[Zuranthium]

Originally Posted by Stormhowl [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fun is subjective; making absolute statements about what is or isn't fun is a waste of everyone's time.

Find me a group that thinks 10 minutes of downtime per 1 blue-con mob (without any chance of amazing drops) is fun.

Originally Posted by Stormhowl [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Mmm.... if only that were true for MMOs (e.g., WoW Clones) where in your design aspect is already a reality. But sadly (for you), that's not the reality of having a set number of roles and the classes that fit into them, because people will take what's available first to get through things faster, rather than waiting for what they actually want.

Why do you keep trying to make a surreptitious claim about how things must work in MMO's as if the only possibilities are WoW-clones? Aside from that, I really don't see what other point you're trying to make here. It seems like you are perhaps trying to arguing that it's bad for an MMO when you have an easier time of finding a workable group. Of course, even if that were true with my class changes (it generally would be), this point disregards how different areas of the game would require different tactics and thus the same group won't always be successful in every area. And if you have quests that give players incentives for actually traveling around the game World and needing to fight through the various content that requires all different kinds of tactics, then it's definitely not just a "get 6 people together and go" kind of deal.

Originally Posted by Hithrohir [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There really isn't anything that you can't do with a group where each member just fits the general category -- tank, healer, dps, crowd control. While it may be less efficient with a druid healer and necro DPS and so on, it'll still be doable enough to not be an exercise in futility.

I'm sorry but this is simply not true with the way EQ is later on. Good luck trying to fight Sebilite Juggernaughts with your "doable" setup of Warrior/Ranger/Bard/Druid/Necro/Magician. Not mention Velious content. In actuality, once you get to that point in the game, only one class actually fits the role of healer (Cleric) and only one class fits the role of crowd control (Enchanter, plus they have a whole other array of amazing abilities) and trying to use Caster DPS instead of Melee DPS is just a big joke.

Originally Posted by falkun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Personally, I enjoy doing things with sub-optimal setups. Until you push you're limits, you'll never know where they are. Also, its pretty bad ass to look back on one of those sub-optimal group experiences and think, "Wow, we pulled that off."

You can have sub-optional group setups even with balanced classes. That shouldn't be an argument for why classes shouldn't be balanced. I agree that it's fun to overcome with a sub-optimal group although, again, it's not even possible to attempt a sub-optimal group (not having a Cleric) for the higher level content, because you are SO sub-optimal that it's pointless. It's along the lines of trying to jump off the top of a 10 story building just to see if you might not die.

Originally Posted by falkun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There are very few times when a war/cler/enc/rog/rog/rog aren't on, even if they're not LFG. Enticing them to leave their current group, EC, or travel to your way-off-the-beaten-path camp is YOUR challenge, like pulling the 9.5 off Muscles Glasses.

I find that to be an absolutely terrible challenge. The most difficult part of the game is supposed to be attempting to try and get people away from EC to come group? That is lame and doesn't require skill relevant to playing the actual content. It's also tiresome and repetitive; once you form your party you're always doing pretty much the exact same thing. There should be a multitude of options that require time to gather the necessary classes/specializations together and skill to pull it off, if you want to achieve the most efficient/awesome group possible. And if you don't have the time/resources to form a perfect or near-perfect group, then you should still be able to make a wide variety of class combinations work.

Originally Posted by falkun [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Except "the game changes you propose" are already present in games, such as WoW. In WoW, all the DPS are pretty much within 5-10% of each other, the healers are all equally capable, and the tank classes are all equally capable. You know what happens? DPS still end up waiting 30-60min for a group because tanks and healers aren't "available".

The game changes I propose are nothing like WoW at all. If one more person tries to use a WoW reference in relation to what I've been saying this entire time, I will start killing puppies.

I will delve into your point, however, because you just touched upon class equalizing. Class equalizing is not the same as Class balance. Class equalizing means you only have a small amount of actual roles and game mechanics, but far too many classes in comparison to the number of roles and game mechanics that a given class might be expected to utilize. Thus, the classes just become slightly different versions of each other within each archtype. This is not the sign of truly well designed game. However, class equalizing is at least better than classes being vastly imbalanced in this case, because if certain classes are fulfilling the same role and essentially doing it in the same way, then the game simply becomes less fun (for most people) when they suddenly find out that they class they picked and poured time into is actually not worthwhile.

And that is why you need enough roles and/or game mechanics to significantly differentiate all of the classes from each other. If every class has a distinctly different purpose, then game imbalance isn't as much of a problem (it should still be strived for) because some people will enjoy playing the class even if it is underpowered, since they like the unique methodology that class brings to the table.

The problem with EQ is the classes aren't actually all that unique from each other in many regards. When the game designers realized something was imbalanced, they often tried to equalize the classes rather than addressing the actual SYMPTOM of the problem. In Original EQ, Rogues were shit. Plain and simple, they just were. They were useful for corpse recovery within the few zones where monsters would see through invisibility and that was it. People who played a Rogue talked about how all of the cool abilities they were supposed to get - stealing, disarming traps, lock picking, safe fall, poison - were just garbage. Even Backstab was quite poor until they gave Rogues the ability to reduce their Aggro via the Hide skill (called Evade in combat), because backstabbing would simply pull the monster off the tank and then waste the healer's mana trying to keep the relatively frail Rogue alive as the monster pounded on them. That ability to reduce Aggro was necessary for making Rogues not complete shit, but they were still entirely underwhelming (after all, the Rogue was actually doing less DPS than the tank even when being able to use Backstab on recharge...the aggro system simply meant that the Rogue's sporadic larger packet of damage would draw the monster off someone who was actually doing more damage in total) and the only thing they had to show for it was being needed for a corpse recovery on occasion.

When Kunark came out, the designers did not address all of the cool abilities Rogues were supposed to have that ended up being implemented poorly, but rather they just turned the class into a DPS bot. The one skill that did actually get "fixed" (in Velious era) - making Poison - was simply an additional DPS function without anything really unique about it. And thus Rogues went from being the shittiest class in the game to being very desired. This did not help the game at all, though, because the number of shitty classes in the game increased when Kunark came out. In Original EQ it was really just Rogues that were shitty overal, but into Kunark a whole host of classes fell by the wayside, and Velious only made it even more so (even though valiant efforts were made to improve the viability of the Hybrid classes...they became less shitty but they still weren't top group picks, while at the same time non-Enchanter INT casters + Druids became even worse and the necessity of a group having the "Holy Trinity" became even higher).