EQ 'Next'

[Falconeer]

Not that it matters but count me among those who hate the character art style. It reminds me of Wildstar's style, which I don't like, but worse.

[koro]

http://www.eqnexus.com/2013/08/soe-live-day-3-everquest-next-class-system/

• No dedicated tank or healer roles in group play.  Everyone is responsible for their own safety.  Combat model will not support that type of play.
• Raids do not require specific classes or roles

This is a huge, huge red flag for me. They can crow about their awesome AI all they want, but if you're not going with any good, defined class roles, you've basically guaranteed your encounter design is going to consist of "basic attack", "AoE attack", "get out of the fire", and "adds".

Edit: Apparently the person who originally linked this to me kind of cherry-picked some stuff. The follow-ups make it seem not as bad as that:

• You can still play specific roles within combat, and some classes can be built to tend toward support, defensive, etc.
• Players perform roles in combat and customize their abilities to trend their class towards things like tank or support, but you will not build a class that ONLY has tank abilities and have that as a required tank class for every group.
• Utility classes will be rewarded for their efforts.

[Bzalthek]

I really like their promises.  But I understand they are just that; promises.  Besides, its going to be ftp. so it's not like they're raping my daughter by having the Lion King Kerran as, apparently, -one- of the Kerran options.  But by god I love all the sandy, salty tears flowing.  So much entitlements being crushed.

[Pennilenko]

But by god I love all the sandy, salty tears flowing. 

Feels good man.

[Simond]

The Rerolled thread is the best one since Vanguard launched.

[Bzalthek]

Yeah but it's become the same 4 people shitposting now.

[Malakili]

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.

I'm just saying I don't think it is a coincidence that LoL has made 8 bazillion dollars and that RPGs are regularly having ~4 abilities active.   Heck, a lot of games are starting to bind things to QWER too.

[Venkman]

Eh, GW1 established that and LoL/DOTA2 have more in common with FPS games than MMOs. It isn't a surprised that PC gamers have inherited conventions foisted on developers by far more limited controllers that are linked to the far more lucrative console business.

In five years everything's gonna require a multitouch touch panel to play it "right".

[Stormwaltz]

I don't believe that many-skill or few-skill is inherently better. They are better for different designs.

If the game has actiony combat like Neverwinter and GW2, fewer is better - fewer variables to keep track of, less chance of hitting the wrong thing.

With slower, more "strategically" paced combat like in LotRO and EVE, fewer skills make a more boring game. I cannot play any class but my Swiss Army Lore-Master in LotRO; the rest are too dull and limited in contrast.

[Kageru]

The console generation doesn't do "strategically paced". That's part of the reason the videos were all about teleports and huge AoE attacks. The ideal balance seems to be a movement ability, a block / dodge and 4-5 flavors of "kill all the things".

[Bzalthek]

I just like the limited skill set.  It's not so much the lack of 50 hotbars (which is a plus mind you) but I much prefer having to think ahead as to what you will need and/or find useful. 

[Threash]

Yeah it is just a different kind of strategy, builds in GW2 include the skills you pick not just where you put your points.

[Merusk]

But by god I love all the sandy, salty tears flowing. 

Feels good man.

Saying this without links is just rude.  Now I have to go do my own searching.

[Bzalthek]

You have to work for it you filthy twink!

But seriously, rerolled.org has a mega eqnext thread with raging e-tears.  Though keep in mind the moderation is nonexistant.  The last 10 pages have been 4 people circle-jerk shitposting. 

[Venkman]

Diehard EQ fans not feeling the love?

I can understand, but don't care. SOE needs to do right by themselves, and this approach (on paper) is a lot better than how they interpreted how to jump from EQ1 to EQ2.

[Merusk]

Was browsing the Rerolled thread. Holy shit.

Darniaq, it's not even "Die Hard EQ fans" it's "catass EQ1 fans who have been angry for the last 9 years that EQ1's model doesn't reign supreme."  People whose homes and lives I really don't want to see any more of than the glimpse in that wretched thread.

Jesus wept, I can't imagine being THAT invested in a *game* 13 years later.

[Kageru]

The origin for the forum (if it's carried the FoH crowd) was EQ catasses so it is a pretty specialised sample.

[Quinton]

Looks like SOE licensed VoxelFarm for EQN: http://procworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/everquest-next.html

His procedural building stuff is pretty slick (actually most of his blogging about his engine tech is full of cool tidbits, tech demos, and videos, but this stuff is among the coolest, to my mind...):
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/real-men-dont-draw-buildings.html
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/building-rooms.html
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/06/dude-where-is-my-castle.html

Looks like the TUG guys (a kickstarter project) licensed his stuff as well.

[Phred]

[
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.

How can it be foisted off on them when it's announced like 6 mo to a year before the game ships? Oh right. Cause of the Stupid.

Tell me the idea of some dickweed playing a paladin getting his jimmies rustled doesn't make you giggle a bit.

[Phred]

Double Post. Oops.

[Ingmar]

http://www.eqnexus.com/2013/08/soe-live-day-3-everquest-next-class-system/

• No dedicated tank or healer roles in group play.  Everyone is responsible for their own safety.  Combat model will not support that type of play.
• Raids do not require specific classes or roles

This is a huge, huge red flag for me. They can crow about their awesome AI all they want, but if you're not going with any good, defined class roles, you've basically guaranteed your encounter design is going to consist of "basic attack", "AoE attack", "get out of the fire", and "adds".

Edit: Apparently the person who originally linked this to me kind of cherry-picked some stuff. The follow-ups make it seem not as bad as that:

• You can still play specific roles within combat, and some classes can be built to tend toward support, defensive, etc.
• Players perform roles in combat and customize their abilities to trend their class towards things like tank or support, but you will not build a class that ONLY has tank abilities and have that as a required tank class for every group.
• Utility classes will be rewarded for their efforts.

Yeah makes me think it will end up with GW2's shitty encounter design.

My only other prediction is that the non-permanent nature of the Minecraft-y stuff essentially guts what actually is cool about Minecraft and ends up disappointing everyone completely.

[Simond]

Yeah makes me think it will end up with GW2's shitty encounter design.

Remember when everyone was cheering GW2 on during its beta for getting rid of The Holy Trinity?
Good times.

[UnSub]

Although a lot of EQ Next sounds interesting, I wonder how much things will need to be hamstrung once players get in there to really start breaking things.

Because 'demorphable terrain' plus 'physics' equals 'can we drop a mountain on the city below it?'.

[01101010]

Although a lot of EQ Next sounds interesting, I wonder how much things will need to be hamstrung once players get in there to really start breaking things.

Because 'demorphable terrain' plus 'physics' equals 'can we drop a mountain on the city below it?'.

I was thinking zones would be something like:




But I like your idea better. 

[Merusk]

Yeah makes me think it will end up with GW2's shitty encounter design.

Remember when everyone was cheering GW2 on during its beta for getting rid of The Holy Trinity?
Good times.

 

My only other prediction is that the non-permanent nature of the Minecraft-y stuff essentially guts what actually is cool about Minecraft and ends up disappointing everyone completely.

This was my first thought on the system as well.  Things are permanent and your entire world is  just fucked down the line, or things are temporary and you wonder "why bother?"  There's middle-grounds, like using Landmark to stake claims and those are permanent and scattered, but they'll never make the world large enough to cover [server pop] * {#of alts} and maintain enough land to avoid the urban sprawl feeling.  Certainly not without massive travel times that I'm fairly sure nobody wants to put up with these days.

[Draegan]

This game feels more and more like a Zelda game where you equip a bunch of stuff that allows you to do a bunch of things. I love the idea of tier advancement. Seems like they stole my idea I posted on FOH/Rerolled a bunch of time. Good for them. I'll expect a royalty check in the mail.

As far as the trinity thing: as long as they don't make it like GW2 where all you have are self heals and weak AOE ones, and make targetable and significant group heals, the game will be just fine. I think with a good Mob AI and terrain manipulation, you might not need a traditional tank/healer relationship. Perhaps the mob will attack the most important person and there might be abilities to trip mobs or something.

Anyway the whole reveal was a tech demo and we have no idea if these pipedreams are real. Game look pretty though. And the seperate Landmark game will be awesome. They will slave labor the shit out of all the minecraft neckbeards that jump on this.

[palmer_eldritch]

Yeah makes me think it will end up with GW2's shitty encounter design.

Remember when everyone was cheering GW2 on during its beta for getting rid of The Holy Trinity?
Good times.

 

My only other prediction is that the non-permanent nature of the Minecraft-y stuff essentially guts what actually is cool about Minecraft and ends up disappointing everyone completely.

This was my first thought on the system as well.  Things are permanent and your entire world is  just fucked down the line, or things are temporary and you wonder "why bother?"  There's middle-grounds, like using Landmark to stake claims and those are permanent and scattered, but they'll never make the world large enough to cover [server pop] * {#of alts} and maintain enough land to avoid the urban sprawl feeling.  Certainly not without massive travel times that I'm fairly sure nobody wants to put up with these days.

They've said that changes you make to the world in the main game are temporary. You can smash a bridge or dig a hole, but the world "heals". I'd guess nothing is going to last more than 30 minutes or so at most.

They also apparently have permanent changes to the world in the form of server-wide events (eg civil wars, dragon armies attacking) but those seem to be controlled by the devs as far as I understood it, while the players simply have to work out how to trigger them.

The changes you make in EQ Next Landmark will be permanent but there's no guarantee anything you make there will be imported into EQ Next itself.

Edit: In this interview, Dave Georgeson states that you can in fact own land and build on it in EQ Next itself. This seems to be their version of player housing - you can build your own house (or presumably use a design someone else has created).

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/everquest-next-interview-dave-georgeson/

I guess this is on top of the devs borrowing some of the best Landmark creations and simply bring them in to the gameworld for general use.

[Goreschach]

Although a lot of EQ Next sounds interesting, I wonder how much things will need to be hamstrung once players get in there to really start breaking things.

Because 'demorphable terrain' plus 'physics' equals 'can we drop a mountain on the city below it?'.

There is almost no 'real' physics going on in this type of system. Look closely at the video. The scene where the bridge gets blown up? It doesn't collapse, the entire stretch just gets deleted. Same thing with the house that gets knocked apart. The walls don't fall over, they just cease to exist. This is why there is so much dust and smoke effect covering the screen when something happens. They throw a bunch of smog and some cosmetic chunks flying through the air to cover up what's going on. There is a huge fundamental problem with what they are doing, and while I'm not saying it's a gamebreaker, there are fundamental design level issues that they are going to have to contend with.

Minecraft works because it feels consistent. Everybody understands blocks, they've played with legos. When they look at minecraft, it is intuitively obvious. Minecraft has been so successful because the fundamental metaphor of the game is that you are playing with legos. You can put the legos down, and you can remove them. This makes sense to players, because they understand pulling a lego off some more legos. That lego is gone. It has ceased to exist. Imagine if you loaded up minecraft and you picked at a lego: now it explodes. A shower of dirt and debris covers the lego ground, and when you walk over it you bounce around as you path over the jagged shards of a broken lego. Now if you pick away under a cliff you are contending with lego landslides. Your lego mines are suffering lego cave-ins. And all of your cool lego buildings are no longer structurally sound, so they're falling over. It does not make sense.

EQN is going to be approaching this from the other end of the problem. The fundamental metaphor of EQN is that you are a real person running around in a real world. And when you start blowing up real ground, you will expect to see bridges collapse and walls fall and mountains collapsing on cities below them. So when you do that and instead legos get removed, it will not make sense. This is comparable to the uncanny valley. The more real you try to make the world, the more the shortcuts start to stand out. Full world realistic destruction is just nowhere near possible on current hardware. So they have to make the world cartoony and cover up the destruction so people don't look at it and go 'that doesn't make sense'.

A somewhat related problem is the shift in artistic requirements that this is going to bring. The idea behind Landmark seems to be that they want to use the players as artists. This works really well in minecraft, because anyone can stack blocks. The 'artists' in minecraft don't actually need any significant talent, and so everyone can do it. In a system like EQN is using, where you are selecting block sizes/texturing/smoothing levels, and using copy/paste tools, there is going to be a huge increase in required skill. Granted, it's nowhere near real 3d modelling, but creation in minecraft and EQN are going to be miles apart. I suspect Sony is hoping for a minecraft, when they're actually going to end up with a neverwinter: where 90% of the players tinker around with building for a few hours then give up, and 90% of those people who do stick to building only manage to produce a mountain of crap.

[Soln]

Looks like SOE licensed VoxelFarm for EQN: http://procworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/everquest-next.html

His procedural building stuff is pretty slick (actually most of his blogging about his engine tech is full of cool tidbits, tech demos, and videos, but this stuff is among the coolest, to my mind...):
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/real-men-dont-draw-buildings.html
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/03/building-rooms.html
http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/06/dude-where-is-my-castle.html

Looks like the TUG guys (a kickstarter project) licensed his stuff as well.

WOW. Now I'm interested.  I've been following Miguel for years.  That's awesome.  TUG is actually not using it anymore if you check two posts ago on his blog.  

Edit: I'm still confused and thus skeptical about the open world, but I can see the editor game working well and people then MP for new skins etc. Even auctioning to each other.

[Ingmar]

Yeah makes me think it will end up with GW2's shitty encounter design.

Remember when everyone was cheering GW2 on during its beta for getting rid of The Holy Trinity?
Good times.

That never included me.

[Typhon]

I was cheering loudly, elbowing Ingmar and stepping on his toes

[MediumHigh]

Still cheering 

[palmer_eldritch]

I linked to this interview above too but here are some highlights for those who don't want to listen:

You can bring Landmark creations into the game - or simply build directly in the EQ Next client - on land you have bought or been granted ("earnt through your actions"). This is on top of the designers pulling in Landmark assets for their own use.

Crafting "will be a very big part of our game" but few details.

No quest givers with feathers/exclamation marks over their heads. For quests, you need to keep your eye out for interesting things going on (a girl crying in the street, a barn burning etc).

"There is no end game". Because there are no levels, there is no end game. You become "able to do more" as you go out and collect new classes and stuff. You can develop your gear and character abilities to an extent.

"I can confirm that we'll have PvP" but no details. But big hints that there will be a major PvP element making lots of use of destructible environments.

One hotbar, using the numbers 1 through 8. "You have four character abilities that you can mix and match with all your different classes, and then each weapon you use has four different abilities also".

http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/everquest-next-interview-dave-georgeson/

[Senses]

I haven't been this excited about a game "Vision" since Vanguard!  Sounds like a sure thing.

[Mithas]

The rerolled thread is awesome. I think this guy is losing his mind:

"I think I am the only one who sees this game realistically. I said it's amazing, I think it will be a massive success. I just think it is also a piece of shit. I know this kind of thing can be very hard for simpletons like you to understand but give it time, maybe you will come to terms with it eventually."