EQ 'Next'

[Koyasha]

Some of my enthusiasm is feeling dampened by that whole eight slots thing.  Meaty, interesting classes need more than eight skills, as GW2 taught me.  They don't need the thirty+ skills that fill your screen with skillbars, but it gets repetitive fast if you only have actiony weapon skills 1-4 and non-weapon misc skills 1-4.  If they go the Tera route and have basic weapon attack chain skills on the right and left mouse buttons and 1-8 are for more situational skills, that could be doable, but I'm still worried.

I agree with this at least according to what little I've read about it thus far.  The thing to me is that it's not the number of skills that's the problem, it's tying them to other things; specifically, tying skills to the weapon.  That was what felt limiting in GW2, and from what little I've read that's what they're going to do here.  It's not a huge deal, but it is suboptimal, to me.

Contrast with EQ1.  8 spell gems.  That was perfect.  That was, to me, the ideal balance between having your entire damn spellbook and all spells and such available constantly, and having too few skills available.  I could mix and match any of my eight spells.  And just as importantly, I could swap them out, even mid-combat...if I could get a moment to do so.  The combination of these factors made for the perfect limitations, to me.  If I needed another spell available right now, I could try to get off to the side of the battle, sit down (which increased agro significantly, often enough to pull the monster onto you) and swap spells mid-fight.  Then I just had to wait for the spell refresh (so certain spells I couldn't swap in like that, such as the...uhh...I can't recall the name, the invulnerability shields, and a few others with a several-minute refresh timer) and cast the spell.

I really don't like having all abilities available at any given time, like in WoW.  I like to have to make a choice of which abilities to have readied at any given moment, but also be able to mix and match as I please, and alter that choice mid-battle, with a cost of time and possibly getting smacked upside the head for attempting it.  It's a pity this isn't something they're carrying forward from EQ1.

[patience]

Kudos to them for taking a big-budget stab at something relatively new, regardless of how it turns out.

They deserve kudos.

I'm wondering if the ecosystem is going to be complex enough that your actions define what npc factions you have better relationships with. It would be amazing if players who choose to help in the destruction of the colony town are sort of recognized by the goblin king and his horde. They don't need to offer quests. They just need to offer temporary assistance to player tasks for an obvious price. Being orcs and goblins they still will attack you when it is convenient to not stick to their social obligations.

[Falconeer]

Since I just said we shouldn't speculate... here's my speculation based on what they are pitching.

Yes, weapons will have skills tied bound to them, but classes will have different skills (actions) based on that same weapon. For example, you have unlocked the Warrior class and have a halberd. You got, say, 4 halberd-warrior skills (assuming classes have some skills tied to weapons, and about 4 more unbound-generic-utilities for that total of 8). Later on you unlock more classes, for example, Mage, Enchanter, Lancer, Marauder, Priest, Battlemaster. Let's say that the Mage, Enchanter and Priest cannot use a halberd so you don't get any skill for that. But the Lancer, Marauder and Battlemaster all got about 4 (different) skills for when you have a halberd equipped. So in the above example you would have about 16 halberd skills to pick your 4 active ones from, and that is the point of their glorified multi-classing and horizontal progression. You can level up a class (they say it is called tier-advancement), but it is important to unlock classes in order to gain access to more options and to true customization. It would be like GW2, but with the real chance to pick skills from any class you unlocked. Actually more like The Secret World, except you gotta unlock classes while TSW was completely class-less and every weapon had its own tree of skillls that needed to be unlocked, and you could only pick from two trees at a time.

TL;DR: It should be much more like The Secret World than Guild Wars 2. With 40 classes, you should be able to pick among a sheer amount of skills for your sword or staff or whatever isn't a very unique weapon (that only a few classes can use). It's meant for much much more customization than GW2 ever was.

[Typhon]

It entertains me enormously to listen to you ride this roll coaster again.  I'm not mocking or belittling you, I genuinely enjoy your boundless capacity to be spellbound by the potential.  I'm a little sad that I've largely lost that capacity.  This is the very best time for you, you should enjoy it. 

[patience]

Some of my enthusiasm is feeling dampened by that whole eight slots thing.  Meaty, interesting classes need more than eight skills, as GW2 taught me.  They don't need the thirty+ skills that fill your screen with skillbars, but it gets repetitive fast if you only have actiony weapon skills 1-4 and non-weapon misc skills 1-4.  If they go the Tera route and have basic weapon attack chain skills on the right and left mouse buttons and 1-8 are for more situational skills, that could be doable, but I'm still worried.

This. GW2 bored me because you unlock your few attacks so early then its 75 levels with the same 4 attacks.

I've only played two classes so far and I would say I had to switch weapons a lot on both of them to deal with certain raid encounters. What sucked about the system was that you were locked into the weapons you choose the moment combat begins. To my understanding this gets corrected when you reach a sufficiently high level but I haven't gotten their yet and Dota 2 is taking up more of my time.

[Merusk]

I personally don't foresee such a system lasting even a year in the wild, if it even goes live in the first place.

I imagine MMO players have pretty low tolerance for this particular brand of permanent consequence, especially if it's foisted on them potentially dozens of hours into their characters' careers.

It will either be changed within a month or you'll be able to quickly grind for honor to unlock Paladin. There's zero chance of this lasting long term the way the describe it.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet the "game keeping track" is just version 3.0 of EQ's faction system.  "Go Grind 10,000 evil mobs to make-up for being a bad guy!"

[Mrbloodworth]

I was thinking about the urban sprawl issue. You know, it could very well be that landmark IS the housing system. I don't really see a reason as to why after EQNext launchers, they two would not be connected. You could likely pop in and out of the two without ever logging out.

[Rendakor]

I've only played two classes so far and I would say I had to switch weapons a lot on both of them to deal with certain raid encounters. What sucked about the system was that you were locked into the weapons you choose the moment combat begins. To my understanding this gets corrected when you reach a sufficiently high level but I haven't gotten their yet and Dota 2 is taking up more of my time.

To clarify my personal preference, I really don't like the trend lately toward having a few skills available out of a larger pool (GW2, TSW, D3, etc.). I like the WoW/EQ2 model of many hotbars full of interesting abilities.

[Mrbloodworth]

I welcome that change.

[Threash]

I do too.  My mouse has 12 buttons, if i need any more than that i probably won't play your game.  Eight is about the perfect number, DCUO had five i think and that was way to few but at least you could do weapon combos with the mouse.

[Mrbloodworth]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/08/03/everquest-next-interview/

McPherson: So, we’re not ready to discuss the details of crafting, but we’re going to be playing in a very rich, deep world—as [David Georgeson] mentioned, you can take a weapon and make it out of multiple parts. And, the reason you want to make it out of multiple parts is because each character class, and each multiclass build, will have different requirements and different ways that you can augment and fine tune it. Weapons have a huge role in that. Armor has a huge role in that.

Butler: Weapons are actually recognizable, for instance. With acuity and experience in the game, I can look at your weapon and I can tell what its properties are, just by looking at it.

McPherson: I can go, ‘Oh, I see what you’ve done. You’ve made it out of this material.”
“We don’t expect the need to build 10,000 rifle barrels to become a grandmaster.”

Butler: I think the thing that’s additionally, extremely relevant as far as crafting is concerned is that exploring through the world is, in itself, a kind of element of crafting. We’re digging, we’re building. If we want to cross a chasm, build a bridge.

McPherson: I can tell you one of the things you won’t be doing as a crafter, and that’s making the same thing over and over and over again to advance your skill. That’s not how it will work.

Butler: We don’t expect the need to build 10,000 rifle barrels to become a grandmaster.

McPherson: It’s not a skill-based system, it’s very much like the system of advancing your classes. We have multiple tiers. You begin digging, you explore and you find, and those things give you progression and advancement that can be spent on your crafter.

So, to advance your blacksmith, you don’t have to only create many items over and over again. That’s not the way it works.

Butler: Another great example, we could be here in this room right now and want to destroy things. We might be able to destroy the walls with the weapons and materials we have, but not the floor. But there’s probably something that can destroy the floor, and we have to craft it—get better materials, put them together, and then start chewing through the floor to see what’s underneath us.

McPherson: And because of the way our world works, resources—if you’re an MMO player, copper is the newbie metal, it’s the metal you find right outside the starting city and eventually you don’t need it anymore. Because of the way our game works, copper is always useful, because copper has specific qualities. Iron is always useful, mithril is always useful. All of these things are always useful to you, depending on what you want to make.

If you want to make a weapon that does electrical damage, or a weapon that is really good against undead, you need to find the right material to make it out of, and that could be any of the materials you find in the world.

[Venkman]

Some of my enthusiasm is feeling dampened by that whole eight slots thing.  Meaty, interesting classes need more than eight skills, as GW2 taught me.  They don't need the thirty+ skills that fill your screen with skillbars, but it gets repetitive fast if you only have actiony weapon skills 1-4 and non-weapon misc skills 1-4.  If they go the Tera route and have basic weapon attack chain skills on the right and left mouse buttons and 1-8 are for more situational skills, that could be doable, but I'm still worried.

This. GW2 bored me because you unlock your few attacks so early then its 75 levels with the same 4 attacks.

I thought GW2 worked well because it wasn't really like that for me. As an Elementalist that often swapped between daggers and staff, plus the underwater and other occasional-use weapon types you'd encounter, having access to eight skills at a time wasn't the same as only having eight abilities. Engineer felt similar though I didn't cap that one.

If EQ Next is anything like that, I don't see an issue.

Abelien75's comments about DCUO raise a good point about heritage. But if we're going that far, it really goes back through GW1 to CoH in terms of limited contextual ability sets. WoW really was the outlier example of the other way an MMO UI could go, and that was far too bananas to serve as a good example for anyone.

And to clarify the beta application, I think it's just for the Landmark portion, not full on Next (which isn't anywhere near ready for applications I don't think).

[Rendakor]

How did CoH have limited, contextual abilities?

[Venkman]

I might be remembering it wrong. I do recall the limited accessible skillset. And I thought you could pick up weapons that swapped out abilities ala certain consumable weapons in GW2.

But this was a long time ago, and I'm old.

Also, on the beta application, the site says Landmark, but the confirmation email did say Landmark and Next.

So, two corrections in one post!

[MrHat]

Fact: Anyone who is excited about this is wrong.

Fact: If anyone goes fanboy on this, I may start banning people purely on principle. Think before you talk.

But...but....promises !

[Hoax]

You guys are fucking crazy. This is vaporware. This is SOE vaporware. There are some things we shouldn't have to relearn.

I mean I guess its not Vaporware, something will come of it. Its promiseware. None of the bits you think sound cool will be in the game or work in the way you imagine. No hype train for this until a beta exists please.

[Abelian75]

Abelien75's comments about DCUO raise a good point about heritage. But if we're going that far, it really goes back through GW1 to CoH in terms of limited contextual ability sets. WoW really was the outlier example of the other way an MMO UI could go, and that was far too bananas to serve as a good example for anyone.

Yeah, GW1 in particular was definitely a big infuence there.  TBH, it was mostly the "parkour" stuff being inspired by GW2 that made me raise my eyebrows a bit.  If anything, that influence was the other way around.

None of the bits you think sound cool will be in the game or work in the way you imagine. No hype train for this until a beta exists please.

This is basically my concern, yeah.  DCUO had all these cool new technical features, but in the end they were just kinda thrown into a standard level/dungeon/raid environment and didn't really have much of a bearing on anything (especially the havok physics engine, which was technically badass but didn't do a hell of a lot for the game).  At least here they don't seem to be going with the standard MMO formula, but I don't really "get" the formula that is in its place.  I guess we'll see.

[Falconeer]

promiseware

 

[jakonovski]

On paper this thing is the greatest MMO ever. However, two full resets after 18 months of development each, and it's supposed to come out in 2014? Yeah...

[Tyrnan]

ProSieben are involved in the EU side of things?  That's pretty much killed any interest in this game for me.

[Merusk]

On paper this thing is the greatest MMO ever. However, two full resets after 18 months of development each, and it's supposed to come out in 2014? Yeah...

"On Paper" the same things were said about:

Star Wars Galaxies
Knight of the Old Republic
Tabula Rasa
Age of Conan
GW2
Warhammer
Mechwarrior Online
Mechwarrior Tactics
and, yes, even Vanguard.

But people never learn and now we have a new hype to hope for.  It's always "This time it will be different!"  Like plans for invading Russia.

[Teleku]

Hey, Russia has been successfully invaded several times man.  And so this game could be awesome as well!   

[tmp]

I really liked how the human woman looked

She reminded me of Disney's Belle. The basic look was legitimate next-door pretty, not exploitative supermodel sexy. And she was mostly dressed.

Looks-wise i'm getting Disney feel out of the whole thing. Which isn't bad, though i think it's what the other recent games have been trying.

I mostly like the scale, it seems larger and more natural than the vertically exaggerated WoW-like theme parks.

[Threash]

The human looked perfect.  The cat person was too wide, more like a bull than a cat.  It should be sleek and agile, not bulky.

[Miasma]

How is it vaporware?  It's not like this is an unknown start up, we know SOE is fully capable of putting out games.  This is just an MMO with minecraft added in.  If one guy can write games like minecraft and cubeworld why on earth wouldn't SOE be able to do the same?  They're not promising anything that they and others haven't already done before, it's AAA minecraft with an MMO mod.

I assume the last reset was because minecraft came out and the eq devs went apeshit thinking about how awesome it would be to integrate something like that into their game.

I never really got into minecraft so I don't know if I'll like EQ Next but it's definitely going to happen.  They were confident enough about the minecraft side of things to say it's coming out this winter.  So it might be out by spring.

[Kitsune]

No, promiseware's definitely the more accurate description.  It's not vapor, they'll definitely put something out.  It just probably won't be anywhere close to the implications they've made in their hype.

[Threash]

The minecraft MMO part is not the "no way they pull this off" part, it isn't that big a deal and someone was going to do it sooner or later and make bank with it.  Specially since the changes are not permanent.  It's the emergent AI stuff, the whole speech about the orcs reacting to players, we've been hearing that since like Rift or before and it always ends up being some lame gimmick that turns out nothing like what he said.  The rallying call thing is nothing but a continuing story like i dunno, Asheron's call? also nothing new. Neither is the parkour style movement, something everyone loves in hero games and Age of Wushu.  

[Hoax]

On paper this thing is the greatest MMO ever. However, two full resets after 18 months of development each, and it's supposed to come out in 2014? Yeah...

"On Paper" the same things were said about:

Star Wars Galaxies
Knight of the Old Republic
Tabula Rasa
Age of Conan
GW2
Warhammer
Mechwarrior Online
Mechwarrior Tactics
and, yes, even Vanguard.

But people never learn and now we have a new hype to hope for.  It's always "This time it will be different!"  Like plans for invading Russia.

That list makes me feel pretty good. I only fell for the hype on AOC (though in the end I could tell it wasn't delivering so I never played it) and MW:Tactics, I got very hype for MWO but never gave them money because I could tell they were horrible devs who were just as likely to ruin everything as make things better. My big miss was not playing SWG at launch that game I would have had lots of fun with but oh well.

The rest of that list? Fuck those games. Saw the suck coming from miles away. Mark Jacobs still owes me an official apology for making WAR such a piece of shit. We had a bet.

[Senses]

I miss having lots of skills too, only because the nature of choosing forces you to optimize for *most* situations, which means fun yet non-optimal skills or spells just never get used.  Pretty sure they are putting keyboards like the g19 out of business too considering you only need 5 buttons to play any game lately.  Do people really want this... or are they forcing it on us so they can consolize every game.  Now that I think of it, are people who typically play console games even looking for MMORPGS at all?  Why is this suddenly a selling point?

[Kitsune]

I think it's just a backlash against the wall of buttons that we got in the WoW generation of MMORPGs.  I'm also one of the ones who thought that EQ did it right (for spellcasters at least) by having a deep pool of skills but only a limited number on hand.  That way you could have your situationally useful things like buffs, item summonings, etc. in your spellbook for when you need them, but the number of things you're juggling in the middle of a fight are limited.

[Malakili]

Why is this suddenly a selling point?

League of Legends.

[Threash]

Why is this suddenly a selling point?

League of Legends.

I've never played League of Legends and i much prefer the games with a small number of abilities.  Actually, large number of abilities out of which i pick a few to use at a time.  TSW had the perfect system with actives/passives, but GW2 half weapon half class based will do.

[jakonovski]

Tooling up against encounters is a mechanic that really should be in more MMOs. Limited skill decks chosen from a larger pool are a great way of doing that. Make some skills drops and you'll have a whole new gear treadmill too! Bonus points for whoever ties extensive cosmetic changes to the decks.

[Venkman]

Promiseware is an awesome term. Hoax, go copyright that

My own expectations currently are Landmark is the creative modes in Spore, not even launch era vanilla Minecraft (voxels !cubes). That's fine with me, even if SOE pullls a Titan on Next. I put more time into making creatures, buildings and vehicle than actually playing the game anyway.

[Kageru]

8 abilities in this case probably does mean console ambitions. The GW2 model is a bit too minimal for me, though having swap weapons widen it out a little, but it makes me miss the GW1 idea of being able to collect powers and design builds. They haven't really iterated on the skills since launch and the soft classes means a lot of the abilities just feel generic.

The artwork doesn't really appeal that much to me, the action is extremely "noisy" in terms of the amount of visual chaos and the whole deformable landscape hasn't proven that it will actually be fun. I can easily see areas just being rubble and bedrock once you put a real population in it.

But it is SOE so it could have been worse... maybe they can iterate something useful out of it.