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#1
06-10-2011, 12:03 AM
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Odinty Treeguard - Level 58 Druid (Level 9) Vmek Shadowsong - Level 51 Bard (Level 5) Odibin Deathbearer - Level 36 Necromancer (Level 13) | ||||
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#3
06-10-2011, 12:05 AM
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Aside from it being blatantly untrue that you can take on most any content in the game with the setups you described, the "as efficiently" clause that you use to try and shrug off the game imbalance is a massive difference in downtime to the point where the game doesn't become fun.
The other flaw in your argument is that it doesn't take "more effort" to find a tank/cleric/enchanter/melee dps/melee dps/melee dps. It simply takes those classes being logged on and available rather than other classes being available. If the game changes I propose were how the game worked, it wouldn't be a matter of just grabbing on 6 people and grouping together (although such a thing would be more viable than it is now), it would be a matter of picking the class and specialization combinations that create the best groups for the playstyle you want to attempt. There would be more player skill involved as well.
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#4
06-10-2011, 12:50 AM
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#5
06-10-2011, 12:59 AM
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There really isn't anything that you can't do with a group where each member just fits the general category -- tank, healer, dps, crowd control. The latter isn't even strictly needed in most places, and while mezzing adds is great, you can do the same basic thing - preventing the add from wiping the group - by off-tanking it, rooting it, sticking a pet on it, or just toughing through the extra damage it does to the group. Class alone will generally not determine what you can or cannot do, unless it's a case of trying to tank with a ranger who's also undergeared and poorly played, or a druid healer who's several levels under the content's limits. Single-group content is not so challenging that it requires a warrior tank or a cleric healer or anything like that, but they make it a lot easier, make wipes less likely, and make the exp come in faster (unless the content is easy enough that the extra power doesn't yield a tangible benefit). What the "top classes" do more than increase the group's chance of success is decrease downtime due to efficiency. It's still a design error that some classes are straight up better than their counterparts, but unless it's raid content or a group trying to take on an encounter with less members or at a lower level than intended, all classes can fill their designated roles well enough to suffice. It's when the players can't adapt, aren't good enough or haven't sufficiently prepared their characters for the content that class choices can determine the outcome.
The vast majority of Everquest's one-group content is very easy. For the most part, it isn't a matter of winning but rather of doing it as fast and efficiently as possible. A group generally doesn't venture into a dungeon wondering if they can survive at all, they go in with the possible question of whether or not their group is strong enough to make the killing fast enough to be worth the time and effort. And as long as there aren't weak links, it almost always is, at least for the players who aren't playing classes that can typically get more exp from soloing. Just look at most of the game's non-raid content; it might be occupied by a group, but it might also be soloed by one of the select few power-solo classes a few levels higher. People were soloing Lord and Frenzy in Guk, duoing or three-manning Efreeti in SolB, even taking on supposed raid target Phinny in Kedge with far less manpower than probably intended. The same does/will happen with Kunark's high-end dungeon encounters, and it's only because the dungeons are still so crowded and groups so frequent that it isn't constantly being done. As long as that sort of thing is possible, any group can do the same with a far-from-optimal class lineup, and while it may be less efficient with a druid healer and necro DPS and so on, it'll still be doable enough to not be an exercise in futility. The different classes aren't that much weaker than their counterparts. Each has a failing that it makes up for in part with other abilities. It generally doesn't fully compensate for the class' shortcomings - druid buffs really don't make up for their weaker healing, for instance - but it makes the difference less crippling. You don't need CH or defensive discipline for mobs that hit for 150-200ish, you don't need the optimal DPS setup for mobs with 5-10k hp that don't enrage, and you don't need mez for content that can be rooted, pacified, feign-pulled and rarely throws more than one or two adds at you even when it goes wrong. It all makes life easier, but it's plenty possible and mostly worthwhile with anything but a catastrophically weak group. The reason a lot of people won't group with rangers and druids and necromancers isn't that they're so terrible they can't pull their weight. It's just better to find a cleric, rogue and warrior if you can, and it's a matter of complacency and foolishness when people won't let one of the less-than-optimal classes into their groups. It's also far less common than people make it out to be, and when rangers complain about sitting LFG for days, it's probably because they do it in Sebilis at level 49 with crappy gear, far less because they're rangers. It's much more about feeling and perception than it is about actual class worth, and while a few classes certainly are at the bottom of their archetype's hierarchy, people's aversion comes from the fact that it feels wrong and futile to play or group with a class that does 10% less DPS than others with nothing to make up for it. It feels like wasted effort because it could have been better if you'd chosen something else. It doesn't mean you couldn't do Chardok decently with a pal/dru/mag/rng/nec/nec group. It just isn't quite as good and will yield slightly less pwnage. | ||
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#6
06-10-2011, 10:36 AM
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I will delve into your point, however, because you just touched upon class equalizing. Class equalizing is not the same as Class balance. Class equalizing means you only have a small amount of actual roles and game mechanics, but far too many classes in comparison to the number of roles and game mechanics that a given class might be expected to utilize. Thus, the classes just become slightly different versions of each other within each archtype. This is not the sign of truly well designed game. However, class equalizing is at least better than classes being vastly imbalanced in this case, because if certain classes are fulfilling the same role and essentially doing it in the same way, then the game simply becomes less fun (for most people) when they suddenly find out that they class they picked and poured time into is actually not worthwhile. And that is why you need enough roles and/or game mechanics to significantly differentiate all of the classes from each other. If every class has a distinctly different purpose, then game imbalance isn't as much of a problem (it should still be strived for) because some people will enjoy playing the class even if it is underpowered, since they like the unique methodology that class brings to the table. The problem with EQ is the classes aren't actually all that unique from each other in many regards. When the game designers realized something was imbalanced, they often tried to equalize the classes rather than addressing the actual SYMPTOM of the problem. In Original EQ, Rogues were shit. Plain and simple, they just were. They were useful for corpse recovery within the few zones where monsters would see through invisibility and that was it. People who played a Rogue talked about how all of the cool abilities they were supposed to get - stealing, disarming traps, lock picking, safe fall, poison - were just garbage. Even Backstab was quite poor until they gave Rogues the ability to reduce their Aggro via the Hide skill (called Evade in combat), because backstabbing would simply pull the monster off the tank and then waste the healer's mana trying to keep the relatively frail Rogue alive as the monster pounded on them. That ability to reduce Aggro was necessary for making Rogues not complete shit, but they were still entirely underwhelming (after all, the Rogue was actually doing less DPS than the tank even when being able to use Backstab on recharge...the aggro system simply meant that the Rogue's sporadic larger packet of damage would draw the monster off someone who was actually doing more damage in total) and the only thing they had to show for it was being needed for a corpse recovery on occasion. When Kunark came out, the designers did not address all of the cool abilities Rogues were supposed to have that ended up being implemented poorly, but rather they just turned the class into a DPS bot. The one skill that did actually get "fixed" (in Velious era) - making Poison - was simply an additional DPS function without anything really unique about it. And thus Rogues went from being the shittiest class in the game to being very desired. This did not help the game at all, though, because the number of shitty classes in the game increased when Kunark came out. In Original EQ it was really just Rogues that were shitty overal, but into Kunark a whole host of classes fell by the wayside, and Velious only made it even more so (even though valiant efforts were made to improve the viability of the Hybrid classes...they became less shitty but they still weren't top group picks, while at the same time non-Enchanter INT casters + Druids became even worse and the necessity of a group having the "Holy Trinity" became even higher).
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Last edited by Zuranthium; 06-10-2011 at 10:39 AM..
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#7
06-10-2011, 11:22 AM
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Have you played on this server? I don't think I've had a 'traditional' group for more than a couple hours in the last 3 months. I have never had to wait longer than the occasional med/bio break between respawns. Across the board, your assumptions are consistently off base but you continue to write mini-epics based on those ill-conceived assumptions. You make subjective claims and treat them as fact. When someone pins you with an argument you twist or confuse their words into something they did not say, but against which you can cobble together some semblance of a counterpoint. It's frustrating to read and quite apparent that you do not realize, care, or even believe that you do this.
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#8
06-10-2011, 12:31 PM
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Part of the fun of classes not being balanced is realizing these out-of-the-box (read 'box' as 'holy trinity') solutions and making them work. You state as fact your opinion that these endeavors are not fun, yet its the accomplishment felt from succeeding in these groups that I find most fulfilling. As Extunarian says, you need to stop stating opinion as fact. Quote:
Also, you say that you make your group and end up doing the same thing. There are many ways to kill things, with many different groups. I've already explained AEing vs. the traditional holy trinity, but there's also the fear-kiting ranger/necro duo if you need another example of a group that is "suboptimal" that can be very successful at "doing the exact same thing". You say there "should be" a multitude of options to "pull it off", are you blind to their existence already? Finally, you can "make a wide variety of class combinations work", you need to just not be a narrow-minded idiot and think outside the box. Quote:
Congratulations, you have just proven that EQ game design, as-is, is better than the methods you, yourself, are advocating as improvements. Quote:
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Last edited by falkun; 06-10-2011 at 12:36 PM..
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#9
06-10-2011, 06:01 PM
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The point is that you must do higher level content if you want to actually experience the entire game and get the best gear. It's impossible to do that without the very specific setups. Sure, you can do groups that get to level 60 grinding out those low blue con mobs, but that's hardly what makes Everquest (in theory) such a wonderful, dynamic game. Quote:
And once again, if the classes WERE balanced (not equalized, let's not confuse the terms) then you would still find yourself in sub-optimal situations and have to make it work. I completely agree with you that such situations are fun. I love those situations and I love seeing what different classes can do in a given scenario. That kind of gameplay does exist in Everquest during the earlier levels but then it evaporates once you get to a certain point. Quote:
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Trade-skilling? LOL. I mean, yes, it would be great if that was viable in the game (and if raising your levels in tradeskills was actually a fun endeavor rather than simply a "hit the combine button" endeavor) but it's not. Jewelcrafting is the only tradeskill you might make real money from and that requires materials that are dropped from high-end monsters and also a huge initial investment. Quote:
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In Everquest right now, classes don't actually do anything much different to achieve that goal. Whether you are a Monk, or a Rouge, or a Ranger, you do DPS by standing around swinging under haste and occasionally pressing a couple buttons on recharge. Your point about CC is unfortunately completely wrong once you get to the higher content, especially Velious era. The Enchanter's low-rest Mesmerize is the only viable option. As for Ressurect and Travel, they are definitely great perks and add to the community and RPG side of the game and are worthwhile assets to consider when balancing classes, but they aren't as specifically pertinent to dynamic gameplay. Although, ressurects actually do have potential for dynamic gameplay (look at Guild Wars). That is an issue I haven't talked about and am unsure about with regards to Everquest. "Battle Ressurects" are certainly a worthwhile issue to ponder, though.
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Last edited by Zuranthium; 06-10-2011 at 06:08 PM..
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#10
06-10-2011, 07:44 AM
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In WoW, people are too lazy to engage tanks on their server in a social manner to get them to group, and tanks are too elitist to do randoms. Hasbinbad's analogy is dead on, if you put in the effort you can pull the 9.5 off muscles glasses, but you can also get your jollies with the fat chick. If you're really lazy/bad at picking up chicks, you'll go home to JILL.
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Hybrid Mode
