How to fix rangers and warriors without losing the "classic" feel.

[falkun]

Let me see if I can clarify Yendor...

If I remember correctly, if you were a dual-class in AD&D (my direct example being Baldur's Gate games), your item restrictions were the strictest set of gear equip-able by both classes. For instance, a fighter could wield almost any weapon and armor to do everything, however druids could only wield blunts and scimitars and could not cast spells if they wore armor above the "leather" class. As a fighter/druid dual-class, you could wear whatever you wanted (fighter), but if you had on heavier armor than leather, you had to swap down to leather or below to cast spells (druid restriction).

Since EQ was heavily influenced by the AD&D ruleset, I am making the assumption that the reason rangers were deemed to be a chain-mail class was because of ties to this AD&D restriction. Or it may be that the roots of the ranger class are more rogue/druid based and since rogues cannot wear armor heavier than chain that the restriction was also maintained for rangers.

Also, I don't know if EQ had the mechanics to be able to code "if armor > chain, then ability_to_cast = off", so they just made the broad designation that they could not wear armor above chain.

Obviously this is all speculation and you are free to agree or disagree as you see fit.

[falkun]

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

Paladins and Dark paladins could cast spells in plate because they where all touch/divine.

Also, the AD&D cleric and paladins were always plate classes. I honestly loved that the main healer could also wear the armor that allowed them to stand in the thick of it (even if their skills didn't complement this). The WoW priest in cloth always felt fragile compared to a EQ cleric in plate. I always thought the WoW holy paladin was a much more iconic healer than the WoW priest.

[Tiggles]

Aragorn wore chain in the movies

[baalzy]

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

Aragorn wore chain in the movies

/thread

[greatdane]

The classes are pretty heavily based on their AD&D counterparts; or, I should say, on the classes of SojournMUD whose classes were almost completely copied from AD&D. SojournMUD was the main inspiration for Everquest, so that's the reason for the similarities with AD&D where, for instance, the ranger class wears chain armor. Brad McQuaid played a ranger on SojournMUD where the class was an underpowered joke. I guess he was really dead-set on sticking to his inspiration.

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

Since EQ was heavily influenced by the AD&D ruleset, I am making the assumption that the reason rangers were deemed to be a chain-mail class was because of ties to this AD&D restriction. Or it may be that the roots of the ranger class are more rogue/druid based and since rogues cannot wear armor heavier than chain that the restriction was also maintained for rangers.

Also, I don't know if EQ had the mechanics to be able to code "if armor > chain, then ability_to_cast = off", so they just made the broad designation that they could not wear armor above chain.

Obviously this is all speculation and you are free to agree or disagree as you see fit.

Oh, I understand what you're saying, but then shadowknights are a hybrid of a plate/cloth class, and therefore shouldn't be wearing plate.

I think it just has more to do with class balancing... i.e. if you give rangers plate, spells, double attack, dual wield, AND archery... why would people want to play a warrior or knight class? Instead, they gimped our mitigation/avoidance and made us a chain class, which also fit the AD&D version of what a ranger was. And then to continue the class balancing exercise -- if rangers out-DPSed rogues, what would be the compelling reason to play a rogue? If rangers did awesome ranged damage, where's the risk in that... make sure melee is still their primary form of DPS. Etc. All the way down to... lets just make a ranger a jack-of-all trades -- without the foresight of "wow, rangers can't really do anything well even though they're hybrids... are they really deserving of this XP penalty?" until Velious, when the class-based penalties were finally lifted. Even during Luclin, when the devs decided to throw rangers a bone and make archery a primary form of DPS through AAs and itemization, the bitching from the other classes was too great, and our ranged attack abilities took a nerf (so I heard... this was actually after I stopped playing around the time of GoD) because it was too overpowered (i.e. high damage outside of AE range at virtually no risk).

Hybrids were originally imagined to be much more capable than the pure classes, and thus deserving of the 40% XP penalty... but in practice, that gap in ability never quite panned out (except for knight classes in terms of holding aggro, but I would say that was more of an issue with the warrior class NOT having good aggro tools... as evidenced by taunt fixes). In my opinion, the classes that could solo effectively should have received the 40% XP penalty... but I don't think the designers had a firm grasp on which classes could solo effectively until everyone started playing the game. It almost seems like they thought all the hybrids would be able to solo effectively.

But this is all an exercise in speculation, I suppose. Overall, I tend to agree with the rogue/druid hybrid theory.

[greatdane]

You could say that they are more capable, they're just not necessarily stronger. The way I see it, we pay the exp penalty for the ability to be two things at once. Especially before Kunark, shadowknights and paladins weren't far behind warriors and the main distinction in terms of melee prowess was dual-wield. Disciplines kind of skewed this ideal, and they did indeed remove exp penalties in the third expansion after adding disciplines in the second. The pure melee classes are extremely simple and limited in what they can do, and it make some measure of sense to me that taking a melee class that's almost as good* as a pure melee and giving them dozens of mostly useful spells justifies a penalty. Shadowknights are fairly decent soloers and paladins are pretty good healers while rangers have a wheelbarrow full of useful tools. It looks like a design lapse that pure classes become so much better than hybrids in the very end, and for most of the leveling process, the hybrids are generally better classes to play.



*in theory at least, if not in practice. I'm sure the developers didn't intentionally design rangers to be pretty poor DPS or knights to be largely unable to tank raid mobs, but I suspect the development process kind of spiraled out of control, leading to hamfisted extremes like defensive discipline to make up for the lack of options warriors had.

[Ektar]

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

Oh, I understand what you're saying, but then shadowknights are a hybrid of a plate/cloth class, and therefore shouldn't be wearing plate.

I think it just has more to do with class balancing... i.e. if you give rangers plate, spells, double attack, dual wield, AND archery... why would people want to play a warrior or knight class? Instead, they gimped our mitigation/avoidance and made us a chain class, which also fit the AD&D version of what a ranger was. And then to continue the class balancing exercise -- if rangers out-DPSed rogues, what would be the compelling reason to play a rogue? If rangers did awesome ranged damage, where's the risk in that... make sure melee is still their primary form of DPS. Etc. All the way down to... lets just make a ranger a jack-of-all trades -- without the foresight of "wow, rangers can't really do anything well even though they're hybrids... are they really deserving of this XP penalty?" until Velious, when the class-based penalties were finally lifted. Even during Luclin, when the devs decided to throw rangers a bone and make archery a primary form of DPS through AAs and itemization, the bitching from the other classes was too great, and our ranged attack abilities took a nerf (so I heard... this was actually after I stopped playing around the time of GoD) because it was too overpowered (i.e. high damage outside of AE range at virtually no risk).

Hybrids were originally imagined to be much more capable than the pure classes, and thus deserving of the 40% XP penalty... but in practice, that gap in ability never quite panned out (except for knight classes in terms of holding aggro, but I would say that was more of an issue with the warrior class NOT having good aggro tools... as evidenced by taunt fixes). In my opinion, the classes that could solo effectively should have received the 40% XP penalty... but I don't think the designers had a firm grasp on which classes could solo effectively until everyone started playing the game. It almost seems like they thought all the hybrids would be able to solo effectively.

But this is all an exercise in speculation, I suppose. Overall, I tend to agree with the rogue/druid hybrid theory.

didn't read the whole thing. Trying to finish reading something before class. but SKs are not fighter/necros; they are fighter/cleric - based on D&D.

SK is derived from anti-paladin, which is a paladin that used evil cleric based things instead of good cleric based things.

Did you know that evil clerics could turn paladins? lol.

An evil cleric was, more or less, a necromancer. But he was more divine than arcane. I actually do more enjoy the aspect that a necromancer is arcane - but to make a hybrid of fighter/arcane would have been silly, especially if trying to make him the paladin counterpart.

Paladin - fighter/cleric (plate + plate / 2 = plate)
SK - Paladin counterpart (plate)
Ranger - fighter/druid (plate + leather / 2 = chain)

imo.

[Hasbinbad]

rangers may get sneak and hide, but they certainly do not get sneak and hide "just like rogues" lol

rogue would be the last class i would think of when i thought of which classes ranger is composed of.. rangers are like the anti rogue..

[Ektar]

ok so as I read about decentralization of government, I think back.

Under WARRIORS, the classes were Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger. That's why I think of them as fighter/druids :P

No matter how rangers turned out, EQ is based on D&D. It is much more likely that an EQ ranger is a fighter/druid based on this fact.

But just like the gargantuan size of my penis, there is no way to prove it.