EQ 'Next'

[palmer_eldritch]

Watching the class panel now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOKhfxwLokg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVqv78MfJus

The class design might seem familiar to those of us who've played The Secret World . . .

Basically each class has four fixed abilities, which are tied in some way to your weapon. You can change your class between fights.

Then you also have four "character abilities" which can come from any class which you have acquired.

So your starting character has eight abilities - four weapon abilities and four character abilities. But as you gain more classes, and therefore more character abilities, you can change how your class works by changing any or all of your character abilities.

You can swop out your four "weapon abilities" too, by changing class. But you can't mix and match those in the same way - each class always has the same four class abilities.

(although they also say you can ignore this aspect and stick with the original class if you like. The "starter classes" are just as viable as modified classes, so they say).

Individual abilities can also be improved by equipping items. EG, if you have a teleport ability, you might enhance it in some way by finding a ring which enhances teleportation.

And then there's apparently more customisation which is being kept secret.

[Hawkbit]

I'm legitimately interested and excited about this title.  I really enjoyed building stuff in Rift/EQ2 and Minecraft.  I suspect I'll like building stuff for this game, too.  

There are definitely some glaring problems, but they might produce a decently fun experience.  So, we'll see.  It's likely to be a free game, so I can't really be hurt if it isn't something I like.

Likes:  

No obvious quest givers
multiclass
potential to see player built stuff in-game.
dynamic world?
character models, much better than eq2, even if they look somewhat cartoony.  

Dislikes/concerns:

destructible terrain seems a bit too destructible.  A hammer blow should not knock out a section of ground.
weird uncanny valley physics with the environment, as mentioned earlier.

[Falconeer]

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.

This happened before. EQ2, November 2004. How long before they change their mind again and put exclamation marks back in?

[Draegan]

please don't ever quote qwerty from rerolled on these boards. Don't spread the pollution.

[Margalis]

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

Getting rid of the Trinity is fine as long as you have an idea of what to replace it with.

[Miasma]

I read a different article that said they were keeping the trinity so I don't know which to believe yet.  I am pro trinity.  Probably because I usually play a healer.

[01101010]

No obvious quest givers makes me think of FFXI and spending countless hours talking to every stupid fuck NPC in the towns just to find nothing. Then again, FFXI was hardly about side quests. Even so, no big yellow bat signal is a nice change, only if it is obvious that that NPC has some shit for you to do.

[Mithas]

please don't ever quote qwerty from rerolled on these boards. Don't spread the pollution.

At least I didn't say who he was. That guy is entertaining. I will say that if anyone wants to see rage tears, go read qwerty's posts.

[Kageru]

It sounded a lot like they were trying to make the content automatically generated (the orc camp example) or story driven (the build a fort example). So you don't need quest givers as such. It's also pretty much like GW2's model of hearts (static but one-off events), events and zone events. They'll probably even borrow something like the "living world" idea.

They might be trying to make it more dynamic such that events form from more fundamental mechanisms playing out, but getting that stuff to work and give enough interesting variety (especially under the pressure of player manipulation) is far from easy. And I expect their dreams to be reduced to meet reality as development continues.

[Malakili]

It sounded a lot like they were trying to make the content automatically generated (the orc camp example) or story driven (the build a fort example). So you don't need quest givers as such. It's also pretty much like GW2's model of hearts (static but one-off events), events and zone events. They'll probably even borrow something like the "living world" idea.

They might be trying to make it more dynamic such that events form from more fundamental mechanisms playing out, but getting that stuff to work and give enough interesting variety (especially under the pressure of player manipulation) is far from easy. And I expect their dreams to be reduced to meet reality as development continues.

It all comes down to whether or not they are going to be willing to implement anything that prevents players from doing what they want, when they want.  Every developer in recent memory has fallen on one side of that decision.  In some sense you have to go the other way if you want the "living world' idea to work.   If someone wants to log in and quest, but the zone is overrun with orcs, that's a more interesting world - but it isn't a more interesting game to most people I suspect.  More power to them if they stay the course with the idea.

[Abelian75]

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

Getting rid of the Trinity is fine as long as you have an idea of what to replace it with.

Totally.  And unfortunately, my guess/fear is that this necessity is not recognized there.

[UnSub]

I read a different article that said they were keeping the trinity so I don't know which to believe yet.  I am pro trinity.  Probably because I usually play a healer.

SOE wants you to believe whichever statement ends up with you giving them money.

I'm remembering all the DCUO hype that SOE kicked up and how far short that title fell of achieving its goals e.g. Superman's super power is Ice. DCUO only became successful after it became a F2P PS3 title.

So I'm interested to see where EQNext ends up. Maybe it will be F2P, but every shovel costs real-life money.

[Furiously]

GW2 failed for me in that they said you would leave an imprint on the world for your actions... I can go back to the centaur camp that I helped retake and if no one has done the string in 12 hours, it will be back in enemy hands. The zone conflict is either in State A, B, C, D or E. That's not, "Procedurally generated events leaving a long lasting impact on the world." That's the quest is in state "X".

[Abelian75]

SOE wants you to believe whichever statement ends up with you giving them money.

I'm remembering all the DCUO hype that SOE kicked up and how far short that title fell of achieving its goals e.g. Superman's super power is Ice. DCUO only became successful after it became a F2P PS3 title.

So I'm interested to see where EQNext ends up. Maybe it will be F2P, but every shovel costs real-life money.

I'd be very (pleasantly) surprised if it ended up having any sort of strong trinity, or anything substantial replacing it.  I hope I'm wrong, of course, but I'd be surprised if you weren't spot-on.

When I was there, I once tried to show someone one of those Tankspot videos of the Malygos fight, for some reason I don't exactly recall that had something to do with ideas for platforming elements in group encounters.  I started the video, and immediately was met with laughter and cries of "NERD!!!", because the idea of someone making a video about an encounter was just too goddamn hilarious for this person to imagine.  Consider that those tankspot videos were about as un-nerdy as you can get when it comes to videos about MMOs.  We're talking about a video of a normal guy talking in fairly normal-guy tones about how to fight a raid boss in an MMO, and the very idea of that was hilarious to them.  I'm not going to say the exact position this person was eventually promoted into, but it was depressingly significant.

There were a lot of really, really smart people on that team, and we did some really cool stuff in DCUO, technically.  But the culture there, and quite possibly at most studios (I don't know, as I left the game industry) is very anti-"serious gamer", and I don't mean "serious gamer" to include only the hilariously hardcore that are easy to make fun of.  I fear that, much like I felt to be the case on that game, there will not be much a plan for the game other than the moment-to-moment combat (which will probably be great).  I don't think the culture as a whole understood anything aside from that.  Hopefully that's been corrected!  We'll see.

[Sky]

I'm about as far from 'serious gamer' as you can get and I can see that Superman having ice powers is completely insane.

[Kitsune]

I am pro-trinity in this case; if someone wants to be focused on healing or tanking I say let 'em.  GW2 failed in that healing just plain sucked.  It's flatly impossible to outheal any degree of incoming damage with any class or skill in GW2, and there's little for a tank to do either, since getting a big monster's complete attention on you is likely to get you dead regardless of class or armor.  So pretty much everybody's DPS at the end of the day, and while that ended groups sitting around for an hour spamming 'LF1M healer PST!', it also turned combat from a tactical affair with people in set roles having to use teamwork into a clusterfuck of people spamming random attacks until the monster died.

So here's the thing.  Next lets you mix-match class stuff at will.  So basically anybody can get healing powers, or equip a shield and be tanky.  You don't have to worry about everyone in the party showing up to the dungeon entrance as a Hunter, not when any or all of you can swap in a healing skill and *bamf* now you're a healer.  So I don't see an aversion to the trinity being necessary for Next.  The downside of the trinity lies in being trapped in a situation where you need but cannot find a healer or tank, but the things they've said about their class system implies that everyone can be a healer and a tank after running around learning skills.  Let the players enjoy the benefits of specializing in a role instead of watering everything down.

[veredus]

maybe it will be F2P, but every shovel costs real-life money.

Just want to point out that the EQN website says it's f2p.

[Furiously]

I am pro-trinity in this case; if someone wants to be focused on healing or tanking I say let 'em.  GW2 failed in that healing just plain sucked.  It's flatly impossible to outheal any degree of incoming damage with any class or skill in GW2, and there's little for a tank to do either, since getting a big monster's complete attention on you is likely to get you dead regardless of class or armor.  So pretty much everybody's DPS at the end of the day, and while that ended groups sitting around for an hour spamming 'LF1M healer PST!', it also turned combat from a tactical affair with people in set roles having to use teamwork into a clusterfuck of people spamming random attacks until the monster died.

So here's the thing.  Next lets you mix-match class stuff at will.  So basically anybody can get healing powers, or equip a shield and be tanky.  You don't have to worry about everyone in the party showing up to the dungeon entrance as a Hunter, not when any or all of you can swap in a healing skill and *bamf* now you're a healer.  So I don't see an aversion to the trinity being necessary for Next.  The downside of the trinity lies in being trapped in a situation where you need but cannot find a healer or tank, but the things they've said about their class system implies that everyone can be a healer and a tank after running around learning skills.  Let the players enjoy the benefits of specializing in a role instead of watering everything down.

The tears will be strong if raid encounters don't drop a token for everyone present and instead drop actual loot.  (Based on the whole... items can modify your abilities statement)

[Phred]

So here's the thing.  Next lets you mix-match class stuff at will.  So basically anybody can get healing powers, or equip a shield and be tanky.  You don't have to worry about everyone in the party showing up to the dungeon entrance as a Hunter, not when any or all of you can swap in a healing skill and *bamf* now you're a healer. 

If Rift is anything to judge by, this wont happen though. What will happen is everyone will show up in their dps role and bitch loudly about the lack of healers.

[palmer_eldritch]

Rift isn't a great example though because it never really offered the flexibility people thought it would. If you played a mage then yes, there was a healing soul in the mage tree and it did have a use, but it didn't mean you could heal like a priest could. It was a dps/healing hybrid role. If you wanted to play a proper healer, you needed to roll a priest.

[Rendakor]

So here's the thing.  Next lets you mix-match class stuff at will.  So basically anybody can get healing powers, or equip a shield and be tanky.  You don't have to worry about everyone in the party showing up to the dungeon entrance as a Hunter, not when any or all of you can swap in a healing skill and *bamf* now you're a healer.  So I don't see an aversion to the trinity being necessary for Next.  The downside of the trinity lies in being trapped in a situation where you need but cannot find a healer or tank, but the things they've said about their class system implies that everyone can be a healer and a tank after running around learning skills.  Let the players enjoy the benefits of specializing in a role instead of watering everything down.

I'm not sure this is true, particularly for tanks. 4 of your skills are permanently tied to your class/weapon, for which "sword and board" is probably a choice.

[Maledict]

That's not true at all regarding Rift. Heck, for long periods of time the Mage healing soul was probably the best healer in Rift. Chloromancers were able to fully heal content from day 1. It was just that most people who roll mages want to blow stuff up, and most people who want to heal roll priests...

Re GW2, lets be clear on what they were trying (and failed) to accomplish. GW2 set out to get rid of the trinity - but to replace it with other roles. Instead of tanks being beaten on, they wanted 'control classes' who would use a variety of abilities to control bosses. Warriors might melee them as normal, mesmers would create illusions to distract them, earth elementalists would kite and disable them etc. instead of healers they had support roles. They even had a giant chart showing which class could fulfill which role.

Unfortunately they failed in implementation. The tools to control mobs aren't strong enough so fights just end up with people kiting bosses or relying on stacked buffs to absorb damage whilst you burn it down, and support roles don't bring enough to the group to justify speccing as one (especially when the single best support ability, Time Warp, is brought by every Mesmer no matter what).

GW2 is a great game and I play it daily, but their ambition to replace the trinity with something more rational and flexible unfortunately failed. We do have to remember though this wasnt what they planned and they did have concepts beyond 'everyone dps!' That the game ended  up as.

[Numtini]

The Secret World certainly gave you flexibility to multiclass and kept the basic trinity. I didn't care for the spam healing, which was the result of not having mana, but you really could switch class fully. I think Rift's problem was not so much that Chloro mages couldn't heal, but that there were no rogue or warrior healers. Personally, I've yet to see anything that's as interesting to play as the trinity based games.

The no quest givers is nonsense. We've been there and done that. If they don't have quest givers people will just leave or they'll camp. They aren't going to randomly run around looking for damsels in distress.

I don't see the game surviving without an end game. This SOE. They are not nimble and they will not be able to produce content on a regular basis in the manner that GW2 or even TSW is doing. They're going to be more like Defiance, nothing to do and promises that an expansion will arrive "sometime."

The outlier in all of this is with a F2P model, it's about making the best game possible for a large number of people, it's about attracting the small percentage that are going to drop ludicrous amounts of money in the cash shop.

[eldaec]

My problem with gw2 was I could never really figure out what was going on in a group and it didn't really vary according to group composition or tactics.

I always got the impression there were hidden depths I was missing, but compared to something like CoX or even GW1 it just felt bland. Never outright terrible, but everything was so carefully balanced it never seemed to matter what you did as you'd get similar utility from almost any decision you made.

[Maledict]

You are completely right re GW2. The lack of a decent combat log and game notifications really, really hampers fights. There are *amazing* co-ordinated group things you can do - but it's not worth doing as no-one knows unless you are in a very tight co-ordinated group.

For example, as a Mesmer I can give everyone in the group a huge stack of buffs and the time warp them all. But unless that's co-ordinated its mostly wasted and no-one would have a clue what was going on anyway - if they even noticed they suddenly had a lot of extra buffs.

GW2 has huge depths to its combat, but its way too hidden and obtuse and just not needed most of the time.

[Maledict]

Overall I am curious how Neverwinter is doing. It's free to play, has a recognised brand and has content generation as well.SOE seem to be relying on that to provide the endgame in a similar way to EVE but unless their game is radically different to what've have seen so far they really don't have the ability to provide a playground like EVE does.

[Merusk]

GW2 is a great game and I play it daily, but their ambition to replace the trinity with something more rational and flexible unfortunately failed. We do have to remember though this wasnt what they planned and they did have concepts beyond 'everyone dps!' That the game ended  up as.

I think that, unfortunately, that's what all 'everyone's a hybrid' systems are doomed to fall to. 

If everyone tanks then you wind up with players who only have to blindly mash buttons for DPS.  After all, everyone's a tank and whoever the mob is beating on doesn't matter for the group, only the individual concerned with not dying, until their DPS is lost.

If everyone self-heals, then again you wind-up only needing to mash the DPS button. You're responsible for your own health so the guy next to you taking a dirt nap doesn't affect the group encounter in the slightest other than the loss of DPS.

So, unsurprisingly, everyone is a DPS character.

If you want to change that you need to rethink EVERYTHING from the ground-up.  Mob mechanics, encounter mechanics, character build from HP to stats, collision, resources.  You can't say "BAH, we've been playing D&D for 15 years, time for something new!" then jump right back on the "everything has hit points, stats and armor values" wagon.  You're just re-wrapping the same mechanics and throwing out the ones that evolved to their current point for a reason.

You can't tank without a method of keeping the mob on you, which has evolved to "aggro."  You could do nifty front-line stuff requiring positioning instead, but everything I think of for that requires collision detection.  That then becomes a problem with griefing AND hitboxes when you make Bosses big enough for large melee groups to get their hits in. 

Similar problem with heals. Give a class a heal that's even marginally bigger than the rest or good enough to keep people from dying and guess what is the only spell they'll be casting.

[palmer_eldritch]

So here's the thing.  Next lets you mix-match class stuff at will.  So basically anybody can get healing powers, or equip a shield and be tanky.  You don't have to worry about everyone in the party showing up to the dungeon entrance as a Hunter, not when any or all of you can swap in a healing skill and *bamf* now you're a healer.  So I don't see an aversion to the trinity being necessary for Next.  The downside of the trinity lies in being trapped in a situation where you need but cannot find a healer or tank, but the things they've said about their class system implies that everyone can be a healer and a tank after running around learning skills.  Let the players enjoy the benefits of specializing in a role instead of watering everything down.

I'm not sure this is true, particularly for tanks. 4 of your skills are permanently tied to your class/weapon, for which "sword and board" is probably a choice.

But you can also change class.

But only if you have collected the class, however that happens - and then progressed it. They say the game doesn't have levels but it has "tiers" which you progress through somehow. So if you have a tier 3 warriorand you are doing tier 3 content, having a tier 1 mage on that character clearly won't help much.

So some characters will be capable of swopping from warrior to mage.

Again, it sounds to me like it will be like Secret World where you could be in a group and in need of a healer, and one of the DPS characters says "actually I also have a healing spec and gear". But there's no guarantee.

Edit: I may have misunderstood the point you were making.

[Koyasha]

Gear is the real issue here, in my mind.  As long as there's a difference between 'DPS gear' and 'tank gear' and 'healing gear' we're going to see people having to specialize purely out of what gear they have, and the idea of someone switching roles into whatever is needed at the moment isn't going to materialize.

If they manage to make gear that provides equal benefits to all roles (while still differentiating one piece of gear from another) then we'll actually be able to see people switch between roles, but as long as people have to collect entire extra gear sets, not going to happen very much.

[Bzalthek]

If they're going to try to eliminate (mostly) the trinity (which I think is a noble attempt) they'll have to radically change how mob AI works.  This is one of their holy grails, so there is at least the fact they recognize this.  Whether they can implement it or not is the question but speculating on it without seeing their attempts is fruitless, but then, wtf else are we going to talk about.

There are two things which keep percolating in my head:  There was a snippet about the druids kiting you; the storybricks give mobs goals and motivations, release them into the wild, and let the chips fall where they might. 

Nothing I've heard precludes the trinity existing.  What they seem to be striving for is not strictly needing the trinity.   How they're doing this is still unknown.  They could give the mobs a realistic metric in the fact that is a heal spell is cast on the tank, then that fucker has to die pronto.  Having the mobs fight a super armor/hp tank while constantly being refreshed by some dipshit in the back lines has always been retarded.  I'd like to see combat difficulty ramp up hard.  Once players get past their one legged snakes and the suicidal Fippy, just running into meat grinder mob tactics and let the chips fall where they might.

[Maledict]

Just to clarify the idea with GW2 was never that 'everyone could tank'. Some classes could spec support, some spec control. Thieves for example couldn't spec for control at all, and neither could engineers. The idea was never that everyone could tank, it was that tanking was replaced by control and you had a huge amount more flexibility as to which classes could fulfill that role.

Unfortunately that doesn't work - partly because the control options are too weak or don't work. I can spec for control as a Mesmer all I want but bosses are never going to spend more than a second eating my clones, if they even bother to notice them at all. The second reason it doesn't work is that their are no real ways to keep aggro - so I can spec for defense as a Mesmer and be fairly sure Ill be the last person standing, but that's no use if the mob has eaten everyone else first...

It was never as grand an ambition as it first sounded when they announced it - and to be honest it was a much more realistic and sensible option. Unfortunately they simply failed on practically every level to make it work, and a huge amount of that is the tools and in game feedback.

[Merusk]

Control is always going to be a bad method because people get freaked out about how it impacts PVP. 

So long as you have to cater to PVP without a 2nd set of ability rules you're going to have weak, almost pointless, control because players quit when one class can keep them locked-down and helpless.

[Kageru]

(Merusk beat me to the PvP angle I see).

The GW2 team are superb at world building... not so great at class mechanics, and they've done little to iterate on it since launch.

Part of that might also be the old PvP problem. The sort of potent control options needed to make their model work in PvE are gruesomely overpowered in PvP and they don't want to run two different rule sets. So everything gets dumbed down. Even after playing a lot of it, and knowing their are "field" and "finisher" interactions for many powers I tend to just ignore them because none feel like they make that much of a difference.

Of course I don't mind the trinity. Make it a bit softer so being a healer or support isn't a life sentence, so many classes can contribute something or do okay in a prime role (even if it is modal), but don't throw it out entirely. Feeling like you have a role and value to the group is pretty important for group play.

I still expect it to be the champions model though. 4 people soloing in the same area and the guy getting hit kiting or blocking.

[Mrbloodworth]

No obvious quest givers makes me think of FFXI and spending countless hours talking to every stupid fuck NPC in the towns just to find nothing. Then again, FFXI was hardly about side quests. Even so, no big yellow bat signal is a nice change, only if it is obvious that that NPC has some shit for you to do.

I'm thinking anyone who has a quest will be overt. Likely, just walking up to said crying girl will trigger it. More akin to Skyrim/Fallout than Typical MMO's in how quests are started.


As for the "Holy trinity" thing, I think there may be misunderstanding. You can still play a healer if you want, what they are doing though, is shifting the onus from "Group makeup" being the barring factor, to "Individual makeup". IE: instead of needing 3 locked-in class players/alts, with the lack of one barring you from the content. The decision now falls to each individual as to what skill they bring. Want a healer, but don't have one? No need to spam LFG chat, just see if one of your friends will change over a few things.

  

 "I play a Tank/Healer, how are you going to incentivize support roles if they aren't required?"

    "I play a Tank/Healer in Neverwinter/Guild Wars 2 and I am never picked in favor of DPS. Why will I be picked in EQN?"

    "Ambiguous class roles destroy team work, how are you going to combat that?"

To which SOE creative director Jeff Butler replied:

    Jeff Butler

    

“I think one thing that you’ll see from us and we’ll demonstrate this as we get deeper into combat, is that we have a very detailed and intricate plan for moving around and fighting. The NPCs are capable of executing strategy and tactics and you’ll require your own intricate tactics to overcome them. We are saying that no one specific role or pair of roles is required in unlocking the strategy to defeating an encounter. It’s not to say that we are walking away from roles and it’s certainly not to say we are walking away from responsibility, both personal strategic and tactical responsibility….

    Effectively we want every single person playing the game to have fun, I refuse to have my guild fall apart because one member doesn’t want to play anymore and he is our primary healer. This is a responsibility that we created as game developer and we are abandoning it, we are not going to put players through that, we have seen the damage it has caused over the past 15 years and we are moving past it with this design.”

Somewhat related, i love this answer:

Q:Regarding combat mechanics, I understand that there's not going to be a holy trinity. So no dedicated healer class, so everyone has some small ability to heal themselves. Of what I see in the demo/screenshot of the gameplay it looks like there's going to be a large dodge mechanic as far as defending yourself. Well, a lot of my friends and players, I'm going to say this politely, are older and did not grow up playing action games, so am I just going to have to tell them that maybe this game is not for them?

A:That's a good question. So we obviously need to strike a very good balance between the active movement-based and the moment-to-moment dodging of things. We're still working a lot of those details out but I think that the happy medium that we strike will appeal to all the players in the audience.

We're not going to build a game that supports one-button macroing, for sure. So you will definitely have to be more active than that. Even in EverQuest 2, if you're not one-button macroing, you're still usually pretty active. Even if you're standing in one spot you're still busy doing other things, you're watching a million things, you're making sure your buffs are still going. You're doing all these kinds of different things. That's activity. Those are decision you are making on rapid base. You should expect to have some level of interactivity like that in any game. And whether we do those exact same mechanisms or not you're still going to be an active player, that's what a game is.

Even in the most static massively multiplayer game you are generally engaged in the activity of watching your hotbuttons refresh and then stabbing them at the most efficient oppertunity. That is one thing I can promise you that you're not going to be doing in this game. So if that's the sort of gameplay you're looking for you're looking in the wrong place.

Jeff, you play games different than I do, I don't stab my keyboard.

He's an angry gamer.

We will be getting everyone up and looking at what's going on on the screen and enjoying the process of playing the game.

[Falconeer]

Yes, I am worried too about Quest Givers not being obvious, but I think Skyrim is a good example. There's million of things to do there, and they are all quite easy to find, without exclamation marks. It can be done right, with enough time and resources.