[stormlord]

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

-4

From my perspective. Some cleric spells were added later on, lucilin era. The current no exp rez gets like 25% added to it, then they added a new no exp rez like level 20ish. This helps the game along, less long corpse runs at low levels.

I also would like to see the mounts added back into the game. It would take some of this massive amount of plat that seems to be floating around in the game.

Both of these put back in would improve the game here. Anything that makes a relatively large world "smaller", in a server with a small population, helps.

I am also anti pet exp, as it just hoses mages, and only them. Just by virtue of them being a mage puts them at a handicap.

Hybrid exp penalty I am also against. It was taken out of live with good reason.

Everybody always focuses on the obvious like corpse runs and slow experience and nerfs and hybrid penalties. This is the elementary sh** that the noob might point out when they login for the first time.

Where things get interesting is when you start digging beneath the surface. The problem isn't downtime, so much. That's far too shallow of an explanation. It assumes that if you remove the downtime then everything is fixed, no doubt about it. But the thing it misses is HOW the downtime is removed!

The problem was that EQ didn't offer us choices. The few choices that it did offer us it locked away behind a mountain of obstacles. Corpse runs, by themselves, aren't evil. What's evil is not giving anybody any other choices unless they have a level 29+ cleric in the group or can find a 29+ cleric or a 57+ paladin nearby. I think that adding low level rezzes was a good idea. But not because it reduced downtime. The reason I like it is because it gave players an option. I would have liked it even more if they had found a way to make us make different choices. It shouldn't have been as simple as just "Hey, I got a rez spell!" It would have been even more brilliant if they had found a way to reward people who actually did a corpse run in certain circumstances. Or perhaps there might be wandering non-player clerics in zones. Or maybe if you die in certain places you do not lose experience. Or maybe there're certain abilities that some players have that can cancel experience loss due to death. The list could go on and on. The point about all this is that by giving players choices you make the game more interesting. If you only focus on the downtime then you miss this point altogether.

Choices and strategy are what make games fun, to me. Downtime is a separate issue. Yes, downtime can indicate that a game lacks choices. But downtime can also indicate choices you made that were bad ones. For example, if I run face first into the boss monster without any caution or any preparation and then get cut down and killed and lose time because I have to run back, I should not then complain that the downtime I experience because of my own choices should be removed. Another example is if I spend money on an item for my house and barely even look at it before giving the non-player my money. Then when I get home and install the item I find out it won't install! Not only that, but it turns out that it's not even a house accessory, it's a weapon! I bought the wrong item! Now what????? Should I complain and tell developers that this downtime is unacceptable? Do you see what I'm saying? Along with choices comes consequences. Now, this doesn't mean that I can't get a refund for the item I mistakenly bought (maybe could get refund from the same merchant), nor does it mean that bad choices cannot be worked around (ex: feign death so boss monster doesn't kill you), but one has to understand that making a wrong choice cannot be equal to making a right choice.

Negative consequences are not themselves bad. A lack of choices, by comparison, IS bad. But negative consequences CAN be too devastating. Corpse runs WERE too devastating in many cases. Like a unrecoverable corpse in Hate or running across a continent and dying and have to run across again or dying in the ocean with no /loc. But to overlook the lack of choice in the game and to only focus on this one thing is to miss the target. If you do this, your answer to corpse runs is just to make it easier and then say to the players, "There, I made it less devastating. Problem solved." But the problem is that this doesn't make the mechanics of death any more or any less interesting. All it does is solve a problem on the surface but it goes no deeper than that. Some people get stuck in this frame of mind and making -interesting- gameplay becomes less of a priority.