Iksar said:Tanix said:I understand roles will be a Pantheon thing, it is a modern MMO staple now, I am just pointing out the problems that will come from roles and the massive class wars that will result (you can already see it here and people don't even fully understand the classes yet). The roles will tell people what they are supposed to be and then we will be off to the races, wait for it.. it is coming.
And the alternative is what exactly? Even if the devs backed away from primary class roles the players would still be engaged in class wars, worse yet they would be more likely to attack the devs in particular for their poor balancing and leaving some classes to the wolves.
So? People are going to complain regardles. The difference in my point is that in EQ, even though the community whined and complained about what the "role" of a class was supposed to be, it didn't (initially) have an effect on my ability to succeed outside of that designated role. That is, as I pointed out, while the "community" was placing everyone in their neat little buckets, I and my group mates were playing the game outside it, succeeding counter to their claimed required need.
The community is irrelevant in this aspect, but... if the developers succomb to this thinking, I and my group members will no longer be able to play as we choose, rather we will be FORCED to play as the roles to which the developer designs. This is why there were constant nerfs/buffs that never stopped in WoW.
Developers should balance classes not to roles between each other, but rather their success in purpose accoding to the content. Balance classes not class vs class, but class vs content and then tell everyone that is your goal and dismiss the complaints. This means some classes will excell in some areas, fail in others and there will be no "LAW" as to what is right or wrong in terms of static "Roles". It kils the entire argument of a players complaint about "my role" and opens up a large variance in content design which provides numerous means of group dynamic play.
Iksar said:Few people in the modern gaming world would want to be a jack of all trades, master of being a taxi and not getting a group (being a last choice pick) like the druid often were in EQ. Players playing any classes like that would rightly be upset with devs if they were left with no real focus/nothing they excel at.
A lot of that is subjective. I would argue that many of the complaints in EQ of "I am useless" were driven by ignorance, self pitty, and a desire to be catered to. That is not to say there were not ligitimate arguments to a certain classes issues, but the whole "I am useless" claims were often nothing more than lazy whines and I proved this to numerous players I played with over the years when they were willing to play in my groups. Fact is, those who had strict requirements for groups, and were large instigators of "what was required" in a group (and even in some raids), I would black list, as I have no respect for those who are so ignorant in their arrogance.
Tanix said:So? People are going to complain regardles. The difference in my point is that in EQ, even though the community whined and complained about what the "role" of a class was supposed to be, it didn't (initially) have an effect on my ability to succeed outside of that designated role. That is, as I pointed out, while the "community" was placing everyone in their neat little buckets, I and my group mates were playing the game outside it, succeeding counter to their claimed required need.
The community is irrelevant in this aspect, but... if the developers succomb to this thinking, I and my group members will no longer be able to play as we choose, rather we will be FORCED to play as the roles to which the developer designs. This is why there were constant nerfs/buffs that never stopped in WoW.
Developers should balance classes not to roles between each other, but rather their success in purpose accoding to the content. Balance classes not class vs class, but class vs content and then tell everyone that is your goal and dismiss the complaints. This means some classes will excell in some areas, fail in others and there will be no "LAW" as to what is right or wrong in terms of static "Roles". It kils the entire argument of a players complaint about "my role" and opens up a large variance in content design which provides numerous means of group dynamic play.
A lot of that is subjective. I would argue that many of the complaints in EQ of "I am useless" were driven by ignorance, self pitty, and a desire to be catered to. That is not to say there were not ligitimate arguments to a certain classes issues, but the whole "I am useless" claims were often nothing more than lazy whines and I proved this to numerous players I played with over the years when they were willing to play in my groups. Fact is, those who had strict requirements for groups, and were large instigators of "what was required" in a group (and even in some raids), I would black list, as I have no respect for those who are so ignorant in their arrogance.
I don't think Pantheon is going to be exceptionally limiting in general when it comes to "succeeding" with odd groups even with primary role designation, by all means run a group with a shaman and 5 monks for general/outdoor content. The issue for most (as I see it anyway) is more directed toward efficiency not capability.
Pointing at EQ seems to me a poor example given how easy the game was since you really could get away with just about any group composition for the majority of content, you might be very slow in gaining xp but you could crawl your way through almost anywhere in time.
Pantheon is supposed to be a challenging game though. How challenging can things really be if you can just throw any old group together and succeed? If a group is missing a healer and a sturdy tank but can still come out on top then how hard could the game really be? Not very I'd imagine.
Iksar said:Tanix said:So? People are going to complain regardles. The difference in my point is that in EQ, even though the community whined and complained about what the "role" of a class was supposed to be, it didn't (initially) have an effect on my ability to succeed outside of that designated role. That is, as I pointed out, while the "community" was placing everyone in their neat little buckets, I and my group mates were playing the game outside it, succeeding counter to their claimed required need.
The community is irrelevant in this aspect, but... if the developers succomb to this thinking, I and my group members will no longer be able to play as we choose, rather we will be FORCED to play as the roles to which the developer designs. This is why there were constant nerfs/buffs that never stopped in WoW.
Developers should balance classes not to roles between each other, but rather their success in purpose accoding to the content. Balance classes not class vs class, but class vs content and then tell everyone that is your goal and dismiss the complaints. This means some classes will excell in some areas, fail in others and there will be no "LAW" as to what is right or wrong in terms of static "Roles". It kils the entire argument of a players complaint about "my role" and opens up a large variance in content design which provides numerous means of group dynamic play.
A lot of that is subjective. I would argue that many of the complaints in EQ of "I am useless" were driven by ignorance, self pitty, and a desire to be catered to. That is not to say there were not ligitimate arguments to a certain classes issues, but the whole "I am useless" claims were often nothing more than lazy whines and I proved this to numerous players I played with over the years when they were willing to play in my groups. Fact is, those who had strict requirements for groups, and were large instigators of "what was required" in a group (and even in some raids), I would black list, as I have no respect for those who are so ignorant in their arrogance.
Pointing at EQ seems to me a poor example given how easy the game was since you really could get away with just about any group composition for the majority of content, you might be very slow in gaining xp but you could crawl your way through almost anywhere in time.
Pantheon is supposed to be a challenging game though. How challenging can things really be if you can just throw any old group together and succeed? If a group is missing a healer and a sturdy tank but can still come out on top then how hard could the game really be? Not very I'd imagine.
See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
Ghool said: I played a Necro pretty much from EQ1s launch until 2003. I went through all the 'Necros are useless to groups.' nonsense all the time. It was so bad, I was the only Necro in a 200+ person guild. But, I didn't care what the consensus was - I proved to every group I joined, that a Necro had amazing utility and could bring a massive toolbox to the group. If used correctly and skillfully. There was always the rule of no pets during raids due to pathing, control, etc. Again, due to skill in utilizing my pet, I was the only caster to ever be allowed a pet in raids. Uselessness of a class is a relative term. Honestly though, roles are a decent guide to what a fortes a class will have. It will help newer players know how they fit into a group, and it's a thing that new games always do. That's not the problem. The problem happens when devs start listening to the vocal minority and basing design decisions on that. Design decisions should always be made with the overarching vision in mind, and not based on perceived class imbalance in a cooperative game. I have experience, and lots.of it when dealing with these sorts of problems. Despite the whiners and complainers being very vocal, and sounding like the majority, they actually comprise no more than 2.5% in almost all demographics/market/group. So despite there being a clamor over something because a few folks complained frequently and loudly, it does not mean they areally the majority. Most players at happy playing the game and accept changes as needed by the devs to keep the game fun. So, despite roles being pronounced by the devs, it doesn't mean that you're stuck doing one thing because they said so. I would classify roles as a rough guide as to what your classes strengths are, but I don't see it as, 'Good at this one thing and nothing else.'
Bingo. I absolutely LOVED necros in a group. I honestly found them most of the time to be ridicuously powerful through their flexability and usefulness. A necro who claimed they were useless, were actually useless, but not because of their class, rather because of the player.
See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
Jumping even if the subject is a bit off, to add my opinion on this :
It's been a common claim that strategy games were easy, as you say, especially old ones. Because today's gaming trends are to value reaction over anything else. The main down point of strategy is that usually, the same strategy is effective for any raid or group, thus few people write strategies and a lot of other use them, leading to a minimal need of tactical reflexion and a maximum need of something else to differenciate players from players : IE : reaction, the ability to take on decisions in the heat and choose the best option avaliable.
Nothing was easy when we were new to them, whichever mmo it is, Everquest or wow, none were easy and intuitive when they were out. What makes them easy, is that they have been played over and over until nothing is new and everything is public knowledge (Quillmane cycle anyone ? How the hell could that even be analyzed ?).
One things are known, they become trivial and they feel like they bring no difficult, which is just the short for experience and / or knowledge while current values tends for who will train muscular memory the fastest and develop pavlov syndrome for specific mechanics (eh eh eh ).
A medium paced game with 12 buttons is not easier than a fast faced game with 4, but longer cooldowns and skills you can't overlap in the same animations force players to use them at the right moment rather than immediately, and will probably split the good and the bad faster than a game you can only play competitevely if you're in your twenties and your brain is fresh.
Tanix said:
Pointing at EQ seems to me a poor example given how easy the game was since you really could get away with just about any group composition for the majority of content, you might be very slow in gaining xp but you could crawl your way through almost anywhere in time.
Pantheon is supposed to be a challenging game though. How challenging can things really be if you can just throw any old group together and succeed? If a group is missing a healer and a sturdy tank but can still come out on top then how hard could the game really be? Not very
See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
Your jumping to raiding now...
EQ grouping and roles in a group are different then EQ raid roles.
EQ for the most part was easy. As a shaman I could hold most 3-4 spawn camps solo. In a raid I would use different skills and spells.
Claiming EQ was hard cause you killed AoW with 30 people is not a legitimate claim. You could zerg in EQ and kill him with 60 people and it would be "easier" just because you put your own challenge up to keep the raid to 30 players has nothing to do with the difficulty of the game.
Like many have said you can toss any number of players mix and match classes and achieve I would say 90% - 95% of the group content in the game. Every zone had its challenges and once you find it, you can work a group around it.
SoWplz said:
Tanix said:
Pointing at EQ seems to me a poor example given how easy the game was since you really could get away with just about any group composition for the majority of content, you might be very slow in gaining xp but you could crawl your way through almost anywhere in time.
Pantheon is supposed to be a challenging game though. How challenging can things really be if you can just throw any old group together and succeed? If a group is missing a healer and a sturdy tank but can still come out on top then how hard could the game really be? Not very
See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
Your jumping to raiding now...
EQ grouping and roles in a group are different then EQ raid roles.
Sure, EQ raiding presented a need for a massive mitgation tank (predominately the warrior at release) and that of a healer who could replenish large amounts of health efficiently (ie a cleric with Complete heal). This is no way "defined" EQ class structure as early EQ raiding was a minority to group play.
SoWplz said:for the most part was easy. As a shaman I could hold most 3-4 spawn camps solo. In a raid I would use different skills and spells.
When, where, what time....? Again, I asked you WHEN you played EQ to properly establish your claim concerning a monks healing. You seem to have ignored this and moved on without response, why?
SoWplz said:Claiming EQ was hard cause you killed AoW with 30 people is not a legitimate claim. You could zerg in EQ and kill him with 60 people and it would be "easier" just because you put your own challenge up to keep the raid to 30 players has nothing to do with the difficulty of the game.
So your argument is that raiding in EQ was only easy because they zerged? Heck, I remeber some raid hitting raid maxn of 72 and losing consistently even though they zerged. So how do you explain that? I do realize content in EQ was often beaten because people threw more at it than was required, but if you call that easy, I contend you never raided in EQ, and defintely were not part of those who planned and ran the raids.
SoWplz said:Like many have said you can toss any number of players mix and match classes and achieve I would say 90% - 95% of the group content in the game. Every zone had its challenges and once you find it, you can work a group around it.
Tell that to the NUMEROUS guilds who failed against the AoW, Areynor, or numerous ToV, and PoP encounter even though they had max players.
Fact is, if you claim EQ was easy, you never played, were a "Tag along" or played long after it was nerfed into mainstream.
MauvaisOeil said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
Jumping even if the subject is a bit off, to add my opinion on this :
It's been a common claim that strategy games were easy, as you say, especially old ones. Because today's gaming trends are to value reaction over anything else. The main down point of strategy is that usually, the same strategy is effective for any raid or group, thus few people write strategies and a lot of other use them, leading to a minimal need of tactical reflexion and a maximum need of something else to differenciate players from players : IE : reaction, the ability to take on decisions in the heat and choose the best option avaliable.
Nothing was easy when we were new to them, whichever mmo it is, Everquest or wow, none were easy and intuitive when they were out. What makes them easy, is that they have been played over and over until nothing is new and everything is public knowledge (Quillmane cycle anyone ? How the hell could that even be analyzed ?).
One things are known, they become trivial and they feel like they bring no difficult, which is just the short for experience and / or knowledge while current values tends for who will train muscular memory the fastest and develop pavlov syndrome for specific mechanics (eh eh eh ).
A medium paced game with 12 buttons is not easier than a fast faced game with 4, but longer cooldowns and skills you can't overlap in the same animations force players to use them at the right moment rather than immediately, and will probably split the good and the bad faster than a game you can only play competitevely if you're in your twenties and your brain is fresh.
EQ fights were not simply knowledge based. It took player skill through timing and place. It took coordination among the masses of players. You would think that modern gamers would understand at least coordinating masses to objectives in timing as most modern games are excecises in timing and movement.
Fact is, I could tell you how to beat an encounter in detail in EQ, but it would take numerous tries with your raid to perfect and eventually succeed in due to the fact that like modern games, timing, coordination, etc... is important.
The most common fallacy I see from modern gamers who never experienced EQ was to look at the combat, say it was slow and then disregard all of the timing and sequence in play concerning the classes. It is ignorance, and pure bias based prejudice. They think they are smarter, better, more evolved, they are wrong.
Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
So now we are talking raiding or very specific fights for some reason?
I'm talking grouping and the other 98% of the game which was grouping, and it was easy. You are vastly overblowing the amount of attention, ability, timing, etc that was required for grouping in the vast majority of areas. Most classes could get by just fine hitting only 2-3 buttons on cooldown for the entire time in a camp. You break a camp and it was almost mindlessly easy to maintain unless the whole group went AFK for 30 minutes.
And IIRC the top hardcore guild leaders were complaining about them releasing buggy encounters leading them to be unbeatable as well as releasing ridiculous keying processes for no reason other than to buy themselves time to make more content.
This topic has gotten so far off track it's just funny.
I started EQ two weeks after release, yes the game was tougher then. All games are hard when they start. As any game goes gear gets better and older content gets easier. That is when a lot of people could solo camps depending on their class. I stopped playing right before PoP. Even before Kunark expansion certain classes could solo certain content if they knew how with little skill, just needed the knowledge. Karanas, sand giants, FP guards, ice goblin camps. After Epic weapons it only got easier, that is the nature of the game, it is impossible to keep the older content as challenging and the newer stuff progressed.
The monk comment was tongue and cheek making a joke about how monks for the most part were arrogant in their class thinking they were best in game ( funny coincidence huh? ) most of us know the monk did not rely on equipment AC the way the plate classes did. And yes a higher end geared monk could hold his own as a tank for a group, but not as well as a mid leveled gear warrior. So, yes MOST groups looking for a tank would take a warrior over most monks.
No I did not run a raid guild, and yes I did raid, again this has little to do with the core difficulty of the game. Player management is completely different subject.
Iksar said:Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
So now we are talking raiding or very specific fights for some reason?
I'm talking grouping and the other 98% of the game which was grouping, and it was easy. You are vastly overblowing the amount of attention, ability, timing, etc that was required for grouping in the vast majority of areas. Most classes could get by just fine hitting only 2-3 buttons on cooldown for the entire time in a camp. You break a camp and it was almost mindlessly easy to maintain unless the whole group went AFK for 30 minutes.
I am talking grouping as well. Numerous areas in EQ dungeon crawling was very difficult. For instance, a dungeon crawl to Disco 2, or even more so down to the Mushroom king and back to the Juggernauts just before Traknon. A group heading to those areas had serious difficulty due to timing, respawns, etc...
Sure, solo classes that could invis could, through clever timing and reliance of other groups, get back to certain areas, but you didn't invis an entire group and run to a dungeon location (Seb frogs were common for having random see invis). It was not "easy" to group in EQ, which is why there was a lot of people whining as they sat demanding groups in EQ. Knowing how to play your class was integral, and there were far too many people who lacked this ability, which is where there was much gnashing of teeth.
You refer to micro game play, as if smashing a few buttons is all EQ was, but then you lack the understanding of the intracies of skills. For instance, Taunt was the most common misused and misunderstood abilties. Most people who knew nothing about it would just spam it constantly. They were often dismissed from groups as they were crappy tanks. Those who knew how taunt worked used it sparingly and at key times to gain control.
There were numerous elements of play, from pathing mobs, spawn timing, mobs who ran away at low health, mobs that would root and gate at low health, etc... All of these were extremely important in play in just "Group" settings. In fact, if your group wasn't skilled, you didn't get back to where the Frenzy or Ghoul Lord was in Lower Guk because you lacked the ability to deal with mob timing in the areas before. I could go on into various zones (Dalnir, various areas of KC, Velktor, SG, etc...) where if you didn't have a solid group to slowly progress, you would wipe constantly.
Now you can go on how WoW was more difficult, but honestly, even in release WoW was action based, "immediate" response based game play, not long term (even though its initial design did attempt to mimic EQ progression). Even at release, WoW was not EQ, not even close.
Iksar said:And IIRC the top hardcore guild leaders were complaining about them releasing buggy encounters leading them to be unbeatable as well as releasing ridiculous keying processes for no reason other than to buy themselves time to make more content.
That is what they claimed, but excuse me if I don't take their word for it because they were one of the biggest offenders of zerging content and "blocking" content for other guilds to stay ahead. Furor and his guild, as well as Afterlife were second rate raiders, nowhere skilled (read up on thier raids, the amount of people they threw at content and the methods they used).
SoWplz said:
This topic has gotten so far off track it's just funny.
I started EQ two weeks after release, yes the game was tougher then. All games are hard when they start. As any game goes gear gets better and older content gets easier. That is when a lot of people could solo camps depending on their class. I stopped playing right before PoP. Even before Kunark expansion certain classes could solo certain content if they knew how with little skill, just needed the knowledge. Karanas, sand giants, FP guards, ice goblin camps. After Epic weapons it only got easier, that is the nature of the game, it is impossible to keep the older content as challenging and the newer stuff progressed.
Ok, I am confused. Are you saying people who later gained gear to outpace content lower than them could solo content? If that is the case, excuse my blunt and rudeness, but NO DUH! If that is not the case, then… I don’t understand. Some classes could solo content even at release (druids, necros, bards…), but… I beg to differ it was “easy” and took “little skill”. In fact, those classes I knew who did such spent enormous amounts of effort and time to achieve those results. I had guild mates who took multiple deaths to finally find a means to be able to solo kite various mobs and it was a long road of developing skills of how to approach such. If you think people kited mobs on EQ release without risk, then you didn’t play EQ release.
SoWplz said:The monk comment was tongue and cheek making a joke about how monks for the most part were arrogant in their class thinking they were best in game ( funny coincidence huh? ) most of us know the monk did not rely on equipment AC the way the plate classes did. And yes a higher end geared monk could hold his own as a tank for a group, but not as well as a mid leveled gear warrior. So, yes MOST groups looking for a tank would take a warrior over most monks.
Monks tanked from the start of the game. In fact, nobody tended to argue against a monk group tanking all through release EQ and even into Kunark/Velious. Where the “You are not a tank” arguments came about where PoP and after due to the fact that only high end Monks could mitigate to a level to MT for groups anymore (ie 2200 ac and above was the cutoff for monks being able to mitigate efficiently). Up until then, most people assumed monks were some form of situational tank, that is why I think your experience with EQ is beyond the release, and more likely that of PoP and on.
SoWplz said:
No I did not run a raid guild, and yes I did raid, again this has little to do with the core difficulty of the game. Player management is completely different subject.
I did though and your experience is the point I am making. That is, I can understand how someone who was merely a pawn in a guild (point here, do this…) may not understand the intricacies of what was going on, but the fact is EQ raiding was more than simply a bunch of dumb animals sitting afk while attacking a mob. Anyone who would claim such is either an idiot or being devious to promote a point.
Monks were by far the best tanks for months at launch. They had the highest AC and the best avoidance. It wasn't until the temple of sol ro quests were implemented that the plate classes started to catch up, and it wasn't until max level that complete heal became the most efficient thing to do.
Keno Monster said:Monks were by far the best tanks for months at launch. They had the highest AC and the best avoidance. It wasn't until the temple of sol ro quests were implemented that the plate classes started to catch up, and it wasn't until max level that complete heal became the most efficient thing to do.
Highest AC? How? By basic numbers, they had no means to achieve such. The best they could obtain was silk armor, which was barely equivelent to that of leather armor. A warrior could obtain much better armor far faster than a monk on release.
As for avoidance, yes... monks were better at avoidance, that was the point. It is why monks were very difficult to heal, due to spike damage they took as opposed to that of warriors which had more even mitigation.
Iksar said:Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
So now we are talking raiding or very specific fights for some reason?
I'm talking grouping and the other 98% of the game which was grouping, and it was easy. You are vastly overblowing the amount of attention, ability, timing, etc that was required for grouping in the vast majority of areas. Most classes could get by just fine hitting only 2-3 buttons on cooldown for the entire time in a camp. You break a camp and it was almost mindlessly easy to maintain unless the whole group went AFK for 30 minutes.
And IIRC the top hardcore guild leaders were complaining about them releasing buggy encounters leading them to be unbeatable as well as releasing ridiculous keying processes for no reason other than to buy themselves time to make more content.
This is just flat out wrong. EQ was easy for anything less than a raid? Compare the pre raid content in any modern MMO to EQ...it is laughably easy compared to EQ. A few slip ups from the enchanter is all it took for things to go downhill fast. If the puller screwed up they died, yes even monks got killed doing pulls sometimes. Breaking a camp was part of the game, but maintaining the camp was NOT always easy it depended on the group comp and which dungeon/zone the group was in. It is sad you are making this argument when so many games out there are far easier and require far less thought/planning. EQ was easy compared to what? I've played WoW, Vanguard, GW1, GW2, EvE, ArcheAge, etc. None of them had the level of PvE challenge I experienced in EQ except the top tier raids in WoW and VG. And anything outside top tier raids in WoW was laughably easy. So where does this "EQ was easy" talk come from? Where are these super difficult MMOs that make EQ look easy?
I knew the Monk was a premier pulling class in EQ before I hit level 20, before Fear was even announced. Unlimited FD, Mend, Avoidance. I could pull a boss's guards, beat on one, Mend, beat, FD, and it would stand over me while the rest went back out of aggro range. So someone could aggro the one standing over me, and get it single.
When Hate was release, my Monk was the only game in town for pulling. Otherwise the raid, all in the port-up house still, would get swamped and wiped. This wasn't emergent role gameplay, it was predestined by the skills and abilities of the class. Maybe a lot of players had not given it much thought, but it was there nonetheless.
So in Pantheon, we know the skills and abilities and spells because they are published. So we know the concrete direction of each class.
So who pulled in EQ? Depends on the situation. Outdoors with with easily split mobs, just about anyone. Heck, my big fat Ogre warrior could pull in many places. But in tight dungeons or rooms, you needed FD to stop a string of mobs short of the group/raid, and then a ranged to bring a single (sometimes a double if they were up to it) in to the group/raid.
I learned the hard way about bosses and guards not dropping aggro just because they went back to their station out of normal aggro range. I was pulling Maestro's guards, and it looked good to get the last one. So I threw a shurikan at him and ran back to the corner. FDed, and ranged brought him in. RL said ok, we can move to the hall now. So I stood up. And walked into the house to join my group. And who do you think came screaming around the corner? Yep. Maestro himself. We killed him, but he took us completely by surprise. Learned something important right then and there.
So emergent gameplay came out of it, in the form of two Monks, or other combinations. It was a bit of trial and error when the level limit was still 50.
I hope Pantheon allows the same kind of trial and error, and figuring things out, and makes the bosses and guards totally unpredictable so just when you think the Monk is the one to pull, the boss changes your mind. Like tagging the Monk with something that prevents FD from dropping aggro completely. Ouch, nevermind, that would hurt. LOL.
Ziegfried said:Iksar said:Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
So now we are talking raiding or very specific fights for some reason?
I'm talking grouping and the other 98% of the game which was grouping, and it was easy. You are vastly overblowing the amount of attention, ability, timing, etc that was required for grouping in the vast majority of areas. Most classes could get by just fine hitting only 2-3 buttons on cooldown for the entire time in a camp. You break a camp and it was almost mindlessly easy to maintain unless the whole group went AFK for 30 minutes.
And IIRC the top hardcore guild leaders were complaining about them releasing buggy encounters leading them to be unbeatable as well as releasing ridiculous keying processes for no reason other than to buy themselves time to make more content.
This is just flat out wrong. EQ was easy for anything less than a raid? Compare the pre raid content in any modern MMO to EQ...it is laughably easy compared to EQ. A few slip ups from the enchanter is all it took for things to go downhill fast. If the puller screwed up they died, yes even monks got killed doing pulls sometimes. Breaking a camp was part of the game, but maintaining the camp was NOT always easy it depended on the group comp and which dungeon/zone the group was in. It is sad you are making this argument when so many games out there are far easier and require far less thought/planning. EQ was easy compared to what? I've played WoW, Vanguard, GW1, GW2, EvE, ArcheAge, etc. None of them had the level of PvE challenge I experienced in EQ except the top tier raids in WoW and VG. And anything outside top tier raids in WoW was laughably easy. So where does this "EQ was easy" talk come from? Where are these super difficult MMOs that make EQ look easy?
Exactly, and one thing they fail to consider is the endurance play combined with the long downtimes. In modern games, players often AoE everything down to quickly overcome an encounter, there is intricate detailed play in CC and organization of time concerning respawns, etc... They just spam kill everything and if they have to med at all, it is a 30 second downtime and they are back up action arcading their way through the zone.
In EQ, if you overspent resources in the fight, you were often out of mana by the time the next respawns occurred. You had to pay attention to numerous things, manage resources, and time your play so that your group was able to succeed. If the monk over pulled, the enchanter might run out of mana while you took down the mobs one at a time causing the group to have to resort to ghetto CC (root, stun, off tanking, etc...) to last the fight and if your players caused that to happen too much, they wiped.
There were many people in EQ who lacked the skill to even take a group back to (much less beat him) the Frenzy and Ghoul lord because they didn't know how to manage their group in the gauntlet areas. IN Seb, this was even worse as some areas varied spawn timers and had numerous pathers back and forth through areas. Add in the constant gating mobs and SoW runners, as well as the frogs who could, heal, mez, root and it was insanely difficult (or the frog who would charm your healer and have them start healing the pulls). There were numerous times where I was beating on a frog who was running away with snare, only to have another pop, root me, heal him, and dispell his snare so he would run with SoW back into a massive group of other frogs causing a massive train to the group, where it didn't matter how skilled you were, it was a wipe.
People who say EQ grouping was easy, either didn't play, or played long after the game was dumbed down.
Rose colored goggles is what it sounds like. The game did not require high skill just some simple awareness (and even then not too much considering you could play /gems, watch TV, do homework etc while playing easily); EQ wasn't particularly difficult (aside from very limited areas) it was just more punishing/time consuming should a player/group seriously mess up. And yes I'm talking early EQ here, not some later dumbed down version.
Iksar could you please list some MMORPGs that are actually challenging? Because if early EQ wasn't a challenge then obviously something has come along that provides that challenge correct? Or are you merely saying the MMORPG genre in general is easy? Why say rose colored goggles when I gave you specifics? You could not play /gems watch TV or do homework easily in just any group that is false. You could do that stuff when your group had a camp broke in an easier zone and was humming along with a great composition of classes. I went and played modern EQ recently for laughs, still harder than anything I experienced leveling in WoW during the vanilla era or any other new MMO. And you may want to hop on P1999 and try your hand and see if it really is rose tinted goggles as you say...I get the feeling you'll experience quite a shock. The harsh penalties were only one part of the equation: player characters were far weaker in EQ than in modern MMOs. Punishing and time consuming was certainly a big part of it no doubt but go ahead play P1999 like I did or even live EQ and judge for yourself. I made sure it wasn't just nostalgia.
Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
While I disagree with most of what you say, your arguements come off as someone who is extremely experienced and actually knows what they are talking about.
But cmon.. claiming eq was hard... that's a joke right.
The game was absurdly easy, the only time it ever becMe difficult was when people had no idea what they were doing.
The raids were only difficult because people had never seen anything like it before. AoW is literally the most basic raid fight in existence. If pantheon had a fight like AoW, it would die in hours.. (assuming a raid had the bare min gear needed).
If your guild was even attempting AoW seriously. Thay means you've already killed raid mobs... which means your aggro mgmt is already honed.
EQ is easy. The combat is absurdly slow. Even in expansions after the switch to really focusing on raiding...
There would be fights where I would be 3 boxing a warrior, cleric and shaman, having to keep a melee group alive on my shaman while CCHing and dispelling on my cleric... and i was still able to pick up a raid mob on my warrior if the MT went down... this is not because I'm some amazing ninja of an MMO player (though i think i am) it's because the game was just that easy.
Ziegfried said:Iksar could you please list some MMORPGs that are actually challenging?
WoW classic Naxx, any mob in sunwell plateau after kalecgos, yogg 0 lights.
Hell, illidari council was hard. That's a 20 minute fight of nonstop actions in a game where if a fight went 10 mins something went wrong. If you claim wow is not challenging, I would love to see the dates of your raiding achievements!
The ONLY time EQ raiding was ever difficult in my experience was on TLPs when we decided to split raid mobs in 2. 3 or even 4 smaller groups, instead of 1 huge raid. You think classic aow is hard. Try aow with 24 players. 60 mins of hell.
Porygon said:The ONLY time EQ raiding was ever difficult in my experience was on TLPs when we decided to split raid mobs in 2. 3 or even 4 smaller groups, instead of 1 huge raid. You think classic aow is hard. Try aow with 24 players. 60 mins of hell.
Slightly off topic here, but I do want to point out - this is why I think Pantheon should stick with smaller raid sizes. /sidetrack off
Iksar said:Rose colored goggles is what it sounds like. The game did not require high skill just some simple awareness (and even then not too much considering you could play /gems, watch TV, do homework etc while playing easily); EQ wasn't particularly difficult (aside from very limited areas) it was just more punishing/time consuming should a player/group seriously mess up. And yes I'm talking early EQ here, not some later dumbed down version.
Sorry to say, I was not a child when EQ came out. I was an adult, married, and working a full time profession. I remeber specifically playing the game with other adults my age (my IT director also played). I also spent a lot of detail explaining specific tactics, progressions of play by name and function and all you can say is "sounds like rose colored googles" while you don't even mention anything specific to my comments on those tactics?
The fact that someone could camp a certain camp and play gems means nothing. I didn't say everything in EQ was hard, I said grouping in EQ was in many situations and used specific examples to which you did not respond to.
Yet, I am the one who has a biased reflection?
Porygon said:Tanix said:See, this response makes me a bit leery of your understanding of EQ. The claim that EQ was easy is often ignorant of its design. Usually, such arguments are made by action gamers who claim that because the players were not spamming reactions throughout the fight, the game was easy. They use elements of static damage replies and slow based combat as evidence of how the game was easy, but... this is usually due to the fact that they ignore the elements of the endurance play, resource management, timing, environment management, etc... That is, I have seen numerous players who did not experience EQ with any real effort in its peak time make such claims.
EQ was not "easy". Dungeon play required extreme attention to location, management of resources, player ability and timing, etc... Anyone who claims EQ is easy, I challenge them to have tried the AoW in his prime, without special gear and with 30-40 people. Anyone who says EQ was easy in such a fight has no experience with it or never played EQ at all. That is just one fight, yet there are numerous fights throughout EQ that require intense endurance, focus, and timing to achieve a success. I don't buy into the "EQ is easy" claim as I had to organize strategies and lead the raids in EQ to which the only people who ever took such for granted were often people who were simply drones beating on the raid mobs. Even so, if you were simply a basic DPS drone for an AoW fight, you still had to have some form of understanding of timing and agro control.
Heck, after the extreme lamenting of various top guild leaders accusing them of making unbeatable fights to prolong play, I find it odd you would make such a claim.
While I disagree with most of what you say, your arguements come off as someone who is extremely experienced and actually knows what they are talking about.
But cmon.. claiming eq was hard... that's a joke right.
The game was absurdly easy, the only time it ever becMe difficult was when people had no idea what they were doing.
The raids were only difficult because people had never seen anything like it before. AoW is literally the most basic raid fight in existence. If pantheon had a fight like AoW, it would die in hours.. (assuming a raid had the bare min gear needed).
If your guild was even attempting AoW seriously. Thay means you've already killed raid mobs... which means your aggro mgmt is already honed.
EQ is easy. The combat is absurdly slow. Even in expansions after the switch to really focusing on raiding...
There would be fights where I would be 3 boxing a warrior, cleric and shaman, having to keep a melee group alive on my shaman while CCHing and dispelling on my cleric... and i was still able to pick up a raid mob on my warrior if the MT went down... this is not because I'm some amazing ninja of an MMO player (though i think i am) it's because the game was just that easy.
IF you think AoW with 30ish people was most basic, you didn't fight him at any time during that contents peak.