are close similarities to anything in those games. I do know, however, that my Druid and Wizard draw pretty much entirely from abilities those classes already have in EQ, expanding/improving certain abilities and cutting out others, to create much more meaningful and relevant classes.

The thing I disagree with you most about is how you labelled my Rogue class. "EQ1 Rogues once poisons work" is a far, far cry from what the Rogue I propose would be. EQ Rogues with better poison are still just attack-from-behind DPS bots who have the ability to Sneak. There is not much dynamic gameplay to speak of. The Rogue that I envision would be more in line with a D&D Rogue and also much more in line with how the original EQ Rogue was envisioned. Giving Rogues exclusive access to Feign Death out of all the non-caster classes (and it's of course a better Feign Death than Necromancers get because of no cast time and a faster recharge time) is already big departure in and of itself. Making the Rogue's ability to sneak more useful, in addition to giving them relevant and useful abilities in the realm of theft/lock picking/trap disarming/climbing/safe fall, further differentiates the character from what it is now. The sustained DPS a Rogue could do would decrease dramatically, but that's a fair tradeoff for all of the other unique abilities and, more importantly, also much more in line with what a Rogue is actually supposed to be in most any robust fantasy envisioning of such a character.
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