are wizards gimped?

[Weekapaug]

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

XP penalties on hybrids and other classes never affected 'the group'. They only affected the player.

That may or may not be true, but the perception at the time, at least on Bertoxx, was that they did. My hind quarter is still sore from sitting around LFG while all that was going on.

Actually, now I'm going to have to go look that up....it's amazing the trivia we can retain for 10 years about a computer game, yet not remember half the grocery list 20 mins after leaving the house, eh? lol

[Weekapaug]

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

Actually, now I'm going to have to go look that up...

I knew I wasn't losing my mind. From the producer's letter dated 01/14/01:


I think that it would be appropriate to say that most players are aware that there are different experience requirements for advancement based upon the race and class you choose to play. Ogres, for instance, require more experience to level than Halflings, and Shadowknights require more experience to level than Warriors. As such, an Ogre Shadowknight requires FAR more experience to level than a Halfling Warrior does. What some people have discovered is that when in a group, everyone shares in this penalty. Before getting into our plan, I think that its important to talk about what our goals were regarding experience penalties and the group sharing in that penalty.

When EverQuest player characters were being designed, it was immediately apparent that some races and classes would be more powerful than others given versatility and other factors. Later, it came to light that the concept of being "more powerful" began to break down at the upper levels, given that everyone capped at the same level. We could not let any one race or class be immensely more powerful than another at that final point, as it would essentially put parts of the game off limits to those who chose the less powerful classes. While we did a good job of making races vary in power, but not so much as to be unbalancing, the same could not be said for classes. Still, though classes would be roughly equivalent in regard to the compelling reason to play them through versatility, the experience penalties were kept.

In regards to the sharing of the experience penalty, it was apparent in beta, before the penalty was shared, that those playing characters without an experience penalty leveled faster than those that did. It was obvious that this would occur, but it was to the extreme that a group of friends, all playing together, would become separated to the point that they could no longer group efficiently in the mid to upper-mid levels. So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together.

As such, a level 20 Troll SK, having more experience total than a Human Wizard of the same level, would get more experience from each kill, while the total experience for the kill was unchanged. Essentially, the SK would take part of the Wizard's share were everything distributed equally to begin with.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/edit...rs_letter.html

It also mentions a racial penalty that was shared with the group also. Completely forgot about that.

[Omnimorph]

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

I knew I wasn't losing my mind. From the producer's letter dated 01/14/01:


I think that it would be appropriate to say that most players are aware that there are different experience requirements for advancement based upon the race and class you choose to play. Ogres, for instance, require more experience to level than Halflings, and Shadowknights require more experience to level than Warriors. As such, an Ogre Shadowknight requires FAR more experience to level than a Halfling Warrior does. What some people have discovered is that when in a group, everyone shares in this penalty. Before getting into our plan, I think that its important to talk about what our goals were regarding experience penalties and the group sharing in that penalty.

When EverQuest player characters were being designed, it was immediately apparent that some races and classes would be more powerful than others given versatility and other factors. Later, it came to light that the concept of being "more powerful" began to break down at the upper levels, given that everyone capped at the same level. We could not let any one race or class be immensely more powerful than another at that final point, as it would essentially put parts of the game off limits to those who chose the less powerful classes. While we did a good job of making races vary in power, but not so much as to be unbalancing, the same could not be said for classes. Still, though classes would be roughly equivalent in regard to the compelling reason to play them through versatility, the experience penalties were kept.

In regards to the sharing of the experience penalty, it was apparent in beta, before the penalty was shared, that those playing characters without an experience penalty leveled faster than those that did. It was obvious that this would occur, but it was to the extreme that a group of friends, all playing together, would become separated to the point that they could no longer group efficiently in the mid to upper-mid levels. So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together.

As such, a level 20 Troll SK, having more experience total than a Human Wizard of the same level, would get more experience from each kill, while the total experience for the kill was unchanged. Essentially, the SK would take part of the Wizard's share were everything distributed equally to begin with.

Last time I invite an ogre / troll SK to my group! it's gonna be me, halfling cleric, halfling rogue, halfling everything else!

Interesting post btw [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Bumamgar]

I had forgotten about that, good find!

[Weekapaug]

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

Interesting post btw [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Without Google I never would have found it...If you go look at the patch message from when they made the changes it doesn't even list the changes to the experience system...It just references back to the producer's letter and is kind of weird about it. Don't remember seeing anything like that before or since.

They just revamped the entire exp system, something they swore they'd never touch, and it was almost like they were pouting and didn't want to talk about it or something....Such classic Verant...reminded me of an ex gf....ALWAYS right the first time....Like Alchemy and barbarian shield graphics were "working as intended" for almost two years...Untill they actually bothered to listen to a thousand people and actually have a look at them. You just know one of those dorks kicked a hole in the wall the day of that patch.

Funny thing is, I got all warm and fuzzy yesterday when I saw "old" Freeport for the first time here....When I saw the name of the producer on that letter last night I kind of cringed. Of all the things to get nostalgic about from classic EQ, Abashi isn't one of them.

Wonder what ever happend to that jackass. I wish I were a bigger man, but I have to admit, I kind of hope his karma caught up with him and it was really really bad. LOL That guy is the only person I've ever seen....anywhere....who actually seemed to relish being overtly abusive to his paying customers and still managed to keep his job, somehow. I mean, one time he put up on the boards a compliation of bannings he got to do in person in game, most of them were people who just said extreme things about him personally on random message boards that could be construed as threats. I better watch it or he might find this and report me to the FBI....apparently he did that too...He bragged about it on the boards. LOL Such a complete douche nozzle.

I had completely forgotten about all that.

[calaxa]

I think the perception that wizards are gimped comes from a variety of factors:

First, a wizard requires more skill than a mage or necro. Before people flame me for this comment, think carefully. A good wizard is always tethering their aggro and mana balance. Their fast nukes can cause an inexperienced player to nuke excessively causing their ultimate demise. A mage does not suffer this same fate. They send pet in and their cast time is a lot longer. They will usually not have time to generate the hate a wizard can. A wizard is not as simple as /pet attack, cast nuke, etc. A player has to think carefully whether or not this is the mob they need to burn down or is it better to do some damage and saving their mana for that nasty pull when they need to kill several mobs or possibly evac the group.

Another contributing factor to the gimpness of wizards is their bursty dps. Yes a wizard can burn down a single mob in the shortest amount of time (except maybe a team of SKs HTing a mob, though I recall this being nerfed too at some point) but because of mana limitations, their dps will suffer over a sustained duration of time. The mage and necro will not have this problem as their pet will continue to do damage even if they themselves are out of mana. Factor in the damage shield that a mage can cast and that damage is also independant of existing mana once it is cast.

In a raid situation, the necro and mage have other options for their mana. The mage functions as a rod summoner and the necro as mana battery. The wizard has no other alternative but to be dps. The pet issues on raid mobs has already been mentioned and without pet hold, many encounters are preferred not to have a pet so the mage and necro are forced to their alternative role. I have seen many mages and necros complain of this over the years but unfortunately, this is the best use of their mana (and was always the case until rods were nerfed during PoP era and twitching became trivial once cheal no longer became the preferred method of healing).

The last factor I can think of is, because wizards take some more skill than a necro or mage to play, having a less than adequate wizard in your group is very obvious. We all have seen the wizard that ninja afks to no end, the wizard who panic gates, the wizard who overaggros and kills himself, or worse yet, the cleric who goess oom trying to save aforementioned wizard. The pet classes we're comparing wizards to are a lot more forgiving in terms of skill. That is not to say wizards are so hard to play but just require a little more thought. This is also not a bash on mages and necros as there are plenty of skilled players playing those classes as well.

[Skaff]

Managing your mana and threat as a wizard is hardly something I consider as being an element of skill. I classify it more in the "common sense" area.

[Thac0]

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

Managing your mana and threat as a wizard is hardly something I consider as being an element of skill. I classify it more in the "common sense" area.

And yet it's an ability most people lack, hence the abundance of mages [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]