Remove Hybrid Penalty

[Nirgon]

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

Brad is the same guy who lied to the playerbase saying things like "paladin epic is in game" when it actually wasn't, "alchemy is working pals" when it wasn't coded yet, etc. etc. Did you guys not see the debacle that was Vanguard? Did everyone here forget about how awful Luclin was? Do people here really forget all the bugs that existed in classic EQ that Brad simply refused to admit? What about the awful imbalances that existed? Remember how druids and shamans couldn't get groups in classic (where there were long lists for every camp so you couldn't just go lol go solo newb cuz everything was camped) because they had no ability to heal end game? It took until velious to finally give them somewhat of a heal for them to be able to help. The aggro issues with rangers / rogues, rangers being fucking useless, monks being gods until Luclin, hybrid EXP penalty, etc., etc. I guess some people think the class imbalance was an amazing feature of classic EQ and love it, but those of us who played back then remember how awful this was and how lolworthy it was to see the 10000+ post threads with everyone agreeing how awful many of these things were and "The Vision" being mentioned over and over again, only to in almost every single instance have The Vision ultimately be over turned by more competent game designers.

Velious wasn't the pinnacle of EQ because

Honest Abe, I got that far and I won't even stop scrolling if I see another Heartbrand post for 2 weeks.

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

draught of icecream sandwiches every 5 seconds

Fuck I do like me an ice cream sandwich.

[heartbrand]

Experience Penalties - Description

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.

Experience Penalties - Resolutions

Over the past week the EverQuest team has been considering experience penalties in all their forms. We had many meetings where the issue was hotly debated from both sides. We had to consider not only the effect on the individualplayer, but also the effect of any changes on the game as a whole. Eventually, we nearly unanimously decided the following:


1. Race-based penalties are appropriate. An ogre, for instance, does indeed make a better warrior than a halfling. It is not so little that the faction and size problems make up for it, and not so much that it is really unbalancing at upper levels, but enough that the penalty should apply. Secondly, the penalty is not so severe (compared with class-based penalties) that it would cause groups to break up on the journey from one to sixty due to level differences.

2. Class-based penalties are not appropriate. Classes are roughly equivalent in power throughout the level ranges, and the versatility does not make up for that penalty. In fact, the majority of changes made to classes in the name of balance in the last year were based on the assumption that, at the high end, each class should still be roughly as needed and balanced as any other.

3. Penalties, in any form, should not be shared with the group. Players know that no one class is immensely more powerful/valuable than another, and as such it is not fair to ask them to share a burden. If classes with penalties were really more powerful or valuable than the other classes, then it might be right, but that isn't the case here. Furthermore, sharing of penalties causes people to reject potential group members on the basis of them "sucking" too much experience.

4. We're going to fix it.

5. Class-based experience bonuses (which warriors and rogues get) are also not appropriate, as they cannot be so if penalties are not. However, we've decided to leave this as-is, since the bonus is not so severe as to be unbalancing. Bottom line: we don't feel the bonus is enough to warrant a fix that could be interpreted as a 'nerf'.




So, how can you tell me that even though ultimately they realized EXP Class Penalties were dumb and therefore needed to be fixed, that nonetheless it was a great feature originally and should be in place here? (BTW it took months and months of people pointing this out to the stubborn Verant crew as they kept responding The Vision, The Vision, before they finally realized they fucked up) This is what irks me the most about things here. Many items were nerfed or what not retroactively because they were over powered, they shouldn't have exited in their original form, but yet we allow them to exist here for X amount of time supposedly roughly equivalent to the duration of live but almost always far longer due to infrequent patches. But, if the original item as it was implemented was over powered, it should NEVER be in, it was a mistake. Does it matter it took X amount of months for Verant to realize this? We don't do this for things like Alchemy and not put it into the game, we don't keep in all the broken quests that were broken until their fix date or what not, so why do we do it there? There just seems to be no rhyme or reason here to things like this. A perfect example is an item like the T-Staff. Eventually they realized, wow, we really fucked up with this item it's incredibly OP and needs to be changed, but because they didn't finally have this revelation until Luclin it will never happen here? I dunno man, that doesn't make too much sense to me. If the reasoning is, hey bro it's classic, then it's time to intentionally leave bugged encounters and quests in their original bugged form as well for X months of duration so that literally every aspect of this server mirrors the way it was on live for the exact same duration of time.

[Sektor]

Arbonne is right I have a friend that wants to make a Pal. I told him on even bother. He asked me why? I told them that no 1 will group with you because you are a hybrid class. well I'm not well I'm not going to bother playing the game then because I to be a paly, i was always a paly.
There's also no reason experience should be so mind numbling hard. The pop will triple if you get rid of hybrid penalties and add an additional exp bonus

[karsten]

i'm a level 60 ogre shadowknight and now that i've reached the goals that i dreamed of for months of IRL semi-chubby sleep, I can say with certainty that removing the hybrid penalty after i've leveled up with endanger the integrity of the server

[Rettii]

Tldr

[Prince]

egg pumice

[heartbrand]

It's just counter intuitive to me to bug report functional quests because they weren't functional correctly @ X point in the timeline, but if that is in fact the goal here so be it I will do my best to do so, I just personally (which admittedly does not matter as this is not my project nor vision) think if something was changed because it wasn't working etc., that is a positive change.

[Prince]

spell book med

[Rettii]

Should be able to charm people and attack with them. Was my /duel strategy as a bard in EC - meet shady swashbuckler scum newb

[heartbrand]

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

Should be able to charm people and attack with them. Was my /duel strategy as a bard in EC - meet shady swashbuckler scum newb

Lol I did something similar. This is the shit that kills me the PVP on the PVP sever is light years apart from what classic PVP was but if its something like the compass being in game better watch out pals. If this PVP server is already going to have custom resists, custom rule set (exp loss coin only), spells not working, things like jboots not canceling snare on release, water not los'ing spells, Mage bolts, list goes on, why drop the classic word on things like hybrid penalties, yellow text, hot zones?