I've never believed that Verant was stupid enough to add experience penalties blindly. That's what a lot of people say, but I sternly disagree. I believe hybrids were overpowered in some form, and this is why they implemented the penalties. We will never know the full story, more than likely. But I think players do a lot more stupid things than the developers do. Developers have reasons, even if they're not very good ones. Players don't need reasons because their money is not coming from the game.
People always ask why don't necromancers have a substantial experience penalty? Or magicians? They can solo just like rangers, if not better. They can group with some effectiveness too. What makes them different from a ranger? Well, to begin with, their pet cannot keep aggro from another player. This means that if they group with a rogue that the rogue cannot backstab because after the first couple hits the opponent will aggro the rogue and ignore the pet. This is a big negative. Second, necromancers primarily use dots and dots aren't as effective in groups. They use a lot of mana and since they don't use their full duration in groups then they're wasted. Third, there're problems with aggro and zoning. Pets don't always aggro what you want them to and have to be recast when you zone. Fourth, you can't invis without losing your pet. Fifth, there're lots of little things that make pets annoying and make pet classes less effective in a group. For example, most of their spells are personal-only or pet-based, not support based. They can't sow or heal or buff your hp/ac or give you haste or track for you or cure... Necro's get their first root at lvl 34 and magicians don't even have one. Lastly, I think that Verant did not want EQ to be a solo-game because they felt that the bond between guild mates and friends was made stronger by grouping. If rangers had just been another solo-class like the necro then this would be in opposition to the need for grouping and retention of long-time players.
Why am I so adamant? Because I played a ranger for a long time, from 1999 to 2001 and on up to a few years ago. I always liked the class. I didn't feel gimp. I felt lucky to be a ranger.
I think the fact that I played a ranger is why I enjoyed Eq more than many others.
I think that the divide between solo and grouping was unnecessary. There's no reason that players can't solo AND group. My ideal game would allow all players to solo and group and all classes would be different flavors of jack-of-all-trades. There would be no straight tanks or straight healers or straight damage dealers, at least not for very long. One idea is to allow for frequent skill resets so players can change their role. I don't think games that put people into one or two roles are any good - they're too boring. But more than that, people would group together because they simply cannot kill some things alone. They wouldn't group because they need a healer or a tank or a damage dealer or a crowd controller, they'd group because they need more. And a lot of modern games are going in this direction. The only thing I think some of them miss is that games are not fun unless a player is kept busy with his tool box. If there're not enough tools then a player just gets bored. Some of them don't get this. They make things easy and accessible, but fail to make the gameplay interesting.
|