Quote:
Originally Posted by webrunner5
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There is Nothing wrong with a SK or a Pally even in raids. It is mostly the Hybred penalty that kills them off. The 40% or more penalty slows down group XP, which makes it harder to get a group, and they get tired of seeing their friends they started with being level 50 while they are level 30. That is the problem.
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I agree that the group penalty is a big turn off, but an exp penalty limited to yourself alone is not going to kill the game, at least for me. I started a ranger on live in 1999 and played one all the way up to 2010. But this is mostly because I soloed a lot and made friends easily and it didn't bother me if they out-leveled me. In fact, that was the rule. I played off/on and everybody always out-leveled me. I liked being a ranger. I guess if you have a core group of friends and you're leveling slower than them it would be a problem.
I don't think all the classes have to be equally desirable for them to work. I think it's a mistake to think that way. I think a class is only broken when
nobody plays it. Different players have different tolerances and different interests. It makes sense to me that some classes might be less popular for this reason. This also applies to games. Some games are less popular than others. That doesn't mean they're bad games. It could just mean they attract a different smaller audience. And that's what I actually believe.
But if this game could be done over again I think that one would have to look at the experience penalty and either change it so it doesn't get in the way of other players or to add a different penalty. I am of the opinion that the ranger really was a powerful class, but only in the right content and, seeing as it usually wasn't the right kind in large groups, they only prospered alone or in small groups. I don't blame that on the ranger itself, I blame it on the wrong kind of content being made. Rangers are/were supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades; a hybrid. Kind of like the SK and Paladin. But the game really excluded them in a lot of ways by not giving them the right kind of content so they can be useful. Ideally, I'd like to see more games where everybody can be a jack-of-all-trades, not just certain classes. And where you can solve problems using many different methods. But that would be a game that's more skill-based and where you can easily train/untrain. In class-based games, there'd need to be a multi-class system or some way to switch classes on the fly.
(also... why should a jack-of-all-trades need a penalty if when you add up their total skills it's equal to any other class? since they had an exp penalty, it argues that they WERE overpowered. this discussion i think is one that's continually overlooked because many people have never played a ranger for long. from my perspective, the possibility that they overpowered the ranger to compensate for toned-down skills still exists. this implies that they later -after they removed exp penalties- also nerfed the ranger; its defense skills?)
Btw, check out the link in my signature (Server class distributions):
http://www.project1999.org/forums/sh...67&postcount=7
Somebody on the team did a rundown on the classes a while ago. So check the link. It also shows you that druids, while popular, don't necessarily survive to max level just because they're popular.
To save you time, this is what the march to max level looks like:
Enchanter (+266%)
Cleric (+216%)
Magician (+160%)
Rogue (+140%)
Monk (+120%)
Shaman (+0%)
Wizard (+0%)
Necromancer (-10%)
Warrior (-33%)
Druid (-37%)
Bard (-50%)
Ranger (-50%)
Shadowknight (-75%)
Paladin (-80%)
Put another way, more enchanters survive the gauntlet from level 1 to max level than any other class.