I empathize, but the values are pretty oppressive and I'm not sure that's the right course to take. I played a Dragoon on FFXI back in the day and it felt like there was no point logging on without committing an hour to finding a group and at least 2 more to leveling. Needing a group to get exp if the classes aren't balanced is bad, and EQ is also home to underpowered classes. Will the rangers of EQ enjoy this? If even the soloers need groups then rangers have no hope of getting one. If you're gonna go the route of manipulating numbers I'd start at class/race penalties/bonuses.
The problem I see stems from class imbalance, and the only way to fix that is unclassic changes. Ideally they would nerf Ench and Shm, nerf mage's pets, nerf bard target limits and even buff a few things. Some of the zones are also much more difficult by comparison to others. If wizards/druids were more desirable from rebalancing you couldn't say the zones were too out-of-the-way, but they're still very difficult by comparison. That's where ZEM should come into play for incentivization.
They probably won't do that though because classic. There are unclassic things, but those facilitate normalized gameplay. I recently agreed with a /permadeath suggestion, but that doesn't change the game, it only assists in people being forced to do what they can already do - delete their character on death. The argument of "groups were classic" is a tough one. There's no measurement for that, only subjectivity. I'd say it's not classic for an ench/healer to duo a 30 mob camp in a dungeon though.
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12-09-2021, 04:33 PM
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